MIDI came out in 1991. An augmented, upward compatible MIDI-2 came out in 1999. DLS (Downloadable Sounds) enables sampling, making sounds with a wavetable sound capture rather than mathematicallly. XMF (eXtensible Music Format) combines MIDI and DLS in one file.

The MIDI stream sent to instruments over the 5-pin DIN serial connection contains no embedded timing information. The notes are sent the instant they are intended to be played. MIDI files on the other hand need embedded timing information to track when to send the commands.

Trying Out Midi

Bach	Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring	Maple Leaf Rag	Ain’t Misbehavin
Ain’t we Got Fun	The living Love catalyst	The Bodyguard	I Can see Clearly Now
The Impossible Dream	Killing me Softly	Do the Locomotion	Puff The Magic Dragon
Start Me Up	Take Five	Wind Beneath My Wings	The Pearl Fishers

Advantages and Disadvantage of MIDI

If you are a musician, you can modify MIDI files to use different instruments, and feed them into your digital musical instruments. You can also modify the music as you please, to change the tempo or even even the notes and durations.

Basically, MIDI just tells your computer to play middle C for 250 milliseconds sounding as best like a piano or a trumpet as it can. The quality of the sound card hardware and the software synthesiser in the computer playing the MIDI file has a lot to with how lush and realistic the performance sounds. It will sound totally different played on different computers. Only the timing and pitch will match.

There are at least 4 flavours of MIDI: MIDI 0, MIDI 1, RIFF MIDI 0, RIFF MIDI 1.

Using MIDI in HTML

Using JavaScript, it is also possible to cause a song to start playing automatically as soon as a page is loaded.

Using MIDI in Java 1.1

getAppletContext().showDocument ( new URL ( getCodeBase(), "test.mid" ) );

MIDI in Java 1.3+

Creating MIDI files