Wait just a sec — whats MIDI?
General MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a hardware and software standard by which MIDI-compatible programs, sound cards, and instruments can communicate. There are several different versions, some advocated by specific manufacturers (e.g., Yamaha’s XG system) to make their equipment more desirable. All of them involve the same process, however: a device decodes a MIDI file, which is a set of instructions for a musical instrument. The instrument, following those instructions, plays music. Think of a MIDI file as the music roll of a player piano, only infinitely more flexible The advantages MIDI has over any other electronic music format are considerable: • The file size is ludicrously small — a full movement of a symphony can weigh in at less than 100 kb, and the average pop song arrangement is around 40 kb — compared with an MP3 file, which averages around 1 MB per minute of song (at 128 kbps), or with a .WAV file (up to ten times as big as the MP3). You can fit ten to
