Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)

Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI): A serial interface standard that allows for the connection of music synthesizers, musical instruments, and computers. The MIDI standard is based partly on hardware and partly on a description of the way in which music and sound are encoded and communicated between MIDI devices. The information transmitted between MIDI devices is in a form called a MIDI message, which encodes aspects of sound, such as pitch and volume, as 8-bit bytes of digital information.

MIDI devices can be used for creating, recording, and playing back music. Using MIDI, computers, synthesizers, and sequencers can communicate with each other, either keeping time or actually controlling the music created by other connected equipment.