Musical Instrument Digital Interface (music, hardware, protocol, file format) (MIDI /mi'-dee/, /mee'-dee/) A hardware specification and protocol used to communicate note and effect information between synthesisers, computers, music keyboards, controllers, and other electronic music devices. It is basically a high-speed serial connection with separate connections for MIDI in, MIDI out and MIDI through (to allow devices to be chained).
The basic unit of information is a "note on/off" event which includes a note number (pitch) and key velocity (loudness). There are many other message types for events such as pitch bend, patch changes and synthesizer-specific events for loading new patches etc. There is a file format for expressing MIDI data which is like a dump of data sent over a MIDI port. The MIME type "audio/midi" isn't actually registered so it should probably be "audio/x-midi". Filename extension: .mid or .midi http://update.uu.se/~vick/Coordinator.html. Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.music.midi, news:alt.music.midi. Last updated: 1998-06-27
