Organs and synthesizers, you can no longer imagine it in the music world.

Playing the organ is still a profession.
You have to study intensively for years if you want to be able to play everything nicely.

Nowadays a lot is already possible to make it a bit easier for the musician.
Just think of automatic accompaniment that can now be found on keyboards and organs.
But those who want to cobble together a beautiful piece of music themselves will soon find an automatic accompaniment monotonous.

Of course, you have a rhythm variation, but that soon becomes a monotonous event.
After all, the real "breed" artists play with several instruments at the same time.
Think of the singer, drummer, keyboardist, guitarist, etc. etc.

To be able to record a piece of music as complete and varied as possible, you needed a multi-track tape deck. E.g. an 8-track REVOX or FOSTEX tape deck.
You had to record a track over and over again so that, when all tracks were ready, it sounded great together.
Those devices easily cost around 4000 euros.
So much too expensive.

If you made a mistake while playing, you could replay the entire track. Editing was not included.

Fortunately, they invented something wonderful for this.

It's called: MIDI !!!

MIDI stands for "Musical Instrument Digital Interface"

This is a standard used for many musical instruments.
It is a connection that allows the instruments to communicate with each other.

Many artists use this.
Think for example of: Jean Michel Jarre or Vangelis, but also Cher.

In fact, every artist uses this standard.
All House songs are simply designed with MIDI.

If you connect an organ or keyboard, but also a digital saxophone or guitar via the MIDI connection to the computer, you can record without limits.
Then you can change your mistakes to your heart's content without having to redo everything.
With MIDI you can also use one keyboard can control a lot of different MIDI musical instruments.

MIDI has 16 channels you can work with.
One channel is reserved for the drum part and the other 15 can be used for all the different instruments you want.

All information is sent to the mutual instruments via a 5-pin DIN plug.
MIDI has three types of connections, viz. MIDI IN, MIDI OUT & MIDI THRU.
So resp. the input, output and loop-through signals for other instruments.

There are several, very extensive, sequencers that can quite easily record and edit the songs.
One of the most famous is "Cubase" by Steinberg.
But "Cakewalk" from Twelve Tone Systems is also popular with music computer users.
With modern technology you can also record audio with these sequencers. (hard disk recording)
You have so many tracks at your disposal that you will never use them all.

Midi files are just data files.
There is not an ounce of music to be found.

These data control which key to press and for how long.
Also which sound should be used and much more information.
The actual sound comes from the organ. (or the "Wavetable" of the sound card)
That's why these midi files are so small in storage size while still containing a complete piece of music.

For me it is one of the best inventions in music.
Unfortunately I only have one pair of hands and feet and that is often too short to make a beautiful piece of music.
So we use the computer for the other hands that I'm missing.

I hope it's a bit clear what MIDI means.

Have fun, that's the most important thing.

And I must say....
It's my 2nd Hobby. (Wife and children of course the 1st)
For me personally, an organ with upper and lower keyboard and pedal is still the most beautiful thing there is. Do everything yourself and make something beautiful out of it.
But MIDI is a great support to get even more out of the music than what we thought possible.

There is a lot of great MIDI stuff available on the internet, such as tens of thousands of MIDI files.

Again, have fun making and listening to music using MIDI.