What's MIDI music?

RIVER BENDER - JUNE  2004

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It's a standard protocol specification agreed on by electronic musical instrument companies back in the '80s to allow musical keyboards, synthesizers and computers to talk to each other. I'm not going to discuss how MIDI music is created because it's rather complicated and beyond the scope of this article. Instead, I'll discuss MIDI music 101 and how it can be enjoyed by anyone having an ordinary PC with a sound card, media player and speakers.

MIDI music is computer-generated: Unlike recorded music MIDI music is computer-generated by a synthesizer that exists on all sound cards in modern PCs. Depending on the skill of the person who created the MIDI tune, some tunes sound terrible and others sound great. I think banjo music sounds the best. Piano music is usually good. All MIDI music is instrumental so if you want to hear singer's voices you'll have to download huge files such as those using the MP3 format. The nice thing about MIDI files is they're very tiny compared to MP3 files and can be downloaded quickly. Also lots of free MIDI songs exist on the web, something that is no longer true of MP3 music. Whenever you hear music playing at a web site you can bet it's MIDI.

Good MIDI music needs a good sound card and speakers: The more expensive the PC is the better quality the sound card will be, which means that the synthesizer on the card will be able to create sounds of many musical instruments with good fidelity. Also having a couple speakers, including a woofer will provide a hi-fi sound instead of sounding tinny. Laptops with small speakers never play music well.

Finding and downloading MIDI music: Finding MIDI music on the web is easy because there's so much of it. As a starter go to Google at www.google.com and enter "midi" and you'll see scores of web sites, many with music to download and others offering tutorials on MIDI. If you're interested in particular music search on such phrases as "banjo midi, gospel midi, Irish midi," etc., or perhaps search for a particular MIDI song such as "orange blossom special midi." All MIDI songs have a .mid suffix in the filename. Left clicking on the filename will bring up a media player if your PC has one assigned to play .mid files and right clicking will download it after selecting "Save target as" and designating the folder where you want it saved.. The usual player is Windows Media Player Version 9 or 10 that is available from Microsoft. If your PC doesn't have it just put "Windows Media Player" in Google and you'll find where to download it.

Practice playing your instrument with MIDI music: I'm an amateur musician and play a mandolin and fiddle. I bought my PC with the intention of practicing along with MIDI music that is abundantly available on the web so I made sure I had a good sound card and speaker system. In a "My Music" folder I created individual folders and labled them for the various types of MIDI music I download such as Bluegrass, Country, Gospel, Oldies, Contemporary, Polkas, etc. Currently I have several hundred songs saved and find it relaxing to play along with them. Being a member of the amateur Pickin & Grinin group that plays in the mall on Friday evening MIDI music helps me practice tunes that we play and learn new ones to introduce to the group. To hear and see lyrics of some of the MIDI music played by the Pickin & Grinin Group go to http://www.always-online.com/dave/musicindex.htm.

All past articles by Dave Wallace are posted at http://always-online.com/nbcug/dwindex.htm