The basic MIDI message consist of 2 or 3 “data byte” which includes Status bytes and Data bytes. A three data bytes long midi message contains a status byte followed by two data bytes. MIDI message is a 8 bit language ;  the bytes in MIDI are 8 bits long.

Here is an example of a simple 3 byte MIDI message.

Midi Message

Hexadecimal notation is commonly used to describe MIDI messages. Here in above example, the three-byte message indicates a Note On event on Channel 1 followed by Note number C3 with Velocity 125.

The first Status byte Note-Off event will be 1000 with channel 1 (i.e Ox8O). There are a total of 16 channels available 0000 to 1111.

The first data byte indicates the note number, which indicates, what note has been played by the musician.

The second data byte indicates the velocity at which the key was pressed. The velocity measure with values in between 0 to 127.