Translations:Real-time sonification/84/en

MIDI is a protocol that facilitates real-time communication between electronic musical instruments. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and it was developed in the early ’80s for storing, editing, processing, and reproducing sequences of digital events connected to sound-producing electronic instruments, especially those using the 88-note chromatic compass of a piano-keyboard. We can roughly, but easily, understand MIDI as the advanced successor of the “piano rolls”, which, more than a century ago, were perforated papers or pinned cylinders, in which music performances were either recorded (in real-time) or notated (in step time). These paper-rolls were then played automatically by specially designed mechanical instruments, the mechanical pianos (pianolas) or music machines, using them as their “program”.