What is MIDI?

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI was created in the mid 1980's as a protocol for allowing dissimilar electronic music instruments from various manufacturers to "talk" to each other. It is essentially comprised of instructions which tell a musical device when to play a note, for how long, how loud, on what instrument, etc. It also can convey information about how to "express" the note, such as how hard to strike, blow, or bow the instrument. Neat, huh?

If your sound card supports MIDI (most of them do now), then it is a MIDI instrument. When you click on one of the musical links on the previous page, your web browser first downloads the .mid file to your computer, then executes a program which knows how to pass the instructions to your sound card. Netscape (cool!) has this "midi player" built in. Internet Explorer allows you to assign a program to the .mid file type in its OPTIONS menu (see instructions below).

Hey! Nothing happens when I click on your music link!

What you need to play my MIDI files:

A computer (guess you have one or you wouldn't be reading this...), running Windows 3.1, 95, NT, OS/2, etc.

A sound card that supports MIDI with good "WAV table synthesis" (see description below).

A program that can play MIDI through your sound card (\windows\mplayer.exe works just fine...)

Your web browser (see below for configuring your browser).

What the heck is "WAV table synthesis"?

There are two basic types of MIDI support on today's sound cards: FM synthesis and WAV table synthesis. FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis creates sound by combining two electronic signals of different frequencies, producing a third signal which has characteristics somewhat like the desired instrument. Yes, this is indeed the same technique which is used to create the signal which is received by your FM radio. The two signals typically come from a couple of oscillators on the sound card, so this is truly "synthesised" sound. WAV table synthesis isn't really synthesis at all. It is simply the playing back of digital samples (recordings) of acoustic or electronic instrument sounds. It typically sounds much better than FM synthesis, particularly for "real" instruments.

Which one do you have? Your sound card documentation should tell you. A note about WAV table: not all WAV table cards are equal! In particular, the instrument samples on the Sound Blaster 16 are extremely bad. The AWE64 from the same manufacturer has much better samples. There is a lot of great midi music on the web... I recommend getting a very good quality sound card. It is well worth the extra cost!

My web browser gives me an error when I click on the link!

Configuring Internet Explorer:

Internet Exlplorer 3.0 and later has MIDI built in. You can upgrade for free at www.microsoft.com. For earlier versions:

Pull down the VIEW menu.

Select OPTIONS.

A dialog box will appear. Select the FILE TYPES tab.

Find, then double click on "MIDfile" in the file types window.

Double click on "open" in the ACTIONS window.

Type C:\WINDOWS\MPLAYER.EXE in the window labled "Application used to perform action". (If you are using a different application to play midi, type the path and name of that instead).

Back out by clicking on CLOSE or OK or whatever...

Try playing again!

If you still can't play or get errors, you probably don't have the drivers, or you have a sound card configuration problem.

Configuring Netscape:

Netscape 3.0 and later has MIDI support built in. On earlier versions:

Pull down the OPTIONS menu.

Select "General Preferences".

Type MID in the "File Extensions Window".

Click "Launch the Application"

Type C:\WINDOWS\MPLAYER.EXE in the little box below that.

Close the window.

Try playing again!

If you still can't play you have a driver or sound card configuration problem.

How do I save the music for listening later?

In Netscape, use Shift+LeftClick, or RightClick and select "save as".

In Internet Explorer, RightClick, then select "save target as".

You can then open the file later with \WINDOWS\MPLAYER.EXE for listening...

Aren't I violating your copyright by saving the file?

Not as long as you just use my music for your own enjoyment. Click here for details...

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