MIDI is a technical specification developed in the early 80s for control of electronic musical instruments such as synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers. Though developed as a manufacturing standard, it was collaboratively developed by instrument makers who were themselves musicians with considerable input from performers. MIDI was specifically designed to digitally encode and communicate many of the most recognizable and important aspects of music, like pitch, duration/time, and "velocity" (roughly equivalent to volume). However, MIDI was also designed specifically to be open-ended, and beyond a core set of controls, additional controls can be assigned to any function of a given hardware or software instrument or device. The openness of MIDI has given it life beyond musical instruments, and it has been used to control other humanities-relevant electronics like audio recording/mixing equipment and stage lighting, as well devices as far afield as microsurgery implements.
MIDI has had an enormous impact on musical performance, composition, and recording since its inception in the early 80s. First, it allows for the separation of performance and instrument. A performance can be recorded on any MIDI "controller" of essentially any form, hardware or software, or any combination of controllers — for example keyboards, rotary knobs, sliders, switches/buttons, joysticks, and even graphics tablets, laptop trackpads, and touchscreens. But the digitally recorded performance carries only performance information — the values of controllers in time — and no actual sound. A recorded MIDI performance can be sent to any MIDI-enabled instrument like a synthesizer or sampler at any time, separating a musician's performance from the sound of their instrument. Second, MIDI allows for the separation of composition and performance. In addition to recording a performance, MIDI information can be directly programmed, or "sequenced," separating the composer from the need for performers to realize a complex composition, even enabling compositions that would be physically impossible for human performers to execute. The programmability of MIDI also allows for the extension of chance-driven "aleatoric" composition methods like those developed by John Cage in the 1950s.
In full disclosure, I have a bit of an inside scoop with regard to MIDI. My little brother works at Sequential with Dave Smith, the "Father of MIDI," its co-inventor and co-recipient of the 2013 Technical Grammy for its development.
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