MIDI Program Change message

The MIDI program change message tells a MIDI device that at a certain time certain program should be selected for one of the MIDI channels.

Usually this means that an instrument will be selected for the MIDI channel and notes that follow this message will be played with the selected instrument. Occasionally a program change could mean something else such as the selection of a drum beat in a MIDI drum machine.

This message belongs to the category of MIDI voice messages.

The MIDI program change message consists of two bytes of data. The first byte is the status byte and has hexadecimal values between 0xC0 and 0xCF. The high nibble of the status byte is C, which tells the MIDI device that this is a "program change" message. The low nibble of the status byte is between 0 and F (0 and 15 in decimal values) and points to one of the 16 MIDI channels. One byte follows the status byte and has values between 0x00 and 0x7F (0 and 127 in decimal values). It signifies the program that should be selected. A list of the standard programs is provided below.

The following is an example of a MIDI program change message.

0xC6 0x07

The status byte 0xC6 shows that this is a program change message for channel 6. The selected program is 0x07, which for most devices means that a clavinet was selected as the instrument for this channel.

If the status byte is 0xC9, then the program change message has a special meaning. MIDI channel 9 (starting from 0) is the MIDI percussion channel and plays percussion instruments. Thus, a program change message will usually select a specific set of percussion instruments depending on the MIDI device. A list of the percussion instruments is provided below.

The following is a list of defined standard program changes.

The following is a list of percussion instruments played on MIDI channel 9.

See also:
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)