Application of MIDIs nowadays

haha, I wish you luck trying to compose music without MIDI. It''s a common misconception that MIDI is an organized prosession of bleeps and bloops. All major film and game composers use midi to write their music. It''s versatile and quick to make changes, and most of the time, you don''t even need an orchestra to perform the pieces for you.

I think Mischief was trying to say that people tend not to compose with General MIDI soundsets, but they do use MIDI as it was intended - as a standard for communicating between musical instruments.

So, no - music tends not to be delivered in the format of a *.mid file these days. But MIDI is used in the composition, and often to control instruments during recording, of the music which is delivered in the form of digital audio files.

The recording of game music does not differ from any other medium, but the music may be subtly or significantly interactive/adaptive which must be taken into consideration during composition.

Knowledge of composition in MIDI is pretty vital to composing music on a computer.

Deeper knowledge of MIDI is not completly useless either.

Also - the basic GM sound libary is usualy fairly useful in just getting something down quickly.

Of course, there''s all the interactive music stuff too, which has its roots sitting in the MIDI feild.

There is an excellent book about creating music (and sound design) for video games called "The Complete Guide to Game Audio" by Aaron Marks. If you''re curious about the process of creating music for games, this book explains everything you need to know at the entry level.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578200830/gignews/onyourmarkmus-20/103-4743192-9295852

MIDI is God! My life revolves around it.

Cool music for FILM, GAMES, MULTIMEDIA.
Free mp3 samples at:
http://micktaylormuzik.tripod.com

Of course, GM is pretty much crap when it comes to high-quality music, and THAT''S pretty much obsolete for modern games.

However, I invite you to play around with better instrument definition files... Even a .mid with the right IDF can sound like an MP3...

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Original post by RuneLancer
Of course, GM is pretty much crap when it comes to high-quality music, and THAT''S pretty much obsolete for modern games.

However, I invite you to play around with better instrument definition files... Even a .mid with the right IDF can sound like an MP3...

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Indeed. MIDI can do almost anything, and is still used quite a bit in commercial games. You just have to design your own IDF to play it back, which is what a lot of people don''t want to do. Takes a lot of work to create your own sample set, loop all the samples, create the instruments, and etc etc etc.

When it comes down to it, MIDI is the most Versatile Audio File type there is. You can alter the data in a MIDI at the drop of a hat by just opening the file and changing a note. You can do mass amounts of effects with portamento, panning, modulation, velocity, expression, etc. You can loop on the dime with MIDI, at any point in the song(given you use the proper controller and programming). MIDI is mall, really small, and takes little time at all to load a MIDI file.

In Short, MIDI can do it all if you know what you are doing. I think Squaresoft Proved that when they added a Choir to the Sound Chip in FF7 for playback in "One Winged Angel". Now there are MIDIs being played in games and sounding just like uncompressed WAV files.

Yeah...I''m done yapping now.

So, what programs would one use to design one''s own IDF?

I am not sure if this would be too effective for game audio but you could perhaps look into VST''s. If you built a host system that was efficient enough for game use, you really would have an amazing sound system. There you would have a large selection of free instruments and even the possibility of samplers. There is a free VST SF2 player. Once the host system was built in everything else would be very simple and extensible.

I have no idea how well this would work for games though. It is something I will definitely look into for myself after a couple of things.

Well, for making your own IDF it really depends on what you want to do. Sometimes you can use pre-existing ones and just get a license to use them in a game(like the soundbanks from Sound Modules, or synethesizers like the SC-88).

Then there are the ones you make yourself, by using a bank format like DLS, SF2, SBK, etc. There are hundreds of different IDFs you can use and for the MIDI to playback using them, it''s just a matter of the programmer making a playback device that uses the sounds from the given bank you decided to go with. SF2 files are easy to make and use, but they are only supported by Soundfont Compatible soundcards and I don''t think any consoles to this date have the proper drivers to use soundfonts either.

The DLS file(which stands for DownLoadable Sound) is directly related to DirectX and DirectMusic Producer. Anything that supports DirectX can use DLS banks for playing back MIDIs. There are tutorials on Microsoft''s site for how to do so too.

Still, I wouldn''t advise sticking with MIDI alone. While MIDI might be versatile, there are some consoles/systems like the GBA that can''t handle MIDI as well as some other formats such as Module Formats(MOD, XM, S3M, IT, SPC, NSF, etc).