MIDI : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is both a way of connecting to digital musical intruments and a way compactly recording music for playback by digital musical istruments or a software sythesiser in a computer.

MIDI came out in 1991. An augmented, upward compatible MIDI-2 came out in 1999. DLS (Down Loadable 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 (Deutsches Institut für Normung/German Institute for Standardisation) 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.

It allows you to interconnect various MIDI-compatible electronic musical instruments such as keyboard, synthesiser, electronic drum set etc. and to connect them all to your computer. It allows you to play an instrument and have the computer convert your playing to sheet music, or to automatically play electronic MIDI sheet music, much like a player piano. A sound card usually comes with a built-in MIDI compatible synthesiser. It usually is a crummy sounding FM synthesiser, but on higher end sound cards it can be a full wave table synthesiser that can accurately simulate any combination of acoustic instruments. MIDI is very compact way of storing music. You can pick up a whole song off the Internet in a few seconds and start playing it immediately using the Crescendo add-in software to your web browser.

Limitations

• The main limitation of MIDI is that it currently cannot handle the human voice.
• Midi is designed around the 12-tone chromatic scale. Some instruments support microtuning to let you experiment with historical scales, experimental tunings, quarter tones etc, but this is not part of the MIDI standard.
• Only expensive keyboards give you fine volume control. Most just register key pressed or not. Every note plays at the same volume, like an organ.
• The sound lacks the subtlely of analog instruments.

Connectors

MIDI is a very simple serial interface. It uses only 3 pins of a 5-pin DIN connector. Inexpensive synthesizers are missing the MIDI connector. They use a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port intended to plug into a computer.

MIDI connectors

male MIDI connector	male MIDI pinouts. 1=unused 2=shield 3=unused 4=positive 5=negative

USB connectors

USB2-B connector that plugs into the synthesizer	USB2-A connector that plugs into the computer	USB2-A slot on the computer

Trying Out Midi

sample MIDI files

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 (Resource Interchange File Format) MIDI 0, RIFF MIDI 1.

There are over 60 different downloadable MIDI formats, that are converted to a standard format for timed commands sent to the instruments.

Using MIDI in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

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

electronic link to Cakewalk Sonar Artist Music Production Software

	recommend electronic⇒Cakewalk Sonar Artist Music Production Software
	asin	B00TFYS6GC
There are two more expensive versions the Professionals and the Platinum. They let you compose MIDI music.
Online electronic stores carrying Cakewalk Sonar Artist Music Production Software amazon.com bestbuy.ca amazon.ca canadacomputers.com amazon.de ncix.ca amazon.es newegg.ca amazon.fr www.staples.ca amazon.it tigerdirect.ca amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com junglee.com ncixus.com other stores newegg.com www.staples.com tigerdirect.com
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

Books

Book referral for Making Music with SONAR Home Studio

	recommend book⇒Making Music with SONAR Home Studio
	by	Craig Anderton	978-1-59863-973-5	paperback
	publisher	Course Technology	978-1-4354-5571-9	eBook
	published	2010-03-10	978-1-4354-5571-9	WebBook
			B0044KLPRO	kindle
Highly reviewed.
Online bookstores carrying Making Music with SONAR Home Studio abe books anz abe books.ca abe books.de amazon.ca amazon.de Chapters Indigo amazon.es Chapters Indigo eBooks iberlibro.com abe books.com abe books.fr amazon.com amazon.fr Barnes & Noble abe books.it Nook at Barnes & Noble amazon.it Kobo junglee.com Google play abe books.co.uk O’Reilly Safari amazon.co.uk Powells other stores
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder.