At NAMM 2026, Athan Billias (from The MIDI Association), Robert De La Pena (from SAE Mexico), Professor Jennifer Amaya (from Riverside City College), Gillian Demarais from TI:ME (Technology In Music […]

The Music & Drama Education Expo returns to London on 12–13 February 2026 at the Business Design Centre, bringing together educators, publishers, instrument makers, and music-technology innovators focused on improving […]

As usual, NAMM 2026 was a blur of activity at The MIDI Association booth. We hosted 21 events over three days at our booth and participated in many Tec Tracks […]

From today’s perspective—where musicians can load dozens of virtual instruments inside a DAW and compose symphonies on a laptop—it is easy to forget that the foundations of modern electronic music […]

Roy Elkins has spent his professional life helping musicians solve problems that don’t always show up in glossy product announcements: how to get heard, how to find opportunity, and how […]

As the MIDI community celebrates the 2026 NAMM Show, The MIDI Association proudly recognizes Emile Tobenfeld, better known to musicians around the world as “Dr. T,” with a MIDI Lifetime […]

When Greg Hendershott receives the MIDI Association Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 NAMM Show, the honor commemorates more than the founder of a legendary American software company. It celebrates […]

As the MIDI community gathers for the 2026 NAMM Show, The MIDI Association proudly recognizes Dave Oppenheim with a MIDI Lifetime Achievement Award. As the founder and principal architect of […]

It seems fitting that on the same day we are celebrating David Kusek from Passport Designs and Berklee Online that we would announce a new partnership with TiME UK. David […]

When David Kusek receives the 2026 MIDI Association Lifetime Achievement Award at the NAMM Show, the honor reflects not only a single innovator’s achievements—but the legacy of a company that […]

When the MIDI Association recognizes Chris Adam for his lifetime contributions to music technology, the honor celebrates one of the most influential—and often understated—figures in the history of computer-based music […]

When Gerhard Lengeling accepts the 2026 MIDI Association Lifetime Achievement Award at the NAMM Show, the recognition honors not only a visionary software designer but also one of the most […]

When Charlie Steinberg receives the 2026 MIDI Association Lifetime Achievement Award at the NAMM Show, the recognition celebrates a musician, engineer, and inventor whose work helped shape the entire era […]

2025 MIDI Association MIDI Lifetime Achievement Award (MLTA) recipient Katsuhiko “Karl” Hirano (平野 勝彦) known by most people in the world of MIDI simply as Karl played crucial roles in […]

The MIDI Association is pleased to announce a new relationship with TI:ME (Technology in Music Education)—centered on a shared goal: helping music educators confidently and creatively integrate technology into teaching […]

The MIDI Association and SAE Mexico are close to launching a free MIDI Curriculum on Coursera. So now seemed like the perfect time to engage with some of the other […]

MIDI Association member Caedence has been named a finalist in the 41st NAMM TEC Awards in the Audio Apps & Hardware / Peripherals for Smartphones & Tablets category, alongside global […]

Every year The MIDI Association meets with its corporate members and members of the MIDI Association Special Interest Groups to participate in all member online meeting. As there were no […]

After Music China closed on Saturday night, we packed up, grabbed some dinner and then on Sunday flew to Tokyo. On Monday, The MIDI Association was part of an event […]

We caught up with Oscar Xie CEO & Founder of Robkoo at Music China 2025 to discuss the latest releases from Robkoo and Pedro Eustache, wind synthesist and performer with […]

Date: Youtube Premier On Saturday May 31, 2025 Event: MIDI In Music Education Working Group Presentation and Webinar The MIDI Association will host an education-focused webinar, bringing together music educators, […]

SAE Mexico has been selected to begin work on The MIDI Association’s MIDI In Music Education curriculum by the NAMM Foundation. They will provide the curriculum materials in both English […]

The MIDI Association and MIDI Showcase at NAMM 2025 continued to grow in both size and attendance at events. Over 30 companies from The MIDI Association had booths at NAMM […]

Music China and the Chinese Musical Instrument Association (CMIA) have really stepped up their support for MIDI and digital music making and right next to The MIDI Association booth was […]

Starting in 2021, Athan Billias (MIDI Association President), Denis Labrecque (former MIDI Association Exec Board member) , and Lee Whitmore (MIDI Association Board Member and Treasurer)  initiated biweekly meetings of […]

The MIDI in Music Education (MIME) Special Interest Group has defined a MIDI Curriculum and a Certification Program Starting in 2021, Athan Billias (MIDI Association President), Denis Labrecque (former MIDI […]

This article is to explain the benefits of MIDI 2.0 to people who use MIDI. If you are a MIDI developer looking for the technical details about MIDI 2.0, go […]

Hosted by MIDI In Music Education Working Group Chair, Lee Whitmore, VP of Education for Focusrite, the webinar featured virtual tours of several MIDI In Music Education institutions including Belmont […]

Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is the technical standard for connecting electronic musical instruments and computers to record, edit, and playback music.Created in 1983 and 40 years later, it is […]

Join MIDI Association President Athan Billias, artiphon’s Emma Supica and Oddball’s Pasquale Totaro for a discussion of playful (and round) products that use MIDI from the June 2022 NAMM show  Follow the bouncing […]

Join MIDI Association President Athan Billias, Big Ear Games Aviv Ben-Yahuda , Playtronics’ Sacha Pas and Playtime Engineering’s Troy Sheets for a discussion of playful products that use MIDI from […]

Los Angeles, CA – June 2, 2022 The NAMM Foundation and the MIDI Association are pleased to announce the MIDI Fund, a new donor-advised fund in The NAMM Foundation.  The […]

Join the inaugural webinar of the MIDI Association’s MIDI in Music Education (MiME) working group.  To celebrate “May is MIDI Month,” we welcome Craig Anderton – who’s played Carnegie Hall, […]

MIDI Controllers (Products, Physical Controls, and Messages) Unfortunately the word controller is overburdened in the MIDI lexicon and probably the most overused word in the world of MIDI.  It can refer to […]

A DAW’s MIDI Plug-Ins Can Provide Solutions to Common Problems In a world obsessed with audio plug-ins, MIDI plug-ins may not seem sexy—but with MIDI’s continued vitality, they remain very […]

 There’s more to life than audio echo – like MIDI echo Although the concept of MIDI echo has been around for years, early virtual instruments often didn’t have enough voices […]

DAW software, like Ableton Live, Logic, Pro Tools, Studio One, etc. isn’t just about audio. Virtual instruments that are driven by MIDI data produce sounds in real time, in sync […]

Once upon a time, school students had to know how to play an instrument to make music or know enough theory to compose a song. We all gathered in the […]

The Bob Moog Foundation and the MIDI Association The Bob Moog Foundation and the MIDI Association have had a close working relationship for many years.  When we talked to Michelle Moog-Koussa, […]

Melodics is modern learning for modern instruments Melodics is modern learning for modern instruments, supporting MIDI Keyboards, Pad Controllers, and electronic drum kits. It’s structured learning for solid progress. Melodics takes the […]

There are lots of websites that offer information on DAWs and music production.  Audio Assemble takes a unique approach by offering articles, videos, reviews, interviews and information on schools that […]

The way most keyboard players add vibrato is to turn up the mod wheel, and inject some LFO to change the oscillator pitch periodically. That’s fine, but consider guitar players—they […]

There’s more to life than audio echo—like MIDI echo. Although the concept of MIDI echo has been around for years, early virtual instruments often didn’t have enough voices to play […]

ReWire is a software protocol that allows two (or sometimes more) software applications to work together as one integrated program. For example, suppose you wish your DAW of choice had […]

Sometimes you hit notes you don’t want to hit, particularly if you’re playing MIDI guitar or some other alternate controller (although this tip is most relevant to MIDI guitar, even […]

In the days before click tracks, tempos varied because musicians are humans, not crystal-controlled clocks. However, these changes were far from random. While researching an article for Sweetwater’s inSync web […]

Sometimes you don’t need an external, dedicated MIDI controller—the one on your favorite synth may be all you need, and the synth even has built-in sounds. The keyboard usually feeds […]

Some virtual instrument and effects parameters just cry out for footpedal control—too bad you don’t have a pedal that outputs MIDI data…or do you? If you have a keyboard synthesizer […]

You can “humanize” sequences that have been quantized too rigidly by tweaking the start times for individual notes or phrases. Ignore any menu item called “humanization,” because this usually just […]

REX files chop digital audio into “slices,” each of which is associated with a MIDI note. Playing a MIDI note triggers its associated slice, which is why REX files can […]

Part of making MIDI guitar feel “right” when triggering synths has nothing to do with the guitar and its tracking, but with editing the synth presets so that they’re guitar-friendly […]

Some MIDI instruments, particularly those from Arturia, include an external input for processing audio signals through the synthesizer’s filter, VCA, and effects modules. That’s cool enough, but of course, what’s […]

One of the complaints about “MIDI music” is that quantizing everything to the beat sucks the life out of a song by eliminating the kind of timing variations humans make. […]

When you’re songwriting, you want nothing to get in the way of your creativity, and you want as fast a workflow as humanly possible—so for those reasons, you’re better off […]

Most people of think of arpeggiation solely in melodic terms, but arpeggiation has additional uses. General MIDI instruments include drum kits where the top notes are percussion sounds, and many […]

When audio plug-ins entered the mainstream, MIDI plug-ins took somewhat of a backseat because they weren’t the “shiny new toy” in town. However with MIDI’s resurgence, companies are paying more […]

AudioPedia 109: MIDI Ask Audio’s AudioPedia series is a comprehensive video dictionary of audio terminology. Created by audio expert Joe Albano, this encyclopedia of technical terms is the ultimate audio […]

MICROTUNING VIRTUAL AND ELECTRONIC HARDWARE INSTRUMENTS: AN OVERVIEW OF FORMATS AND METHODS FOR USING ALTERNATIVE INTONATION SYSTEMS For those electronic hardware synthesis enthusiasts, as well as computer based musicians and […]

Make quantization work for you, not against you  Quantization is the process of moving MIDI data (usually notes, but also potentially other data) that’s out of time to a rhythmic […]

Ask.Audio and Non Linear Educating Ask.Audio is one of our favorite technology websites and has been a great partner to The MIDI Association. We have worked with Ask.Audio’s parent company, Non Linear Educating […]

Join the MIDI Association and download the 21 page booklet “What is MIDI” excerpted from “MIDI for the Professional” by Paul Lehrman and Tim Tully.  We’re always trying to help our MIDI Association members get the […]

Fix those little “gotchas” before they make it into the final mix by Craig Anderton MIDI sequencing is wonderful, but it’s not perfect—and sometimes, you’ll be sandbagged by problems like […]

What MIDI does, how to use it, how devices are connected, and more. pdf File Name: An Introduction to MIDI File Size: 2.1 mb Download File

Our friends over at http://en.wikiaudio.org created this simplfied diagram of MIDI messages and kindly let us put it up here.

 Unlike audio file formats like MP3 files and CDs, MIDI files contain individual instructions for playing each individual note of each individual instrument. So with MIDI it is actually possible to […]

Paul White’s beginners’ guide to MIDI continues. This month, he explains the concept of MIDI sequencing.To anyone used to playing and recording using traditional methods and skills, the MIDI sequencer is […]

Paul White, editor of Sound on Sound wrote a series of articles in 1995 for newcomers to MIDI.  You might imagine that most SOS readers already have a pretty firm grasp of MIDI, but new […]

Unlike MP3 files and CDs, MIDI files contain individual instructions for playing each individual note of each individual instrument. So with MIDI it is actually possible to change just one […]

MIDI (pronounced “mid-e”) is a technology that makes creating, playing, or just learning about music easier and more rewarding. Playing a musical instrument can provide a lifetime of enjoyment and […]

Part 2: MIDI Cables & Connectors Many different “transports” can be used for MIDI messages. The speed of the transport determines how much MIDI data can be carried, and how quickly […]

An explanation of music synthesis technology and how MIDI is used to generate and control sounds. This document was originally published in 1995 at a time when MIDI had been […]

Standard MIDI Files (“SMF” or *.mid files)   Standard MIDI Files (“SMF” or *.mid files) are a popular source of music on the web, and for musicians performing in clubs […]

Part 3: MIDI Messages The MIDI Message specification (or “MIDI Protocol”) is probably the most important part of MIDI. MIDI is a music description language in digital (binary) form. It […]

MIDI is like air, it’s all around you, most of the time you can take it for granted, but if you are a digital musician you probably couldn’t live with […]