What's MIDI?

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=50 BGCOLOR="#666699" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>What's MIDI?</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=430 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Music"><U>Music</U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><B>What's MIDI?</B></div> <div> <B>English</B><B> </B><A HREF="midi43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="¿Que es MIDI?"><U><B>Spanish</B></U></A><B> </B></div> <bR> <div> Most music you hear (CD's, MP3's, MPEGs, tapes) is a recording of a live performance</div> <div> (on stage or studio) performed by musicians playing instruments and possibly singing.</div> <div> It's recorded by sound engineers using microphones and other equipment.</div> <div> To play it back, amplify the volume and send the pre-recorded</div> <div> sounds to a speaker or headset. No instruments to play it back.</div> <bR> <div> MIDI music by comparison consists of the actual music score (notes, tempo, etc).</div> <div> Only the notes not the sounds are recorded!  No microphones or studios are used.</div> <div> You can't play it straight into an amplifier and speakers, you need something to "read" </div> <div> those notes and generate the sounds. Only computers or musical instruments can play MIDI music.</div> <bR> <div> Advantages? CDs (wave files) and MP3's take about 1 Megabyte (million bytes per minute) of music.</div> <div> But MIDI music is tiny -- takes very little space.  </div> <div> Only notes, tempo and perhaps instrument "voice" channels are "recorded".</div> <div> It can be downloaded very quickly.</div> <bR> <div> Disadvantages? Even on a bad amp, pre-recorded music can sound very full.</div> <div> MIDI is at the mercy of the instrument or computer that is being played on.</div> <div> If your computer has a nice sound card with rich sounding voices (synthesizer)</div> <div> then the MIDI music will sound rich.  But if it's not, it'll sound flat and thin.</div> <bR> <div> Another difference? Pre-recorded music takes place in a studio, with professionals</div> <div> and studio engineers erasing mistakes.  MIDI can be created by professionals also...</div> <div> but very often is created by folks like you and I and no studio. Mistakes can go unnoticed until you play it. </div> <div> Mistakes are easy to make: typing the wrong note, tempo or voice.</div> <bR> <div> Final difference? Pre-recorded music often contains human voices. Even expensive MIDI instruments or computers</div> <div> have no standard way to reproduce human voices. Hence MIDI music is instrumental. </div> <bR> <div> We're using MIDI only here due to size/speed of download. You may have high speed Internet and the patience</div> <div> to wait for the bigger downloads (25X larger) but most folks don't have either. </div> <div> To compensate for different sound cards and taste differences we often provide multiple (different) versions of the same piece.</div> <bR> <div> Back to <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Music"><U>MUSIC</U></A>.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>