A MIDI track is an independent stream of MIDI events (time-stamped MIDI
data) that can be stored along with other tracks in a standard MIDI file.
The MIDI specification allows only 16 channels of MIDI data, but tracks
are a way to get around this limitation. A MIDI file can contain any number
of tracks, each containing its own stream of up to 16 channels of MIDI data.
A Track
occupies a middle level in the hierarchy of data played
by a Sequencer
: sequencers play sequences, which contain tracks,
which contain MIDI events. A sequencer may provide controls that mute
or solo individual tracks.
The timing information and resolution for a track is controlled by and stored
in the sequence containing the track. A given Track
is considered to belong to the particular Sequence
that
maintains its timing. For this reason, a new (empty) track is created by calling the
Sequence.createTrack()
method, rather than by directly invoking a
Track
constructor.
The Track
class provides methods to edit the track by adding
or removing MidiEvent
objects from it. These operations keep
the event list in the correct time order. Methods are also
included to obtain the track's size, in terms of either the number of events
it contains or its duration in ticks.