Using MIDI files

[BANDL]

Recently I posted a note in Vogone Forum that might have been confusing. Since the note would be relevant to both Forum, I am posting this one here.

I have been using MIDI files for several years and find them very helpful and relatively easy to use.

A MIDI file contains no music; it is basically a set of instructions to your MIDI hardware/software (most newer computers have a some form of MIDI software that will read these instructions) to play the song. Because it does not contain any sound, MIDI files are relatively small, so they do not take much room in your computer and they can be downloaded from the Internet in a flash.

There are other advantages:

1- The most obvious one is that, since a MIDI file has no vocals, it is perfect for the Karaoke Home Producer.

2- Usually one of the tracks in the MIDI file is dedicated to a single instrument (for example a sax) that carries the melody. Since you can hear the melody, there is no problem with synchronizing the lyrics to the music. When I do my Karaoke Home producer work, I have this instrument very soft, then I play the song and capture it as a .WAV files (again most newer computer have software that will do this). Now I have a .WAV file with NO vocals ready to place in my KARAOKE format.

3- Any of the instruments in the MIDI file can be changed with a MIDI synthesizer program (Digital Orchestrator, Cakewalk or any of the many available)

Admin Note: MTU will be offering a very high quality software synthesizer that can take a MIDI file, let you play with the instruments, and save it as a .wav file. The program comes on a CDROM with hundreds of megabytes of quality sample sound files used to create the sound. This is how they can generate a much higher quality sound than your inexpensive MIDI generator sound card. As BANDL points out below, with quality sample sound files, it can be very hard to tell a MIDI .wav from real instruments recorded as a sound file.

4- You can find MIDI files of songs that you might not be able to get in any other way. For a very good search engine use http://www.musicrobot.com. This search engine looks only at the MIDI file universe.

Now, MIDI files have their drawback:
1- Sometimes the music is not quite what you remember from the original recording, but if you download and examine several of the files available on the Internet, you may find one that is a very good facsimile of the original.
2- The sound of the instruments is not real! They are all synthesized. I sometimes have a hard time differentiating between a real sound and a synthesized sound, but some people might object to that.

I hope this helps. Good luck!
BANDL