public abstract class MidiMessage extends Object implements Cloneable

MidiMessage is the base class for MIDI messages. They include not only the standard MIDI messages that a synthesizer can respond to, but also "meta-events" that can be used by sequencer programs. There are meta-events for such information as lyrics, copyrights, tempo indications, time and key signatures, markers, etc. For more information, see the Standard MIDI Files 1.0 specification, which is part of the Complete MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification published by the MIDI Manufacturer's Association (http://www.midi.org).

The base MidiMessage class provides access to three types of information about a MIDI message:

• The messages's status byte
• The total length of the message in bytes (the status byte plus any data bytes)
• A byte array containing the complete message

MidiMessage includes methods to get, but not set, these values. Setting them is a subclass responsibility.

The MIDI standard expresses MIDI data in bytes. However, because Java uses signed bytes, the Java Sound API uses integers instead of bytes when expressing MIDI data. For example, the getStatus() method of MidiMessage returns MIDI status bytes as integers. If you are processing MIDI data that originated outside Java Sound and now is encoded as signed bytes, the bytes can be converted to integers using this conversion:

int i = (int)(byte & 0xFF)

If you simply need to pass a known MIDI byte value as a method parameter, it can be expressed directly as an integer, using (for example) decimal or hexadecimal notation. For instance, to pass the "active sensing" status byte as the first argument to ShortMessage's setMessage(int) method, you can express it as 254 or 0xFE.