MIDI Music


Last Updated: Sunday, June 25, 2006

There are two primary ways computers can make music. One is digital audio. This is simply a recording of sound waves, just like a compact disc. Digital audio takes up huge amounts of space! With low quality audio and compression, the Internet (at telephone speed) is just barely capable of playing digital audio in real-time. 

The other way a computer can make music is by using what is essentially sheet music. A file containing sheet music is called a MIDI ("middy") file. When you play back a MIDI file, the computer does its best to synthesize the notes in the file. There are 128 standard instruments a MIDI synthesizer must be able to play.

Warning: The following music is in sheet music form (MIDI), if your computer has only a "frequency modulator" synthesizer, then the following music will sound very poor (and synthetic), like old video game systems.

If, however, you have a wavetable synthesizer, then it may sound very good! Click the links below to hear the music! (Your computer will use recordings of real instruments [played at different speeds] to synthesize the music.)  Even if you do have a wavetable synthesizer, results may vary, because each wavetable synthesizer sounds different.

Here are a few of my favorite MIDI music files:

Movies:

TV:

Jazz:

Techno/Dance/Ambient:

Christmas:

Video Games (some of these are used on pages in my site):

Other:

 

Here are a few of my favorite sound effect files:

Note/Disclaimer: The MIDI music and WAV sound files above were found elsewhere on the Internet and are assumed to be public domain or freeware. The MIDI music I listen to often results in me buying the real album.  I take no copyright on the above music files.

Copyright 1997-2000 by Walton Dell

wdell.com Home Page Walton Dell's Software School Projects by Walton Dell Computer Support (Tutorials and more!) Glossary of computer terminology Music Video Games Fun Stuff Humor Links to other web sites Search wdell.com or the entire web! Contact Walton Dell
Web Site: wdell.com