The General MIDI protocol defined Channel 10 for Drums. The old joke about normal musicians and drummers is true... drum kit programs are different from other (normal) instruments. Normal instruments, in MIDI, typically, use the channel for one unified instrument where all the notes can share a volume, a Pan position, a Send to Effects, etc., while a Drum Kit uses the channel for multiple drum and percussion sounds, each with its own volume, its own Pan position, its own Send to the Effects, etc., etc. drum Kits are very complex from a routing standpoint.

The GM convention selected channel 10 for consistency. If you are not creating General MIDI files for distribution, you are under no obligation to follow that protocol. You can choose any channel, no channel or all channels for drums, if you so desire.

If you purchase a commercially available GM file you will notice that it uses Channel 10 for drums... you however, do not have to...

Thank you Phil for informing us. I wasn't aware of this and ran into some similar (small) problem.

I recently bought a KTMP1 - Electronic Drum & Percussion Pad for alternative rhythm input on my Montage 8.
It really works very nice (and cheap). The pads react fast on both hands and sticks. It has a good built-in conga sound, but it can't beat the sounds of Yamaha.

It is possible to assign midi-notes to its pad, and as such using the Yamaha sounds. But unfortunately you can't change the midi-transmit/send channel. I wanted to use it on channel 16. But the machine is fixed set at 10. So I had to swap the channels and parts from my other midi-keyboards, occupying slots 9 to 14. Fortunately they were all set/selected to simple single-parts so swapping was a piece of cake.

Still, wished I had known this in advance. RTFM is not my strongest point. Should have finished school......

Still, wished I had known this in advance. RTFM is not my strongest point. Should have finished school......

Actually, it is fairly common knowledge... if you are working with items that conform to the GM standard (where the whole drums on 10 comes from) you can understand that GM is a standard that setup a set of minimum and specific requirements - designed not only for conformity but so that products could be made inexpensively. (It does not mean all GM products are inexpensive, it means that it does allow that this can occur). Drums programs, to be flexible, needed to be defaulted to a specific (consistent) channel, so manufacturers of "GM compatible" devices only "had to" provide the specially routing for this one part...

As you may realize now, the additional routing for the 73 different instruments found in a Drum Kit, is available for any of Montage's 16 Parts... meaning you can select a drum Kit for any Part. Your external device, being a percussion device, if fixing the MIDI channel to just one channel was a necessity, then channel 10 was a wise choice because, again, it is fairly common knowledge: if you must pick one, universally Channel 10 = drums. Surely, you've come across this at some point using MIDI, no?

Reading will not hurt you... and can save you time and frustration. Think of it as an investment!