| back to my MIDI files |
| MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface
and is a standard by which electronic instruments (eg. the soundcard inside
a computer or an electronic keyboard) communicate with the computer. To
program a MIDI sequence (a file with a MID extension) data in the form of
notes, volumes, patch changes (different instrument sounds) to name a few
is entered into a musical sequencing program. MIDI files are therefore entirely
different from WAV, MP3, RealAudio files etc. With MIDI everything is programmed
into the file and the computer interprets this data into the sounds and
effects to be played by the soundcard or other MIDI instrument. The sound
output from MIDI files can in fact be converted to other formats eg. WAV
& MP3 but this of course considerably increases their filesize. The quality of playback of a MIDI file is very dependent on the quality and type of soundcard or other MIDI instrument. However there are good software wavetable synthesizers around nowdays which dramatically improve the performance of a basic soundcard. A big advantage of software synthesizers is that they have much greater polyphony capabilities than a soundcard. Polyphony is the maximum number of sounds that can be played at one time. The consequence of the polyphony limit of many soundcards is dropped notes and strange sounds and naturally pieces scored for full orchestra are most affected. It is very time consuming to create long MIDI sequences and extremely difficult to balance the sound. I am only an amateur and have much to learn. There are no repeats yet in the Beethoven or Dvorak as I intend to improve them some day and they will take less time to download. |
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email rkbt@gil.com.au
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Last updated 12th May 2005
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