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...

January 2015 The MMA Executive Board at the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim CA held a meeting of prospective developers to discuss possible procedures for bringing HD Products to market. The Board noted that the additional options possible with the proposed HD Protocol could make product interoperability more challenging to achieve, and require signifi...

What MIDI does, how to use it, how devices are connected, and more. pdf File Name: An Introduction to MIDI File Size: 2.1 mb Download File

MIDI (pronounced "mid-e") is a technology that makes creating, playing, or just learning about music easier and more rewarding. Playing a musical instrument can provide a lifetime of enjoyment and friendship. Whether your goal is to play in a band, or you just want to perform privately in your home, or you want to develop your skills as a music com...

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...

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...

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' (software or hardware), and the final sound is the...

 Unlike MP3 files and CDs, MIDI files contain individual instructions for playing each individual note of each individual instrument. So with MIDI it is actually possible to change just one note in a song, or to re-orchestrate an entire song with entirely different instruments. And since each instrument in a MIDI performance is separate from t...

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...

Our friends over at http://en.wikiaudio.org created this simplfied diagram of MIDI messages and kindly let us put it up here. 

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

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...

By Daderot (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons 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.