Do you own a keyboard? Check the back of it and you may see a circular plug labeled MIDI In, MIDI out, or even MIDI through. What does it all mean. Well, in a nutshell, it means that you can use your keyboard to compose and arrange original musical compositions on your computer.

MIDI is an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a communications protocol created in 1983 that allows synthesizers and computers manufactured by different companies to talk to each other. An analogy for how MIDI works can be found by examining the relationship between musicians and their sheet music.

If you are a musician, you read the notes on your sheet music or guitar tab in order to figure out what notes to make on your instrument. Sheet music tells you more than just the pitch of notes. It can also tell if you should play fast or slow, loud or soft, and how long you should hold each note. MIDI works very much like sheet music.

With MIDI, notes are represented by numbers. The tempo, volume and duration of each note are also quantified by MIDI. However, MIDI describes each note and how it is played in far more detail than sheet music could ever do. There are numeric representations for the attack of each note, how each note fades, how hard you pressed down on the keyboard and the list goes on. These details are called MIDI Values. MIDI also lets you play several instruments from the "standard list of instruments" at the same time. All of this information is represented by a stream of ones and zeros to comprise the MIDI protocol.

MIDI wasn't perfect when it first came out back in 1983. One problem was that different manufacturers had different instruments at different instrument values. In layman's terms, a piano on a Sony MIDI instrument might be a trumpet on a Yamaha, or a clarinet on a Korg.

A few years after MIDI's debut in 1983, MIDI manufacturers put their heads together and formed the MMA (MIDI Manufacturers Association) and defined a "standard instrument list." They also worked out some remaining glitches in the MIDI protocol and called the resulting total package, General MIDI or GM for short.

Most MIDI capable instruments on the market today are GM MIDI compatible.

Just like sheet music, GM MIDI only tells the musician what to play. You cannot hold sheet music up to your ear and hear a trumpet solo. There needs to be something "making the noise." Sheet music instructs a musician to play the trumpet a certain way with a certain pitch and tone. Similarly, MIDI tells an electronic musician to play their electronic instrument a certain way. These electronic instruments are commonly known as synthesizers.

There are two basic types of synthesizers. There are the keyboard variety and the box variety. You can go to Radio Shack or K-Mart and see a cheap example of a keyboard/synthesizer combo. You press the keys and the synthesizer plays noises out of the speakers which are usually mounted on the keyboard someplace. A more expensive example of a keyboard/synthesizer combo can be found at your local music store. Roland (link), Yamaha (link), Korg (link)... these are some examples of companies that make high-end keyboard/synthesizer combos.

The second type of synthesizer is the box kind, known as a synthesizer module. It is basically a very expensive box filled with electronics dedicated to translating MIDI signals into very high quality sounds. Modules normally do not have a keyboard or any sort of input device attached to them. Modules need to be hooked up to a MIDI input of some type (like a keyboard) and on an amplifier on the other end.

Your computer's sound card most likely has some MIDI capability. Your sound card is essentially a very inexpensive example of a synthesizer module. If you've ever been to a web site that has annoying MIDI music playing in the background, you've heard the MIDI capabilities of your computer's sound card. The reason why most web surfers get annoyed with midi on web sites is because it sounds so chintzy when translated by the GM module built into their sound card... that and they really don't care to hear a Muzak version of "My Heart Will Go On".

Common Newbie MIDI Mistake Number One: No actual sound is being transmitted over the wires. MIDI only tells other electronic instruments how to play a note. When you plug your keyboard synthesizer into to your computer, only ones and zero's are being exchanged. Therefore, it is very possible that the trumpet sound on your synthesizer will sound a little different from the trumpet sound your computer's sound card makes. If you have a real cheap sound card, you may be downright offended by the sound your computer makes.

Newbie Tip Number Two: Hey, you don't really need a $3,000 keyboard. You can get a radio-shack cheap-ass keyboard and hook it up to an expensive synthesizer module to make some really quality sounding electronic music. The keyboard is essentially just an input device, like a joystick or mouse for your computer. You can get the really expensive joystick, or the cheap-ie They both do the same thing, albeit one may feel better, ergonomically or have better response. For an example of a cheap keyboard hooked up to an expensive module... check out this picture.

The picture above shows the set up that a friend of mine used in a brief electronic / acoustic project of mine. Lets take a closer look at each of the components of the system. It's not THAT expensive or hard to use.

Cakewalk is a program that is capable of recording the MIDI actions spit out by keyboards and other devices. It records them and then lets you compose them. This is called SEQUENCING. Some keyboards and synth modules have built in sequencers that let you save, or record, your songs as you play them. However, Cakewalk is much more powerful than any built in Sequencer.

Now, Cakewalk (link) isn't cheap or free. In fact, it costs hundreds of dollars... but I bet if you look hard enough on the web, you can find the latest version floating around. Some people, so I've been told. like to search the web for sites offering "Warez, Hackz, Crackz, Downloadz." But this is illegal. So don't try it if you don't like to do illegal things. You could get in trouble.

Lets take a look at the Keyboard. It's a cheap OPTIMUS brand keyboard that you can get at Radio Shack here in town for under $200 bucks. It's built in sounds are all fairly cheesy.. Meaning they sound cheap. But we didn't get this keyboard for the sounds that it could make. The keyboard is used to trigger sounds in the synth module that we hooked it up to called a "MC-505 Roland Groove Box."

One thing to look for in a Keyboard, even a cheap one, is touch sensitivity. All that means is that if you hit a key harder, it plays louder, like a real piano would do. If your keyboard doesn't have this function, then all your notes will be the same volume, which sounds robotic and unfeeling.

The box is a Synthesizer Module with a small keyboard built into it. Technically it is a keyboard/synth combo, but we used it primarily as a drum machine and synth module. It has a whole ton of knobs and buttons on it designed to let you alter drum patterns, attack, tone, and other aspects "on the fly." The sounds it produces are superb, professional quality tones. Many techno artists and dance artists have this box in their tool chest. Unfortunately, the Groove Box is not cheap. This one cost Tonehog (sound clips)about a grand.

So, to recap, we have a laptop computer recording and replaying the MIDI sequencing. We also have a cheap-ass Radio Shack keyboard that has touch sensitive keys. The keyboard is just an input device, like a joystick or mouse is to a computer. You DO NOT have to have the best keyboard in the world. In our case, we didn't use any of the built in sounds of our keyboard. We used it to control the Roland Groove Box, which has much better sounding electronic instruments.

By hooking the Roland Groove Box and the keyboard directly to the computer we can record what both the keyboard and Roland are doing. The computer also passes along information from the keyboard to the Roland so that the Roland can make noises and send them to the PA.