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Think of MidiView as a tool that will help you to understand and appreciate MIDI music. If you just want to listen to the music, MidiView makes it easy to play any MIDI file. Simple controls let you start or stop the playback, scroll to any position in the music, and step forward or backward one note at a time. The tempo and time are displayed continuously during playback and they can be changed easily. At a slow tempo, you can hear every note from each instrument.
MidiView lets you view MIDI music in color, unlike any other MIDI player program presently available. Most MIDI sequencer programs can display the notes for only one instrument at a time, but MidiView normally displays all of the musical notes at once. However, you can also choose to play or display any combination of channels. The colors of the notes can be related to their channel, instrument (program), track, note value (key), or volume. Colors help to distinguish the sounds coming from various instruments; for example, you can follow the solo line or the bass part easily. Study the dynamics of a piano performance by viewing the loudness of each note in terms of color. Anyone using MidiView, from music lover to professional composer, will gain new insights into the subtle structure of MIDI music.
MIDI files may contain as many as 16 channels of sound. Each channel controls a single musical instrument. The General MIDI specifications define 128 different instruments. Each channel can play many notes simultaneously, and the instrument assigned to a given channel can change during playback. Moreover, several tracks can share a single channel or instrument; for example, the right-hand piano part can be recorded in one track, while the left-hand piano part is recorded in a second track. The duration and loudness of each note can be varied, and many expression controls are available, thus providing enormous flexibility to the performer (the person who created the MIDI file).
Text information within a MIDI file is usually hidden from the casual listener. Each time you open a new file, MidiView always lists every embedded text line, giving much-deserved credit to the performers for their work. Often, the embedded text includes the full name of the composition, the name of the composer, the name of the performer, his/her online address and copyright notice, the instruments assigned to each channel, the tempo of the music, and many other pieces of information. In addition, MidiView allows you to edit and list a separate text file that contains your description of the performance.
Want to learn even more about the details of MIDI files? With MidiView, you can list every single note and expression change in the music. This detailed information is valuable to music students and performers, both beginners and professionals, for checking their own work as well as for understanding what makes the best performances truly great.
Literally thousands of MIDI files are available for downloading from many online services. Classical music, big band, jazz, blues, rock, country, you name it. Some of these MIDI files are excellent, and some are not so good. The best MIDI files capture all of the nuances of a live performance, while other MIDI files are rote transcriptions from a beginners piano book. Fortunately, MIDI files are generally quite small, so downloading is quick. MidiView will help you search for the gold nuggets among the thousands of available files.
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© 1997 Warme Software <==> Email paulwarme@aol.com
Last modified 8/15/00