Where to get MIDI Files and How to Play Them?

Now that you've learned the basics of MIDI and Desktop Music, let's play some ready-made MIDI files. But where to get them, you may ask?

Good question. A good place to start is the Blaster Album. Over there, you'll find a number of MIDI files composed and arranged by Creative staff covering various musical genres from rock to pop to jazz to classical. Quite a number of them even have SoundFonts for special effects!

You can also find lots of MIDI files elsewhere on the Internet and on various BBSes. If AWE32 MIDI files with SoundFont banks are what you're looking for, you can try ftp://ftp.inc.net. You can also find links to a number of AWE32 sites in our Creative Zone's Music Pub.

If all these are not enough, you can buy MIDI file collections from some of the larger music shops. These are usually categorized by Artists and Genre, such as "Hits of the 70's", "Phil Colins" etc, and are available mostly on 3.5" floppy disks, and less occasionally, CD-ROMs. Some of these collections come with a songbook containing the scores of the songs found on the disk. This allows you to play along with the MIDI files.

As for music education programs, here are some application that can help you learn music via the computer.

Education

• Musicware Piano
• Band-in-the-Box

Sequencer

• various CakeWalk files

With a MIDI music sequencer, you can try out a few experiments with your MIDI files - changing the MIDI instruments, reading through the music score while the file is playing, or even playing along with the MIDI song on your MIDI keyboard. Of course, if you want to have a MIDI karaoke session, simply connect your microphone to your sound card and sing along!

Have fun with your MIDI files and AWE32 sound card.

A gentle reminder : MIDI files have their own file format. They come with the extension, .mid (e.g. funk.mid)