MIDI

Each interaction with a key, button, knob or slider is converted into a MIDI event, which specifies musical instructions, such as a note's pitch, timing and velocity.

Advantages of MIDI include small file size, ease of modification and manipulation and a wide choice of electronic instruments and synthesizer or digitally sampled sounds.

Kakehashi felt that Oberheim's system was too cumbersome, and spoke to Dave Smith, the president of Sequential Circuits, about creating a simpler, cheaper alternative.

[8] Using Roland's DCB as a basis,[6] Smith and Sequential Circuits engineer Chet Wood devised a universal interface to allow communication between equipment from different manufacturers.

[24] MIDI's appeal was originally limited to professional musicians and record producers who wanted to use electronic instruments in the production of popular music.

[29] The expense of hiring outside musicians for a project can be reduced or eliminated,[2]: 7  and complex productions can be realized on a system as small as a synthesizer with integrated keyboard and sequencer.

[2]: 7–8  In 2022, the Guardian wrote that MIDI remained as important to music as USB was to computing, and represented "a crucial value system of cooperation and mutual benefit, one all but thrown out by today's major tech companies in favour of captive markets".

In 2005, Smith's MIDI Specification was inducted into the TECnology Hall of Fame, an honor given to "products and innovations that have had an enduring impact on the development of audio technology.

[33] The frequency of a filter and the envelope attack (the time it takes for a sound to reach its maximum level), are examples of synthesizer parameters, and can be controlled remotely through MIDI.

[40] Soon after, a number of platforms began supporting MIDI, including the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and IBM PC compatibles.

In 2015, Retro Innovations released the first MIDI interface for a VIC-20, making the computer's four voices available to electronic musicians and retro-computing enthusiasts for the first time.

[52][53] Due to their tiny filesize, fan-made MIDI arrangements became an attractive way to share music online, before the advent of broadband internet access and multi-gigabyte hard drives.

[58] The compact size of these files led to their widespread use in computers, mobile phone ringtones, webpage authoring and musical greeting cards.

[2]: 65 Sequencing software allows recorded MIDI data to be manipulated using standard computer editing features such as cut, copy and paste and drag and drop.

[12]: 213  Scorewriting software typically lacks advanced sequencing tools and is optimized for the creation of a neat, professional printout designed for live instrumentalists.

These became essential with the appearance of complex synthesizers such as the Yamaha FS1R,[66] which contained several thousand programmable parameters, but had an interface that consisted of fifteen tiny buttons, four knobs and a small LCD.

[76] The roots of software synthesis go back as far as the 1950s, when Max Mathews of Bell Labs wrote the MUSIC-N programming language, which was capable of non-real-time sound generation.

[82] The ability to construct full MIDI arrangements entirely in computer software allows a composer to render a finalized result directly as an audio file.

[32] Early PC games were distributed on floppy disks, and the small size of MIDI files made them a viable means of providing soundtracks.

[84] The computer industry moved in the mid-1990s toward wavetable-based soundcards with 16-bit playback but standardized on a 2 MB of wavetable storage, a space too small in which to fit good-quality samples of 128 General MIDI instruments plus drum kits.

[12]: 23  Nevertheless, some features of the keyboard playing for which MIDI was designed do not fully capture other instruments' capabilities; Jaron Lanier cites the standard as an example of technological "lock-in" that unexpectedly limited what was possible to express.

Samplers typically allow a user to edit a sample and save it to a hard disk, apply effects to it, and shape it with the same tools that subtractive synthesizers use.

This results in a nominal 5 milliamperes[103] current flow sourced from the sender's high voltage supply,[g] which travels rightwards along the red lines though the shielded[h] twisted-pair cable and into the receiver's opto-isolator.

XG similarly offered extra sounds, drumkits and effects, but used standard controllers instead of NRPNs for editing, and increased polyphony to 32 voices.

Once stored in the receiver, the information is no longer subject to timing issues associated with MIDI or USB interfaces and can be played with a high degree of accuracy.

MOTU's MTS, eMagic's AMT, and Steinberg's Midex 8 had implementations that were incompatible with each other, and required users to own software and hardware manufactured by the same company to work.

[137] Instruments like the Continuum Fingerboard, LinnStrument, ROLI Seaboard, Sensel Morph, and Eigenharp let users control pitch, timbre, and other nuances for individual notes within chords.

It was conceived as a local area network for musical instruments using FireWire as the transport and was designed to carry multiple MIDI channels together with multichannel digital audio, data file transfers, and timecode.

Representatives Yamaha, Roli, Microsoft, Google, and the MIDI Association introduced the update,[154] which enables bidirectional communication while maintaining backward compatibility.

[157] AMEI and MMA announced that complete specifications will be published following interoperability testing of prototype implementations from major manufacturers such as Google, Yamaha, Steinberg, Roland, Ableton, Native Instruments, and ROLI, among others.

MIDI logo from the MIDI Manufacturers Association
Example of music created in MIDI format
Several rack-mounted synthesizers that share a single controller
Using MIDI, a single controller (often a musical keyboard, as pictured here) can play multiple electronic instruments, which increases the portability and flexibility of stage setups. This system fits into a single rack case, but before the advent of MIDI, it would have required four separate full-size keyboard instruments, plus outboard mixing and effects units .
Dave Smith (right), one of the creators of MIDI
MIDI files contain sound events such as a finger striking a key, which can be visualized using software such as Synthesia .
A Novation Remote 25 two-octave MIDI controller
Smaller MIDI controllers are popular due to their portability. This two- octave unit provides a variety of controls for manipulating various sound design parameters of computer-based or standalone hardware instruments, effects, mixers and recording devices.
A General MIDI sound module.
A sound module , which requires an external controller (e.g., a MIDI keyboard) to trigger its sounds. These devices are highly portable, but their limited programming interface requires computer-based tools for comfortable access to their sound parameters.
A button matrix MIDI controller
Yamaha's Tenori-on controller allows arrangements to be built by "drawing" on its array of lighted buttons. The resulting arrangements can be played back using its internal sounds or external sound sources, or recorded in a computer-based sequencer.
8-N-1 asynchronous serial communication of two MIDI bytes. Each 8-bit byte is preceded by a start bit and succeeded by a stop bit for framing purposes, to total 10 bits. [ 14 ] : 286 So while the 31,250 baud rate corresponds to 31.25 kbit/s , the net bit rate is only 25 kbit/s. Each byte with its frame uses 320 microseconds . [ 103 ]
MIDI interconnection schematic
GM Standard Drum Map on the keyboard
General MIDI's Percussion Key Map specifies the percussion sound that a given note triggers. MIDI note numbers shown in parentheses next to their corresponding keyboard note.
A theatrical event operated by MIDI Show Control
MIDI Show Control is used to cue and synchronize lighting and effects for theatrical events, such as the Waterworld attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood . [ 128 ]