Newb question: How to change instruments?

[anchpop]

I've been reading this page and getting quite confused.

The concept of channels is central to how most MIDI messages work. A channel is an independent path over which messages travel to their destination. There are 16 channels per MIDI device. A track in your sequencer program plays one instrument over a single channel. The MIDI messages in the track find their way to the instrument over that channel.

What does this mean in terms of Midir? MidiOutputConnection doesn't seem to have any way of switching channels, so my first thought was that I just needed to make 16 calls to midi_out.connect(out_port, channel_name) to get 16 connections to send notes through. But connect consumes midi_out so that doesn't seem to work.

Sorry for asking such a newb question in here but I'm really confused, haha. Any help?

[anchpop]

Oh I see, the first nybble of 0x90 represents the channel (NOTE_ON_MSG in the example)