Part 2: MIDI Cables & Connectors Many different "transports" can be used for MIDI messages. The speed of the transport determines how much MIDI data can be carried, and how quickly it will be received. 5-Pin MIDI DIN Using a 5-pin "DIN" connector, the MIDI DIN transport was developed back in 1983, so it is slow compared to common high-spee...

Animusic produces innovative music animation by leveraging MIDI data in creating "virtual concerts". The animation of graphical instrument elements is generated using proprietary software called MIDImotionTM. The technique is analytical, note-based, and involves a pre-process (as opposed to being reactive, sound-based, and real-time). Feature: Inte...

"Manipulate the state of your mind" using Light Scape sequences. Enjoy the psychedelic color experience that the eLSD is inducing. It gently pulses light and color in front of your eyes, influencing your brain waves and the state of your mind. Create your own Light Scape sequences (The eLSD is a USB-MIDI device).  We have seen lots of MIDI dev...

DC Cemetery will be updated for 2017! For years now the Brent Ross, Creator & Designer of the DC Cemetery has been creating some of best Halloween haunts by using all kinds of technology including MIDI. Here is an article form 2008 updated with the 2014 video and information on where you can see the 2017 version DC...

RTP-MIDI (IETF RFC 6295) is a specification for sending/receiving standard "MIDI 1.0" messages using standard networking protocols ("Real Time Protocol" and "Internet Protocol"). RTP-MIDI includes a data recovery mechanism (MIDI event journaling) to address packet loss that can occur on networks, eliminating the need for packet retransmission (whic...

An explanation of music synthesis technology and how MIDI is used to generate and control sounds. This document was originally published in 1995 at a time when MIDI had been used in electronic musical instruments for more than a decade, but was still a relatively new technology in the computer industry. All these years later, the PC industry has ch...

An explanation of issues to consider for syncing hardware devices (LauterZEIT website). lauterZEIT - Taxonomy of Arpeggiator and LFO Sync http://lauterzeit.com/arp_lfo_seq_sync/

"What is MIDI and How Can I Use It" (Seymour Duncan website). What is MIDI and How Can I Use It? | Seymour Duncan http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-tone-garage/what-is-midi-and-how-can-i-use-it

The Web MIDI API connects your MIDI gear directly to your browser. Your browser connects you to the rest of the world. MIDI hardware support has been available for a long time in Windows, Mac OS, iOS and most computer/tablet/smart phone platforms through USB, WiFi and even Bluetooth interfaces. But until now, there has been no standard mechani...

​August 2015 -- This contest is a joint partnership between CMIA, MMA, Google, and AMEI, to sponsor the promotion of web based music and audio application development and innovations, by leveraging the latest development in web audio APIs and web MIDI APIs, to develop new products and services, and creating more business opportunities for the music...

A special Web Audio/MIDI Hackathon was organized for web developers by Google at the Google Shanghai office. More than 70 developers from across China, from as far as Beijing and Zhangjiakou in northern China, and even a developer from the Netherlands, came to attend the event, which was lead by Ryoya Kawai and Encai Liu of Yamaha, to train the dev...

Standard MIDI Files ("SMF" or *.mid files)   Standard MIDI Files ("SMF" or *.mid files) are a popular source of music on the web, and for musicians performing in clubs who need a little extra accompaniment. The files contain all the MIDI instructions for notes, volumes, sounds, and even effects. The files are loaded into some form of 'player' ...

Part 3: MIDI Messages The MIDI Message specification (or "MIDI Protocol") is probably the most important part of MIDI. MIDI is a music description language in digital (binary) form. It was designed for use with keyboard-based musical instruments, so the message structure is oriented to performance events, such as picking a note and then striking it...

MIDI is like air, it's all around you, most of the time you can take it for granted, but if you are a digital musician you probably couldn't live with out it. MIDI is inside musical instruments, computers, tablets, smart phones, stage lighting, audio mixers, and many other products from well-known international companies including Apple, Gibso...

The MIDI specification first saw the light of day at the 1981 AES, when Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits presented a paper on the "Universal Synthesizer Interface." It was co-developed with other companies (an effort driven principally by Roland's Ikutaro Kakehashi, a true visionary of this industry), and made its prime time debut at the 1983 Los ...

The first electronic musical instruments As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, the Theremin and the Hammond organ. What is interesting in looking at these early devices is how much they foreshadow the future...

The MIDI Association (TMA), a global community of people who use MIDI to create music and art, has been founded with the goals of providing education for existing users, as well as creating new music makers by promoting the creative possibilities of connecting digital musical instruments, MIDI controllers, smart phones, tablets and computers. To fu...

Electronic musical instruments had been around in some form since the late nineteenth century. The Telharmonium and the Singing Telegraph date back to the beginnings of electricity itself while throughout the first half of the twentieth century electronic musical contraptions were quite the rage in Europe, from the French Ondes-Martenot to the...

From mechanical to digital to virtual....and back! The relationship between mechanical musical machines and MIDI gets even more intriguing with orchestrions and "fairground organs".  Orchestrions have multiple mechanical instruments in them and are designed to sound like a complete orchestra (hence the name). Orchestrions a...

The golden age of mechanical music machines really came in the late 19th century and early 20th century with player pianos and orchestrions.  A player piano is defined as any actual acoustic piano that is played by a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music.  Between 1910 and 1...

To really understand the origins of MIDI, you need to go all the way back to before there were digitally controlled synthesizers and computers, In fact you need to go back before there was even electricity to the very first mechanical music machines. The very first mechanical musical instruments were documented in the Book of Ingenious Devices...

What is MIDI and How Can I Use It? | Seymour Duncan https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-tone-garage/what-is-midi-and-how-can-i-use-it