What You Should Know About MIDI
Posted on 04. Jan, 2011 by MuseScoreTips in Tutorials & Articles
What is MIDI?
MIDI is an acronym that stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and it is not an object, but rather a universal standard – or common language – which allows lots of different music software programs and devices to talk to one another.
Are you familiar with a pianola? 
That’s the old-fashioned player piano that plays by itself when you load it up with a pianola roll and work the pedals. The pianola roll tells the pianola which notes to play, how long or short to play them, at which speed and how loud or soft. The pianola roll contains all of this information, so you can put the same pianola roll into a different pianola so that it can play back the same piece of music in the same way. The timbre or sound quality might be slightly different because it’s a different pianola, but the performance of the piece will be the same.
MIDI files are a little like this – the same MIDI file can be “played” by all sorts of different programs: MuseScore, GarageBand, Sonar, Acid, Logic, Protools, Sibelius, Finale or by devices such as digital keyboards, mobile phones and computers, because the information is in the MIDI file itself. This information triggers the software program or keyboard to play sounds – notes which are loud, soft, short, long, fast or slow. As with pianolas, the resulting sound may differ between programs, because each program or device has its own unique output sound. When you take a look at the MIDI information in one of these programs, it even looks like a pianola roll (and if often named the “pianola view” or similar).
So what?
Lots of existing MIDI files available for download on the internet. This means that someone has sat at a MIDI keyboard and recorded themselves playing the individual parts of a song – the bass line, the melody, the guitar part and keyboard part – one at a time. All the hard work has been done for you. You can download this MIDI file and simply play it back on your computer using something like iTunes or Windows Media Player.
But the beauty of MIDI files is that you can edit what your hear by opening it up in a program that will read MIDI files. Because each instrumental part has been recorded separately (on individual MIDI “channels”), you can change any or all of the parts to suit your own needs.
So where does MuseScore come in?
MuseScore reads MIDI files which means that you can turn your MIDI file into a score that can be printed for live musicians to play. And you can edit it – change the key, alter the instrumentation, delete or simplify parts – before you press print. It’s not a perfect science – a MIDI file is really intended for playing music back audibly, rather than for printing music – so this means that the MIDI file often does not include information you would see in a score – like slurs or articulations. You may also have missing key signatures or accidentals that are “spelt” incorrectly (ie. A sharp instead of B flat). However, you can view MIDI files as a little shortcut for getting notes into a score quickly, particularly if you are slow with note entry.
Coming soon will be a tutorial outlining the step-by-step process for opening and editing MIDI files in MuseScore. If you’d like to read more about MIDI, you can visit the Wikipedia article or the MIDI Manufacturers Association.
11 Responses to “What You Should Know About MIDI”
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January 10, 2011
[...] As a MIDI file: go to File > Save As and choose Standard MIDI File from the Format drop-down menu. Saving your score as a MIDI file creates a file which is small enough to email and can be played back in iTunes or Windows Media Player. However, the real beauty of the MIDI format is that you can use it to transfer your MuseScore file into another program – such as Sonar Home Studio, GarageBand or Protools – where you can add audio, or edit it further. If you’d like to know more about MIDI files, take a look at What You Should Know About MIDI. [...]
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April 27, 2011
[...] files – if you’re unfamiliar with MIDI files, take a look at my earlier article. MIDI is a “musical language” that is interpreted by many software programs and [...]
ALAN DEL ROSARIO
10. Jan, 2011
Greetings Musescore,
As a guitar player who plays by ear, I wish I could just connect my instrument to my laptop, play and Musescore would write what I play..Is this possible?
Katie Wardrobe
12. Jan, 2011
Hello Alan,
Some notation programs allows you to do that, but it’s never quite perfect when you play “live” into a notation program. There’s always quite a bit of fixing up to do. MuseScore uses a more manual method of note-input: you need to select the rhythmic value of the note and then play the note pitch (either on a MIDI instrument, or with your computer keyboard). You can read the method in the post I wrote titled The Secrets of Effective Note Entry. If you have a sequencing program like GarageBand or Sonar Home Studio, you could attach a MIDI guitar and play into that program. When you’ve finished recording your piece you can export it as a MIDI file and then open it in MuseScore to print the score (there will still be an amount of fixing up to do).
Good luck!
Katie
John Sprung
28. Apr, 2011
One really important thing to know about MIDI is the logic of the ins and outs. A lot of audio stuff works by connecting like to like: red to red, white to white, left to left, right to right….
But MIDI is different. MIDI is all about information flowing from one thing to another. With MIDI, you always connect the out of one thing to the in of the next, and vice versa.
Another point: Some MIDI devices can be damaged by being connected or disconnected under power. So, always plug everything in before you turn anything on.
– J.S.
Katie Wardrobe
28. Apr, 2011
Good advice and information – thanks John!
sgordon
19. Dec, 2011
Didn’t find a followup MIDI article on how to import MIDIs into score format… That’s something I’m interested in (and I’m heartened to learn that one -can- do this with MuseScore, as isn’t obvious – yay!) – since I’m far more apt to be able to do arranging than composing… and what a time savings this will be (assuming I can find the MIDI file :^). I’ve just discovered the elegant MuseScore – thank you so much for your YouTube tutorials and articles here!
Katie Wardrobe
19. Dec, 2011
I haven’t yet done the follow-up article, but thanks for reminding me! It’s not exactly a straightforward process and sometimes it’s quicker putting notes in from scratch. I’ll get on to it soon.
keith
03. Feb, 2012
Is it possible to enter notes on a grid similar to the gridscore in Cubase
Katie Wardrobe
04. Apr, 2012
MuseScore doesn’t have a piano-roll editor view like Cubase. You could always enter the notes in Cubase and then export the file as a MIDI file, which you can then open in MuseScore, if you prefer to work that way. Good luck!
Peter
22. Jul, 2012
I download midi files to a thumb drive and playback through a Roland SD50; however some files do not come up. Even though I can see them on my laptop the total thumb drive library is not there when I plug it into the SD50. Can you think of a reason?