MIDI: Musical Instrument Digital Interface

Introduction

Since its emergence, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) has been growing in popularity at a rapid pace. MIDI is a powerful tool for both composition and music education, and consists essentially of a communications protocol that allows digital musical instruments, computers, and other devices to interact with one another.

History

The idea of producing sound by electrical means is not new. It originated with Elisha Gray’s Musical Telegraph (yes, the same Gray who competed with Bell for the telephone patent). Electronic instruments, however, remained unpopular until the 1960s, with the emergence of the first transistor-based Moog synthesizers.

The true popularization of synthesizers came in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as these instruments made their way into the world of disco, pop, and rock music. This spurred great advances in sound generation, eventually reaching sampling, which allows for near-faithful reproduction of the sounds of conventional instruments. With these developments, musicians began to recognize the synthesizer as a musical instrument in its own right, since until then its use had been limited to a relatively small group of “electronic musicians” (e.g. Jean-Michel Jarre, Walter (now Wendy) Carlos, Vangelis, Isao Tomita, or Tangerine Dream).

But musicians wanted even more: the ability to play multiple sounds — or, to put it another way, to play more synthesizers — simultaneously. At the time, this could only be achieved in a multi-track recording studio, not, for example, at a live concert.

As a result, sequencers of all kinds began to appear, built both by companies and by musicians themselves (for example, the Geiss Matrisequencer). All of this created a kind of chaos of incompatibilities between the communication interfaces of electronic instruments.

Recognizing the need to standardize these interfaces, engineers and designers from several companies came together to develop a standard communications protocol, which (yes, you guessed it — MIDI) was presented at the First North American Music Manufacturers Show (NAMM) in Los Angeles in 1983.

MIDI

MIDI works in a manner analogous to a communications protocol between computers via modem, for example. The simplest MIDI application is the ability to play a note remotely: pressing a key on one instrument causes another connected to it to play exactly the same note.

But that is far from all. More recently, the MIDI interface has begun to be used between computers and synthesizers or keyboards, making it possible to edit and store a synthesizer’s musical information on a computer. This opens up an even broader field of creative possibilities for composers.

MIDI and Computers

Computer manufacturers soon realized the potential benefits of MIDI.

Since MIDI’s data transmission speed (31.5 kBaud) differs from all standard computer transmission rates, designers had to create a dedicated MIDI interface for computers. Apple (with the Macintosh and the Apple II) and Commodore were the first companies to adopt this interface. The major synthesizer manufacturer Roland later designed an interface for IBM PCs and compatibles. But Atari went even further, designing an entire new line of computers — the Atari ST — with a built-in MIDI interface (highly specialized machines, used extensively for sequencing).

Alongside the hardware came a wide variety of software for all platforms on the market. The simplest programs are sequencers, which handle the basic tasks of recording data from a keyboard, saving it to disk (in the well-known .MID files), and playing back that MIDI data. Today there is a considerable range of software for working with MIDI on computers. On PCs, most of it runs under MS-Windows and similar graphical interfaces — which, admittedly, do make reading sheet music much easier.

Credits

Please include credits if you plan to use this article in any way. Also include the references listed below.

References

LIPSCOMB, Eric. (BITNET: LIPS@UNTVAX). “How Much for Just the MIDI?”. This article appeared in the October 1989 issue of North Texas Computing Center Newsletter, “Benchmarks”. Credits to: “Articles database of CCNEWS, the Electronic Forum for Campus Computing Newsletter Editors, a BITNET-based service of EDUCOM”.
CALDWELL, Dustin. “Standard MIDI File Format”. Games Programming Encyclopaedia.

Originally published in “GAUSS Gazette”, a publication endorsed by the Office of Student Affairs of the B.U.A.P., in August 1996