Modern Piano Midi Files

[Jule Watkinson]

Ifyou want to learn how to play a song, a MIDI file gives the unique chance to do that using a visualizer such as Synthesia on all devices (desktop, tablet, mobile). You simply load the MIDI file and the visualizer shows you what to play. For most visualizers you can easily pause, speed up/down, and so on to help you learn at your own pace.

Users mainly use my MIDI files in visualizers to learn my songs without reading sheet music. But MIDI files serve many more purposes: they can instruct digital or self-playing pianos, and assist in non-commercial music production. Commercial use, however, is strictly prohibited.

To visualize MIDI file data, use software like Synthesia. To hear the performance, use MIDI-compatible digital or self-playing pianos. Music production software like Logic Pro, Cubase, or FLStudio can also load the file.

The main benefit is that you can learn songs without the ability to read sheet music. Also, MIDI files contain more information than sheet music and can thus be used for multiple other purposes such as listening to the song on a self-playing piano.

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. We can use a DAW like Ableton or Logic Pro X, to record what inputs are being used on a MIDI controller such as a keyboard or drum pads, or you can pencil the MIDI in manually. This recording can then be turned into a MIDI File and shared with other people.

MIDI files can contain all types of information such as what notes were pressed, velocity, timing, tempo, pitch, vibrato, and panning. MIDI Files are super cool for learning about your favorite songs as you can reverse engineer them and learn how the artists put it all together.

MIDI files can be used for so many aspects of electronic music production. They can be used to record piano parts, drum grooves, bass guitar notes, and effect automation. If you can think of it then you can more than likely accomplish it using MIDI.

Loading MIDI files into your DAW is super easy. Simply drag your desired MIDI file onto your timeline and there you go. Easy huh? I like to keep my MIDI files organized, so I have created a folder specifically for MIDI Files.

Resources such as these Free Midi Files and MIDI songs can help you learn the art of music production so much faster. Use them to reference against your own tracks, learn how to structure chords, or how to add groove into your drum patterns. Rather than figuring out these things by yourself, use free MIDI files to learn from others.

These are not for commercial use. His e-mail address is listed if one wants to contact him about licensing. They were all recorded to midi by Doug McKenzie on a Yamaha P250. About 250 solo jazz piano files, mostly standards. (A very few appear to have a bass added that gets mixed in with the piano track by accident.)

ON AT LEAST ONE OF THESE, MIDI CC CHANGES ARE MADE DURING PAUSES IN THE PERFORMANCE. If you have cc's assigned to parameters in PTeq, these changes will be reflected in your PTeq settings. Not good. Sweet Embraceable You has this occur around 2.30.

(At first I thought he was he hitting a few off-notes in the midi file, in the bass near the late middle. It's a bass track that doesn't work when it's mixed into the piano track. Sounds good in the video, though.)

Did you know that the Erard company originally made harps? My impression (haven't fully researched this) is that their entry into making pianos is what led to the modern steel "harp" in pianos, and thus the greater tension and higher pitches on modern pianos--they just set a harp on its side and put it in a piano, from what I can tell!

I find that most files that have piano, bass, drums, etc, usually have the piano on channel 1, so I can eliminate the other sounds in Pianoteq in the MIDI setting. In fact I have a number of my own "creations" with a bass line, and if I forget to select channel one, I find out very dramatically.

This particular mp3 exceeds Pianoteq's 10MB limit, so it is made available to you via Mediafire.com. As with my Variations on Jingle Bells file, this Gershwin piece was arranged and performed (this time in multitrack midi) by Yours Truly more than decade before Pianoteq became available.

I started working on this in an (unsuccessful) attempt to become a Roland performing artist, back in 1995. At the time, I had acquired a JV-1080 sound module that had a whopping 64MB (not GB) worth of ROM (read-only memory) sounds, and a total polyphony of an equally whopping 64 simultaneous voices.

This particular arrangement took me perhaps 3 or 4 months to work up. It was designed to put the JV-1080 through its paces in a 16-track performance. Since there are far more voices than are allowed by 16 simultaneous tracks, I made very, very extensive use of program changes. Everything you hear in the mp3 was done via midi sequence in real time through the 1080, including panning, pitch bends and reverb -- there is no audio rendering and no third-party processing going on here.

Many of the sounds you hear, especially the soaring solo trumpet line at approximately 4:00 were from "static" sounds. I made great use of pitchbend, volume and expression edits to enable the instruments to sound plausible.

Surely, the sound is dated, but we are talking about sounds from fifteen years ago. Thinking back, this was done on my Macintosh computer of only 4MB of RAM, an 80 meg hard drive and an ancient 25 Megahertz (1MHz = one thousandth of 1GHz) Motorola 68030 series microprocesser. The sounds were purely from this Roland hardware sound module. I used MOTU "Performer", the MIDI-only software precursor to "Digital Performer".

A bit of explanation of my arrangement is in order:

Because of the title, "A Foggy Day in London Town", the piece begins with the ringing of Big Ben -- from a custom patch by playing chimes that were pitch bent some three octaves (36 half steps) low, and making use of multi-tap delays and multi panning in the JV-1080.

The idea is that the listener is walking around London, and by chance walks into a pub wherein a lone pianist is plunking out the Gershwin tune one note at a time. Please note the intentional clash between the pianist's rhythm who is totally oblivious to Big Ben's chiming of 10PM.

As the pianist is going along (the JV-1080's piano was absolutely horrible sounding by today's standards), in comes a double bass player who takes up the melody. The pianist assumes the accompanist position to the bass line.

Between full bigband reprises of the chorus and bridge come a series of solo excursions that include clarinet, trombone, trumpet, piano and vibes, and duets between various soloists, all interspersed with some key changes. By the way, all of the percussion drum sounds were from single notes flown in one-at-a-time -- no loops, here. In fact, if you listen closely, I kept changing the rhythm patterns to keep them from sounding too mechanical or boring in nature.

The hardest part for me in arranging this piece was how to end the darned thing. Finally, in an act of sheer desparation, I suddenly switched to the ending of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" theme song, in order to bring about a suitable close to this arrangement.

As you listen to this piece, please again be aware this was done some fifteen years ago on a hardware sound module that had only 64 total voices of polyphony and several hundred sounds crammed into 64MB of ROM. I hope you enjoy.

This was not submitted before now, because -- with due consideration to Niclas and Guillaume -- this IS the Pianoteq forum, not the Joe Felice forum. I was rising to the challenge of "... what might Felice do with a jazz setting?"

TO: Niclas and Guillaume, I recently acquired some good-sounding Big Band Jazz sampling software, and sincerely intend to redo this arrangement with Pianoteq prominently featured in the solo piano part. This particular thread came up before I had a chance to do it in Pianoteq. You will be very proud of your modeling software when this re-recorded arrangement gets posted here.

I was wondering what your impression of his rendition was - he stayed pretty close to the original - at least didn't stray nearly as far from the original harmonies as his other interpretations of pop tunes.

Glenn--I apparently spoke too soon about Erard. Strangely, they started as harp makers, but Benjamin Adams in Boston seems to have first patented the all metal piano frame. (But there's a Steinway patent, too. Apparently who invented what is a matter of contention.)

But Erard contributed a lot--the invention of the double-escapement allowing rapidly repeated strikes, and according to some sources, the earliest pedals (developed from harp pedals). The founder also created two piano-organ combinations for Maire Antoinette. Had to flee to England when the Revolution broke out.

The easiest way to connect your MIDI keyboard is by using a MIDI-to-USB cable. Note that the MIDI 'In' goes to 'Out' and sometimes vice versa, depending on your keyboard. This setup allows for a direct, responsive playing experience with Midiano.

To use the playalong feature, you can enable it for each track in the track settings. This feature enhances interactive learning and playing, allowing you to engage directly with the music and receive direct feedback.

No, a MIDI keyboard is not a requirement to use Midiano. While it enhances the playalong feature, you can also use your computer keyboard. Midiano can be used for a variety of different use-cases such as video creation, note learning, pitch training, sight reading, or simply enjoying your favorite songs.

Yes, you can use Midiano with a keyboard with any number of keys. If you want, you can adjust the view of the piano using the zoom-settings. For the playalong feature you can set the range of your available keys in the settings under General -> Playalong. This will allow you to use the playalong feature even if the song covers a greater range than your piano by ignoring notes outside of that range. This customization ensures that Midiano caters to your specific keyboard size, enhancing your learning and playing experience.

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