General MIDI - what is it?
General MIDI is used in professional recording studios, home recording, games and karaoke. We explain exactly what MIDI is in this practical tip.
MIDI: what is it and what is it used for?
We can describe the history and functionality of General MIDI with the following ten facts. In the following picture gallery you will learn how to connect MIDI devices.
- MIDI stands for "Musical Instrument Digital Interface" and was introduced in the 1980s to exchange control data from digital keyboards, sequencers, synthesizers, effects devices and mixers.
- Other devices such as lighting systems or robots can also be controlled via MIDI data.
- General MIDI (GM) was introduced in the early 1990s to standardize MIDI.
- For example, one of 128 standardized instruments can be selected on 16 MIDI channels. Channel 10 is provided as a drum track.
- The data packets are very small, so an entire song is often only a few hundred kilobytes in size. MIDI was often used, especially in old PC games that had to fit on a floppy disk.
- Pressing a keyboard key first generates a note-on command and a velocity between 0 and 127. When released, a note-off command is sent. In between, other controls can manipulate the volume, panorama, pitch or Virbato frequency.
- A sequencer such as Cubase can record this control data from a keyboard and forward it to a physical sound generator such as keyboards, synthesizers and drum computers or a virtual sound generator such as VST or Direct-X instruments.
- It is only this sound generator that actually generates a sound, for example from a library (such as samplers / wavetables) or through synthesis processes (such as additives or FM synthesis).
- It is therefore not possible to convert MIDI to MP3 or vice versa. However, synthesizers can interpret MIDI data and create a sound from it, which in turn can be saved as an audio file.
- Since MIDI files are pure control data and no audio content, MIDI files from copyrighted works have long been considered legal and have been traded especially for karaoke applications. However, since MIDI data almost corresponds to a note form of the piece and can be output as scores by many programs (such as MuseScore or Finale), copyright law also applies to MIDI files.
With the bundle MIDI4all, which is available free of charge from CHIP Online, you can record, edit and display MIDI data on a PC, display it as notes, open MIDI files and output the generated sounds as MP3. This practical tip shows you how you can otherwise output MIDI data as notes.
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Devices that can be controlled via MIDI have a MIDI input. Keyboards without audio function and other controls can only send control commands via MIDI-Out. The signal sent on the MIDI-In is copied via MIDI-Thru. In this way, two additional devices can be controlled with one keyboard.
MIDI cables either have five pins on both sides ...
... or on one side 12 to 15 pins for the gameport (Sub-D15) for computers.
If a MIDI connector on the computer is not sufficient, a MIDI USB interface was previously required to send and receive MIDI data to various devices via several channels.
Nowadays, many MIDI devices have a UBS connection directly over which MIDI data can be sent.
