An Introduction to MIDI

For the new music makers, MIDI might totally be a new word for you if you have never had the time to really look at musical instruments or devices with midi capability. MIDI stands for Musical Instruments Digital Interface. It is a technology made in view of electronic music instruments and has been developed since 1983.

Midi is essentially a digital communication language that is used to transmit musical information among electronic musical instrument with midi features. These musical instrument or devices include keyboards, synthesizers, electronic drums, sound modules, electronic piano and even on guitar. Midi is a widely known standard for saving and transmitting musical information similar to music manuscript that has information on what note to play, key signatures, time signature and so on.

There are many types of midi files as resulted from device developers who want to make a standard of their own. You may have seen formats like XGM and so on. However, there is GM (General MIDI), a standard that has become the consensus among midi device developers. These files are usually denoted with a .mid extension for the filename. For example, “mysong.mid” is a midi data files without the quotes.

Midi files are very small compared to digital audio files such as wav or mp3. Midi data only holds certain information on musical information but not the sound or timbre itself. A midi file does not store a piano sound, but instead, it can be used to store what notes to play on the piano, how long a note is pressed and what midi channel is used to trigger the piano sound on a keyboard or a sound module with a piano sounds.

Most computers with a soundcard are able to play general midi files. But where do the sounds come from? They come from the soundcard’s internal general midi instruments built in its chipset.

In fact, midi is widely used in the music industry by composers, arrangers and performers in studio or home-based music production and also in live performances. Midi however, is greatly used only in the production phase of music, where the process of composing, arranging and editing takes place.

Midi works using 16 midi channels, each can be assigned a different sound or patch. By using a sequencer, you can actually create a performance of a full blown orchestra. Most software or hardware based sequencers support midi. Sequencers are used by musicians to record and edit their musical compositions. Software based sequencers for music production includes Cakewalk, Cubase and Finale. They are many more in the market.