Introducing MIDI

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It’s a communications protocol that allows electronic musical instruments to talk to one another. It was introduced as a technical standard in the 80s to make life easier for electronic musicians with lots of gear. A keyboard player in a rock band would be able to go on stage with just one keyboard and use it to play several devices tucked away on a rack at the back of the stage.

As computers became more and more common, it didn’t take long for people to realize that since the signal going from that keyboard to the devices at the back of the stage was purely digital, it could be easily stored and processed on a computer. This was ground-breaking: people could now perform their musical ideas on a keyboard, record those performances on a computer, and then go back and edit them just like editing text with a word processor. Not only could they fix their mistakes after the performance, but they could...