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Midi Links & Files
All about Midi
MIDI started after the introduction of the
popular synthesizer module of the late '60s - namely, Dr. Moog's -- MiniMoog. Once
such synths became popular, and part of performance and composition, people got
the idea to hook up two such synths, even from different manufacturers. There wasn't
any standard. So, the industry came up with something called the General MIDI standard
(MIDI the acrostic for Musical Instrument Digital Interface).
Laid out in the cables, connections, and hardware, what MIDI does is use a stream
of standard byte codes that hardware devices (even software now) can use to trigger
built in sound patches - that is, instruments; and even all sorts of echo, reverb
effects, and the like. MIDI is often compared with a player piano roll, and specifically
not to the recording of it played on a particular piano. MIDI being just a bunch
of 'triggering' data, therefore, is light - very small (and MIDI data, even complete
songs, saved as files can be .zip compressed by 3,4,7 to 1 or better on top of that).
MIDI files are miniscule, and easy to send, these days, over 'the net'.
In short, MIDI is the particular sequence (the 'triggering' instructions, the MIDI
data/file itself, for an entire song or just part), but requires broadly the software/hardware
to record and then to manipulate these instructions (the sequencer used to create
or modify a MIDI file),
and also the software/hardware to read the instructions of a MIDI file and generate
the music (the synthesizer used to play back the song itself; and "software", because
software-only 'virtual' synths are widely available);
There are other things, too. Of course, the keyboard, or strings, drum pads or whatever
used to create the MIDI sequence are typically part of the synthesizer used to play
back such a sequence, but not always. You can have 'dumb' keyboards, and keyboardless
synthesizer modules. And there are whatever software drivers used by the computer.
And there is a further application or program that can be used to make or rework
certain instructions placed in a MIDI file, called a SysEx editor; covered just
below. And there are numerous other software programs, too.
MIDI data is really more for playing backing instrumentals on a synth! and instrumentals
with some limitations compared with recordings of real instruments. A choir-type
of sound is suggestively possible (because there are various choir 'patches', choir
voices, built into synthesizers). So are backing voices, of a sort, possible, singing
something close to Fa/La or Do/So, on every note. But that's about the limit. A
lead voice – other than a musical instrument that suggests some aspect of the voice
(and all do, basically) – generally just isn't there. It would be just too
complicated to get pre-record samples to speak English, or Italian, or whatever,
short of a synthesized voice add-on. And it's a drawback where the final song is
to be played only on the synth - as they might be played on the net for a web page's
background music, say - and not used as merely part of a final studio production
(where MIDI sequences are used in creating just part of some finely engineered song
for a commercial CD). The other thing is that while MIDI includes stuff (like controllers
and SysEx, mentioned just below) which can help the synthesizer to include some
expressiveness in playing the instruments, any real instruments, on which the MIDI
patches/instruments were based, will necessarily possess more shades and variety
than even a 'wavetable' synth sound sample. In other words, a good live performer
may do things that would be difficult to duplicate because of the limits of the
MIDI patches/instruments, themselves. As mentioned, below, the MIDI instruments
are recordings of real instruments. But it is a recording of just one aspect, one
set-up, for a few brief seconds, for a particular instrument, and likely in one
particular octave, and struck in one particular way. The real instrument can do
much more than that. The expressiveness might be closely recorded, the slurs and
timing, and almost all the rest, but it would still not sound quite like, or even
much like, the much more expressive instrument, itself - depending.
However, the 'power' of a small MIDI file, within limits, is that it can render
even better than CD quality sound, but depending on the synth and depending on the
care that went into the MIDI. The sound depends on the synth, whether hardware,
software, or some combination, that runs that sequence of MIDI codes. Yamaha got
in early, in the 70s, with FM synthesis; which used to be the synthesizer chip on
the bare bones sound cards that came with most computers, in the past. More recently
Roland, Ensoniq, and others, and then Yamaha, placed a far superior synthesizer
chips on PC cards, formerly available only in expensive rack-type modules. As noted,
already, this uses some sort of sampled, 'wavetable' synthesis, using actual sound
profiles from actual instruments, giving a limited, but still potentially better
than CD quality sound (again, of instrumentals). It can sound quite real. It can
sound quite 'live'. But it depends on the performance. And the performance IS the
MIDI - or perhaps more accurately, the MIDI is a particular performance, and that
on a very particular synthesizer.
The synth, itself, may differ quite a bit from one by another manufacturer, using
more or fewer 'patches', different effects, and so on. In the competition of the
marketplace, for these different synths, even if just chips on PC cards, the manufacturers
have used the GM standard for compatibility with all other GM compatible synths,
but have further augumented it with optional extras for their own synths or any
other synth, hard or soft, which is compatible. Roland had vied for setting the
standard, itself, originally. It wasn't taken up by the standard's committee. But
Roland went with this GM+, they call GS, anyway. And Yamaha went with something
called, XG, which is sort of super-GM version, with many more built-in instruments
and more and more specific effects. As suggested above, then, and now here, unfortunately,
for there even being a GM standard, one MIDI file may play on one synth or PC sound
card, and sound awesome, yet also play on another and sound absolutely lousy, or
just inaudible and indecipherable. It can be that different, and that bad. To some
degree, at any rate, that's the great 'problem' of MIDI, today; where the MIDI is
sent out, but not the audio itself. MIDI isn't the audio. It's utterly dependent
on what produces that audio. On the other hand, with a sequencer of whatever sort,
noted above, you have the option of modifying/adapting the MIDI for your particular
synth! And that might even be a lot of fun, for at least maybe few MIDI songs/files.
Okay, so that's MIDI
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