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| MIDI Explained MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and basically it is a computer file format. MIDI music is created using synthesizers and/or samplers to provide the sounds and generally, a keyboard or other MIDI capable device inputs the musical data to a sequencing program. The program records the information as text data, and the magical part happens when you press playback and the synthesizers duplicate your performance! It's sort of like a player piano, but with a full orchestra to work with. The advantages are that the composer has access to a "virtual" orchestra and because they are text based files, MIDI files are typically much smaller than audio files, making them ideal for use on the World Wide Wait (oops, I mean Web). The disadvantages are that the composer can't add vocals or other non-MIDI data such as acoustic instruments and in order to hear them in all their glory, one really needs a sophisticated synthesizer set up (Can you say "expensive"?). Fortunately most computers now support some way of playing MIDI files internally. QuickTime software from Apple, and various plugins for Netscape and Explorer provide the basic "virtual sounds" your computer needs to hear the files. There are all kinds of MIDI players for free on the net. In most cases you can simply download a plugin, place it in the plugins folder of your browser, and you are ready to listen. (Some browsers such as Netscape also require you to select the plugin, in the preferences section.) The only problem with the plugin approach is that the internal sounds that your computer can generate are generally not very good. They tend to sound pretty thin and toyish. They are good enough to enable you to hear the music, though and it's worth enabling your system to hear these files. Some sound quite good and they are very useful in multimedia presentations where file size is important. MIDI files are all over the web, embedded in pages as background music, and as downloadable files. They are an extremely useful source for musicians who need transcriptions of popular songs for performance. Almost any song is available in this format and there are many sites devoted to this technology. The dark side of all of these files being so available is that many wannabe musicians take advantage of the proliferation of files on the net and try to play their entire live show using nothing but pre-made MIDI files. In many cases these posers will actually pretend to play what the listener is hearing. Unsophisticated club owners are actually fooled into hiring these fakers, and some deserving "real musician" loses another paying job. We play LIVE! |
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