MIDI, an acronym for "Musical Instrument Digital Interface", is
a system designed to allow communication between musical
instruments. MIDI established a standard adopted by the
electronic music industry for controlling devices, such as
keyboards, drums, guitars, sound cards, and other electronic
instruments that emit music. Computers that have a MIDI
interface can record sounds created by a keyboard and then
manipulate the data to produce new sounds. For example, a
single set of notes that originally sound like a piano, can be
repeatedly and easily changed to sound like a flute, a guitar,
drums, or hundreds of other instruments. A single musician
using a single MIDI capable keyboard (and related MIDI
capable components), can reproduce the instrumentation of a
full orchestra with all instruments represented! In addition to
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electronic instruments, a number of software programs are
available for composing and editing music that conforms to the
MIDI standard. They offer a variety of functions: for instance,
when you play a tune on a keyboard connected to a computer,
a music program can translate what you play into a written
score.
To share musical sounds, they are typically recorded. MIDI is
one method of generating musical sound. An advanced method
of capturing musical (and other types of) sound is via digital
recording. Conceptually, digital recording captures a
representation of sound using numbers. This is opposed to
analog recording which attempts to capture and record the
sound waves themselves.
