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     First, let's define what a MIDI file is. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. This format was agreed upon by the MIDI Manufacturer's Association (MMA). MIDI files are unlike wave or audio files because they do not contain any sound or play back musical notes. These files consist of a series of messages that contain the volume, pitch, timing and channel designation of a single note. There are various musical effects that a MIDI can be used to control. These are reverb, vibrato, sustain, and instrument assignment and are used to play back MIDI notes on a given port and channel. All the events that I just mentioned are interpreted by your sound card and converted into the musical song you hear. This is why every MIDI file sounds different. When your MIDI card plays back a note for a given instrument, it does so by applying a pre-recorded sample of that particular instrument. The better the quality of the sample, the better the quality of the playback fidelity.

     Wave and audio files contain digitized versions of the actual instruments that produced the song. These files do not change in sound quality (disregarding the amplifier and speaker quality) but do take up a lot of disk space on your hard drive. An example is 1 minute of a wave form audio takes up approximately 10 Meg of disk space.

     There is another type of audio file called MPEG3 (MP3) which is an format that produces highly compressed file while sacrificing very little audio quality. These audio files are actually extracted from a CD and encoded into the MP3 format. You must have another audio player, like Winplay3, in order to listen to these recordings. I have found three versions of the MP3 player. A Winplay3 version 2.0 is real-time player that cuts off after the first 20 second (unless you register it) is available from the Fraunhofer-Gessellschaft-IIS site. An older freeware Winplay3 version 1.3 (does not have the 20 second restriction) or Winplay3 version 1.4 is also available from Fraunhofer-Gessellschaft-IIS .

     Now you ask how do I encode my own MP3 files ? You may get yourself the encoder software from Fraunhofer-Gessellschaft-IIS site. The latest version of the encoder (version 2.61, a bug fix) was released on November 11, 1996. The encoders that are available are for DOS, UNIX, PC-Linux, and NeXTSTEP 3.3 platforms. The function of the encoder/decoder is to convert MP3 files back and forth from PCM to MP3 and MP3 to PCM.

          I have listened to these audio files and they are absolutely incredible. I haven't decided if I will include these type of files here for listening or downloading, but I have a good collection right now and it is still growing. Check back now and then to see if I have included them.

     Try Hitting your refresh button (sometimes more than once) to hear another selection. I will be updating this page frequently adding new Midi's so come back soon.

Well on to the show !!!

 

Links

This Day In Rock & Roll History

This site will give you the history of Rock & Roll for the day, as well as, allow you to search by month and date.

Civil War Poetry And Music

Poems and songs of the Civil War (Union and Confederate) about battles, generals, life in camp and at home, Lee, Lincoln and the postwar era.

 

If you have any questions or comments you may E-mail me at Ghost_Bear2@hotmail.com .

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Copyright © 1997 By Ghost Bear. All rights reserved.

Please see the Credits Page for a list of acknowledgments. Thank You.

Revised : May 11, 1997

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