View source for Help:Media (MIDI)

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<div style="float:left;width:32.5%;padding:.3em 0;margin:2px 2px 0">[[Help:Media|Media introduction]]</div>
<div style="float:left;width:32.5%;padding:.3em 0;margin:2px 2px 0">[[Help:Media (audio and video)|Audio and video]]</div>
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==Playing standard MIDI files==
[[File:Brahms1-1.svg|thumb|right|300px|Standard MIDI files trigger sounds played on a [[synthesizer]]. {{audio|Brahms1-1.mid|Play}}]]

Standard [[Musical Instrument Digital Interface|MIDI]] Files (SMF) contain instructions that trigger sounds played by a [[synthesizer]] which is typically expected to meet the [[General MIDI]] specification. On a personal computer these instructions can be turned into sound by either a software synthesizer, or by sending them along to a hardware synthesizer. 

There can be remarkable differences in the sound produced by a MIDI file, depending on the machine on which it is played and the instrument samples it uses.

It is possible to play MIDI files here, but rather than relying on the user's browser and operating system to support MIDI files, it relies on [[mw:Extension:TimedMediaHandler|an extension]] that internally converts the MIDI instructions into a digital audio file that is playable on most browsers, and displays an audio player. For example, here is a <code><nowiki>[[File:]]</nowiki></code> wikilink to a MIDI file: [[File:Twelve bar boogie-woogie blues in C.mid]]

{{Listen|title=Twelve bar boogie-woogie blues in C|filename=Twelve bar boogie-woogie blues in C.mid|description=Play MIDI example of [[Twelve bar blues]].|help=no|pos=right}}
The {{tl|listen}} template shows this audio player when you specify a MIDI <code>filename</code>.

If a page has a <code><nowiki>[[Media:]]</nowiki></code> wikilink to a MIDI file, this directly links to the MIDI file, so the playback of the file ''does'' depend on the user's browser and operating system's support for MIDI files; many browsers will prompt to download the file. For example, [[Media:Twelve bar boogie-woogie blues in C.mid]].
{{As of|2020|05}} the {{tl|Audio}} template for inline sounds directly links to the MIDI file, while the speaker icon next to the file name links to the emulated audio player. For example, {{audio|Twelve bar boogie-woogie blues in C.mid|MIDI file of example of twelve bar blues|help=no}}

There is another way to play a MIDI file using the [[:mw:Extension:Score|Score extension]] which renders a musical score and can also transform it into MIDI and thence into a digital audio file. An example is below.

=== Problems playing MIDI files directly ===
The following problems might occur when playing MIDI files:
* The machine on which you play the file must have both the software and hardware required to play MIDI files.  This is natively supported in Windows, used to be built into Macintosh computers by default.  Now you may need to install additional software.
* Since around 2017 [[web browser]]s such as [[Firefox]] and [[Google Chrome]] dropped support for [[NPAPI]] [[Plug-in (computing)|plug-in]]s like [[Quicktime]] and [[Totem (media player)|Totem]] that could play MIDI files by clicking on an [[Hyperlink|embedded link]] in a web page. [[Internet Explorer]] supports MIDI playback by launching [[Windows Media Player]], which plays MIDI natively. {{As of|2015|04}}, there seems to be no [[OS X 10.8]]+ browser plugin that allows playing MIDI files without downloading them first.
* Your [[sound card mixer]] playback settings might need to be changed. You can enable and unmute all playback devices, and then increase the volume of all of them, to ensure that your sound card sends MIDI audio to its output.
* MIDI files encoded with a more recent version of the MIDI standard might not be correctly rendered if your machine doesn't support that version of the standard.
* Some hardware manufacturers produce proprietary [[MIDI#Extensions of the MIDI standard|extensions to the general MIDI standard]] that are not rendered by all MIDI players. Such hardware-specific extensions are to be avoided in MIDI files uploaded to Wikipedia.
 
If your sound card does not support MIDI – or on OS X 10.8+ –, free cross-platform software such as [[MuseScore]] and [[TiMidity]] is able to play these files after you have downloaded them to your computer, or convert them to other sound formats. [[VLC media player]] is a cross-platform open source media player that can play MIDI files [https://wiki.videolan.org/Midi with some configuration].

Free software is available to display the content of the most current types of MIDI files in [[sheet music]] or [[Music sequencer|sequencer]] format, or both, including [[Rosegarden]] and [[GNU LilyPond|Lilypond]].

==Creating==
You can create MIDI files with [[Comparison of MIDI editors and sequencers|MIDI sequencing software]] such as [[Cakewalk (sequencer)|Cakewalk]] or [[List of scorewriters|scorewriting]] software such as [[Sibelius (software)|Sibelius]]. Wikipedia editors may also create MIDI files by putting music score code in Lilypond or ABC format in the text of Wikipedia articles, which the {{srlink|:mw:Extension:Score|Score extension}} code turns into MIDI.
For example, this notation (of a simplified version of [[Solfeggietto]] in C minor by [[Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach|C.P.E. Bach]]):

 <nowiki><score sound="1">\relative c' { f d f a d f e d cis a cis e a g f e }</score></nowiki>
transforms into
<score sound="1">\relative c' { f d f a d f e d cis a cis e a g f e }</score>
Click on the musical score image to get a link to download the MIDI file.

More complex scores, including lyrics, are also possible within MediaWikis.

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[[Category:Wikipedia features|Media help (MIDI)]]