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MIDI

Electronic musical instrument industry specification

Entitytechnical specification communication protocol file format familyQ80535

Also known as .midi · .mid · RMI · Musical Instrument Digital Interface

Instance of: technical specification
, communication protocol
, file format family
Website: midi.org/specifications

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music. A single MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen channels of MIDI data, each of which can be routed to a separate device. Each interaction with a key, button, knob or slider is converted into a MIDI event, which specifies musical instructions, such as a note's pitch, timing and velocity. One common MIDI application is to play a MIDI keyboard or other controller and use it to trigger a digital sound module to generate sounds, which the audience hears produced by a keyboard amplifier. MIDI data can be transferred via MIDI or USB cable, or recorded to a sequencer or digital audio workstation for editing or playback.

Overview

All data

45 statements · 20% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Has use: data transmission
video game music
Derivative work: MIDI Show Control
Standards body: Association of Musical Electronics Industry
MIDI Manufacturers Association
Members / parts: Standard MIDI File
MIDI note numbers
Different from: Standard MIDI File
Replaces: DIN sync
Creator: Dave Smith

On other databases

29 identifiers linking MIDI across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

20%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 27, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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curl https://aidb.si/api/v1/entities/Q80535

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Cite this page

AIDB. (2026). MIDI (Q80535). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/midi-Q80535