• Description of common attributes of notes stored as MIDI data
  • instrument
  • pitch
  • volume
  • duration
  • tempo
• Description of advantages and disadvantages of storing sound as MIDI data

Midi (Music Instrument Digital Interface) is a method of storing synthesised sound. It was developed to allow multiple instruments to be controlled and synchronised from a computer. When the standard was developed in the early 80s the standard of sound on the computer sounded a lot like this, so MIDI was used to control the much better sound from a Synthesiser. Nowadays sound cards have high quality synthesisers built in, these cards can often be supplemented with actual recorded sound fonts. The  files containing MIDI data are stored on the computer and can be used with a sequencer to output music.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/IJqTtGA0Bkc" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

The video above is a bit on the long slide and does go into a lot of detail about MIDI, useful if you want to try and set up a midi studio.

For the higher course you need to be able to explain these terms

• instrument
  • This is the instrument that is to be played, you will have seen these if you have ever used an electronic musical keyboard.
• pitch
  • This is the note that has to be played.
• volume
  • How loud the note has to be played.
• duration
  • How long the note has to be played for. In MIDI a start of note and end of note is used. Duration can also be how long it takes the sound to die away.
• tempo
  • How quickly the piece of music is to be played. This is expressed in BPM (Beats per minute)

Disadvantages of MIDI:

• Dependent on soundcard for quality of sound
• Does not contain vocals
• Fewer effects can be applied to the sound