Around 1983 MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was invented as a means of allowing synthesisers to communicate with each other and also sequencers. It also meant as a standard to be used accross many different makes of synthesiser so you didn't have to use different sequencers¹
for different synthesisers. This enabled greater use 'sequencing' of the synthesisers for people to create their music.

General MIDI

Around 1991 a new standard emerged in MIDI, 'General MIDI' which was the basic idea to have a standard selection of instruments allocated to certain positions in the memory on each synthesiser. As such a tune created on one synthesiser would sound pretty much the same on any other synthesiser. Though there ended up being 3 different versions of this from different synthesiser manufacturers, it always remained largely the same and cross compatible.

Unfortunately this also resulted in synthesisers becoming rather boring due to there being little variation in the sounds and tones produced.

However this did provide people with the ability to create backings songs which would work with pretty much any synthesiser and sound nearly identical on any synthesiser. Such as sound 21 'trombone' on a Korg synthesiser would be interpreted and played back as sound 21 'trombone' on a Roland synthesiser, however the actual sound might vary slightly.

MIDI Files

Due to the fact that you could save whatever you have created, people who were particularly talented started to create MIDI Files for commercial distribution. Usually these files were cover versions of popular songs. This was of particular use to people who wished to make a living from performing other people's songs and couldn't be bothered to work out how to play them. Simply order the MIDI file from a company on a disk, load it into your synthesiser and straight away it's all there and ready for you to sing along.

With the expansion of the internet later, midi files can often be found for download from various sources on the internet. Another handy aspect is that most PC soundcards these days have built in ability to play MIDI files. This means that any budding musician has the ability to torture your ears with some badly programmed MIDI music by setting it as a background sound to their web page.

Searching on the internet for MIDI files of your favourite band usually comes up with quite a few results. However, be wary of fact that midi file quality can go down as well as up.

It is rather unfortunate that many cheaper PC soundcards and 'on board' soundcards on PCs tend to use the most unpleasant and awful sounds for their General MIDI specification. To refer back to the part earlier on where sound 21 was trombone, this would be the same on the PC, however the actual tone is unlikely to sound anywhere near as good.

Another handy aspect of the MIDI file is it's ability to save space for game programmers. Using your own tune with it's own unique sounds is all very well and good but it might not fit on the cd/cartridge with the rest of the game. Therefore much space can be saved by using a MIDI file (which is small due to just being a set of instructions, rather than long audio files) to play the standard sounds built into the game console. Quite often on the internet you can find MIDI files that have been taken from games. This enables fans of the game to enjoy the aural experience of playing the game without actually playing it.

I want to make MIDI files too!

Feeling creative, eh? Well to create MIDI files you'll either need a synthesiser with built in sequencer and a disk drive of some sort to save it onto or a PC MIDI sequencer program. Programs available for doing this are such as 'Steinberg Cubase' which is the big professional commercial option if you have a lot of money spare or there are plenty of almost equally advanced shareware and freeware programs that are just a mere internet search away. But please think carefully before adding the ultimate glockenspiel version of Bohemian Rhapsody to your web page.²