What is Midi. What is it used for.?

Question

I am a musician and play guitar and bass. I recently bought a keyboard and it has a midi output. I have heard of midi before but need someone to give me a quick explanation of it if possible.

Answer 1

Midi stands for music instrument data interface or something like that....

a computer or machine that uses midi keeps track of the following information....

The channel of the information (1-16) : there are sixteen possible channels to send midi data
which means you can contral sixteen different sounds on a keyboard or sixteen different pieces of electronic keyboards/samplers depending on what you have connected to the midi network....

here is the data midi sends: What note and octave range was played....how hard was the note played(velocity) at what time was the note played and what time was the note let go of.

so in another words I could use a midi program to create midi data in a visiual or grid editor....and by assigning my electronic keyboard the right cahnnel the computer or sequencer will tell my keyboard/sampler/ what music to play....rather than the cheesy sounds we get on our pc's

Answer 2

I wrote an article on MIDI for WiseGEEK.com. Essentially, it's a computer language which allows different electronic instruments to recognize each other's outputs. While it's true that many MIDI files sound horribly twonky on computers, it's not the fault of the musician. The sound of a MIDI file depends on the instrumentation used for playback. If you record a piano solo on a good synthesizer and save it as a MIDI file, it will sound just as good on another synth. It just won't sound very good on a basic computer with limited voices.

Answer 3

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Very simply it's a protocol that allows instruments to "talk" to each other. For example, your keyboard could be used to play sounds stored in a computer programme, instead of the ones it comes with.

Without getting extremely technical, you can probably see that MIDI gives musicans huge scope with just a simple setup - in a home studio or on stage. A simple example is of a keyboard player with a band who needs to have Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano, grand piano, and strings sounds at his disposal for different songs. Instead of carting all those different instruments about on the road, taking up huge amounts of stage space and breaking all his roadies backs, all the sounds ("samples") all stored in a sampler, or maybe on a laptop. Then he can call up the sounds and use MIDI to play them on a single keyboard.

That's perhaps a bit simplistic, but you get the idea! Lots of fun at your fingertips - find out more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI

Answer 4

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It's a method of specifying a musical note for a musical instrument.

MIDI devices can communicate with one another and remember and replay previously defined sequences of notes.

Answer 5

Huge in music studies. It is a way to hook up a keyboard, maybe even your guitar now to a computer and it will input what you play without having to compose on like Finale or something. Good stuff to have, sorry I don't know more about it. Google it....

Answer 6

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Answer 7

It's like a computerized piano. You play the notes and can save it on the comp and it will playback on a crappy sounding piano format.

Answer 8

It's a small file size music file format for playing tones.

Answer 9

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