MIDI CC list: all 128 Control Change numbers

What a MIDI CC number actually is

A Control Change message is one of the seven MIDI 1.0 channel voice messages. It carries three bytes: a status byte identifying the message as Control Change on a particular channel, a controller number from 0 to 127, and a value from 0 to 127. Note On and Note Off decide which notes sound; Control Change decides almost everything about how they sound while they are sounding. Volume, pan, filter cutoff, reverb send, the sustain pedal — all of it travels as CC.

The MIDI 1.0 specification assigns meanings to some of those 128 numbers and deliberately leaves others open. The table above reflects that split honestly: where the spec defines a controller, the defined name is given; where it does not, the entry reads Undefined. Undefined does not mean unusable. Those numbers are exactly where synth designers put their own parameters, and a plugin is free to map anything it likes to CC 20 or CC 110. It only means no cross-manufacturer agreement exists, so two instruments will not necessarily respond the same way.

The CCs you will actually reach for

CC 1 — Modulation Wheel. The mod wheel is the most universally implemented expressive controller in MIDI. Classically it adds vibrato, but in modern sample libraries and synths it is more often wired to a general intensity or morph parameter. In orchestral libraries CC 1 usually cross-fades between dynamic layers, which is why it is the single most automated controller in film-score mockups.

CC 7 — Channel Volume. The channel's mixer fader. This is a static level control: set it once to balance a part against the rest of the arrangement. Because a DAW's own track fader often also writes CC 7, using it for musical swells frequently causes fights between the DAW and the instrument. That is precisely the reason CC 11 exists.

CC 10 — Pan. Positions the channel in the stereo field, 0 hard left, 64 centre, 127 hard right. Many modern instruments ignore CC 10 in favour of the host's panner, so check before automating it.

CC 11 — Expression. The controller most people should be using and are not. Expression is defined as a percentage of the CC 7 volume setting, not a replacement for it. Keeping CC 7 for static balance and CC 11 for musical dynamics gives you two independent layers of level control: you can rebalance a part later without erasing every crescendo you performed. Riding CC 11 in real time is the fastest way to make a programmed line stop sounding like a grid of identical velocities.

CC 64 — Damper Pedal (Sustain). A switch, not a fader. Values 0 to 63 read as off, 64 to 127 as on. Every switch controller in the 64 to 69 block follows that same threshold, which is why a half-pedal gesture on a continuous pedal is meaningless to an instrument that only implements the switch behaviour.

CC 74 — Brightness. Formally Sound Controller 5, and in practice the near-universal filter-cutoff controller. CC 74 also carries a special role in MPE, where it is the standard dimension for per-note timbre: moving a finger up and down the key surface sends per-channel CC 74, letting each note in a chord have its own brightness. If you are building an expressive patch, CC 1, CC 11 and CC 74 are the three that repay the effort most.

MSB, LSB and 14-bit resolution

A single CC value has 128 steps. On a slow filter sweep or a long fade that is coarse enough to hear as stepping, so the specification pairs the first 32 controllers with a second set: CC 0–31 carry the Most Significant Byte, and CC 32–63 carry the Least Significant Byte of the same controller. The pairing rule is simply LSB = MSB + 32. CC 1 pairs with CC 33, CC 7 with CC 39, CC 11 with CC 43.

Send both and the receiver reconstructs a 14-bit value with (MSB << 7) | LSB, giving 16,384 steps instead of 128 — a 128-fold increase in resolution. Two practical consequences follow. First, send the MSB before the LSB; a receiver that has already acted on the MSB will refine the value when the LSB arrives, but the reverse order can produce a momentary jump. Second, 14-bit support is optional and comparatively rare. Most instruments implement only the MSB and silently ignore the LSB, so do not assume smoothness you have not tested. The one place 14-bit is genuinely everyday is CC 6 with CC 38, the Data Entry pair used to set RPN and NRPN parameters.

Channel Mode messages: CC 120–127

The last eight numbers are not ordinary controllers at all. They are Channel Mode messages, and they change how the receiving instrument behaves rather than shaping a sound. CC 123 All Notes Off and CC 120 All Sound Off are the two worth remembering: All Notes Off releases held notes so their envelopes finish naturally, while All Sound Off cuts output immediately, ignoring release tails. Most DAW panic buttons send one or both. CC 121 Reset All Controllers returns controllers to their default state, which is the usual cure for a patch that is stuck sounding wrong after a stray pedal or pitch-bend message.

Using CC in your DAW

There are three normal ways to get CC data into a project, and they are not equivalent.

• Draw it. Every DAW exposes CC lanes under the piano roll — automation lanes in Ableton Live, MIDI Draw in Logic Pro, controller lanes in Cubase. Precise, repeatable, and slow. It also tends to produce curves that look correct and sound mechanical, because a mouse draws shapes a performer would never play.
• Perform it. Record a physical controller — a mod wheel, an expression pedal, a breath controller — while the part plays back. Faster and far more musical, since the gesture is tied to how the phrase actually feels.
• Map it. Assign a CC to a plugin parameter with the plugin's MIDI-learn function, then record the moves as CC rather than host automation. This keeps the expression inside the MIDI clip, so it survives being moved, copied or bounced to another track.

Whichever route you take, one habit is worth forming: check the instrument's own MIDI implementation chart before automating anything outside the well-known numbers. A CC the instrument does not implement produces silence rather than an error, and that silence is a genuinely tedious thing to debug. If you want to see exactly which CC messages a controller is emitting, the Web MIDI monitor on this site prints every message in real time.

Frequently asked questions