SNCA:MIDI

MIDI is ARYAN btw, if that matters

The MIDI logo.

Musical Instrument Digital Interface (or MIDI) is a technical standard for specifying audio devices and electronic musical instruments for playing, editing and recording music.

It was invented by David Smith of Sequential (USA), and Ikutaro Kakehashi of Roland Corporation (Japan). It is one of the most instrumental (pun not intended) audio instrument synchronisation protocols in history, being the one to first standardise it.

Instead of sending actual audio (like an MP3 file might do), a MIDI file encodes instructions, such as the note, the velocity/dynamics of the note, what instrument to play it with, and its duration. This is notably a very lightweight means to store audio, and is flexible across many audio devices and software, and is easily editable. The current standard, MIDI 2.0, was released in 2020.

Many notable works, including Touhou Project, especially in the earlier era, encoded its audio as MIDI. You may also best know MIDI for synthesiser software, which may produce a piano roll video representing pitch and duration of a MIDI note as a vertical bar. Software known for working with MIDI, called digital audio workstations (DAWs), such as FL Studio (which produces these piano roll screens), and GarageBand on Apple systems (like iPhone) work with these.

Many software platforms, including Java, provide built-in support for MIDI (such as javax.sound.midi), or the Windows.Devices.Midi on Windows). This made MIDI audio ubiquitous on platforms such as J2ME (Java Micro Edition, the software platform things like early pre-smart cell phones ran on), and most audio would be encoded as MIDI due to hardware limitations.

MIDI sound fonts are often stored as .sf2 files, which contain recorded instrument samples, as well as mapping data, allowing for highly customisable audio and sound depending on the MIDI sound font.

Unfortunately, many troonslop streamers like Vinesauce Joel have turned MIDI into a meme, reducing the amount of respect for this amazing technology.

Snopes

MIDI is part of a series on Computing

>I wrote my own fucking compiler I'm not a nigger like Linus

➜ /languages

├ /markup/ HTML • CSS • XML
├ /low_level/ Assembly • C • C++ • C# • Holy C • Rust
└ /high_level/ Java • Go • PHP • Python • SQL • Bash • JavaScript • PowerShell • ActionScript • Scratch • Ruby • Lua • P

➜ /software

├ /imageboards/ nusoi • Vichan • Yotsuba • OpenYotsuba
├ /operating_systems/ Windows • Linux • Android • TempleOS • BSD
└ /misc/ Babybot • McChallenge • CAPTCHA • Systemd • MS Paint • JS Paint • Photoshop • Flash • IRC • Ad blocking • Dark Web • Ricing • Free-software license • 4get • Game development • Snarkysnappydoxingtool.bat

➜ /cyb

└ Operations security • The Ultimate Cybersecurity Guide

➜ /misc

├ /file_formats/ GIF • MIDI • SVG • WEBM • WEBP
└ /hardware/ ThinkPad

➜ /ai

└ ChatGPT • Gemini • Grok • Vibe coding • Generative AI • Stable Diffusion

SOYNY