MIDI on the Macintosh

Many Macintosh users are frustrated the first time they try to use MIDI files from sources such as the internet (using resources such as those found here on Twin Cities MIDI, or from other computer platforms (e.g. Windows users). They transfer the file to their Mac, but they can't get their MIDI applications to recognize them. So they assume something must have gone wrong with the transfer. That's most likely not the case. This page addresses this issue, as well as others of interest to Macintosh MIDI users. You can read it straight through, or select the topic of interest to you.

1. What types of files can I use?

In most cases, you want to make sure you're using a "standard MIDI file" (sometimes called SMF, but usually just called a "MIDI file"). MIDI files are not the same as the files output by most sequencers, such as Trax, Performer, etc. However, most sequencers can output a MIDI file if you ask them to. As an analogy, consider word processors. Microsoft Word uses one format, Nisus Writer another, ClarisWorks another, etc. etc. One program's native format is not compatible with the others, and cannot be used with the others (please ignore the fact that most programs now will automatically convert other formats to theirs...). However, if you ask the word processor to save as ASCII text, you can load it into virtually any word processor from Quark Xpress to AppleWriter //e and it will work just fine. The analogy can be extended in that when you save a word processing file as ASCII text, you will likely lose formatting information such as margins, tabs, fonts, etc. Likewise, in converting your sequence to an SMF, you might lose some "sequencer specific" items that would normally be stored in the sequencer's native format. However, SMF's were designed for being transportable across platforms, so your SMF should contain more than enough data to play just fine.

How do you tell if you're dealing with a SMF? Well, the convention is that the file will end with the extension '.MID' if it's a standard MIDI file, and something else (e.g. '.WRK') if it's a native sequencer format. But just renaming the file won't change it-- it's the internal formatting of the file that counts.

2. Why doesn't my application recognize my MIDI files?

• The hard way: Use ResEdit or another utility to manually change the filetype and creator yourself. Here's how to do it with ResEdit:
  1. Load ResEdit
  2. Under the "File" menu, select "Get File/Folder Info..."
  3. Find the MIDI file you want to change and open it
  4. Change the four-character string in the "Type" box from whatever it is to "Midi". Note this must be "Midi" and not "MIDI" or "midi" or "mIdI" or, well, you get the idea.
  5. Close the window, and save the changes.
  6. Repeat for every MIDI file you need to change.
• The much easier way, using "Midi Typer"

  Midi Typer is wonderful little utility by Peter Castine which automates the above process. With it, you simply drag MIDI files, or folders of MIDI files onto its icon. Midi Typer will determine which of the files contain MIDI data, and change the type of those which are to "Midi". Therefore, you can drag a folder of MIDI's to the icon, and all of the real MIDI files will be converted, but the 'readme' text files will not. It's great, and you'll wonder how you ever got along without it if you've been doing it the ResEdit way.

  To download Midi Typer, click here. (Note: This is a Stuffit archive. If you don't have a means to uncompress it, please read on, and download Stuffit Expander, below.)

• There are other tools available that will change a Mac file type (e.g. FileTyper). The key is that you change the file type to "Midi" from whatever it was (probably "text".
• Please note that the extension '.MID' does nothing for a Mac. Feel free to remove it and rename your files to anything you find descriptive. Older, Windows 3.1-compatible files (which is still the brunt of what you'll find on the Internet) also have a maximum filename size of 8 characters. If you plan on giving the file back to someone who uses Windows 3.1, you'll probably want to leave it as an 8-character name with the extension .MID. Otherwise, rename to your heart's content.

3. Are there shareware/freeware MIDI players and sequencers?

Several are available. MidiGraphy ($20 shareware), is the best know and fairly full-featured, once you figure out the interface. For MidiGraphy and other freeware or shareware sequencing software available for the Macintosh check out the Macintosh Midi User's Internet Guide (if you know of any more, please let me know). You will also find demos of commercial products at this link, and on archive sites such as info-mac. These demos, are usually 'crippled' in that they cannot save, your work, and sometimes have a limited time for use. Otherwise, they are generally the full commercial product, so it's a good chance to 'try before you buy'.

If you simply looking for a program to play standard MIDI files, you're in luck. A number of good freeware and shareware MIDI players exist. One well-recommended one is Arnold's Midi Player, a $10 shareware program which works with both MIDI instruments and QuickTime. Click on the name for information about this program, or to download the latest version.

Anthem is a shareware sequencing and scoring  program that has a configurable (to your MIDI device) patch librarian. If anyone can tell me more about it please contact me.

4. How do I deal with MIDI files compressed on other platforms?

Many files you'll find out on FTP sites or newsgroups will be in a compressed format. One of the most common compression schemes for MIDI files (and most other files originating from Windows platforms) is 'PKZIP'. These files have the extension '.ZIP'. There are several utilities you can use to handle this compression, but the one I recommend is the duo "Stuffit Expander" and "DropStuff w/ Expander Enhancer", from Alladin Systems. "Stuffit Expander" is freeware and uncompresses several Mac formats. "DropStuff" is shareware, and adds compression in the Stuffit (.sit) format, as well as expands Stuffit Expander to handle almost any format you'll encounter on the Internet. I recommend it, since it's easy to use and works with so many formats (including .ZIP).

Uncompressing a file will generally yield a .MID file, or a folder of .MID files, which need to have the filetype changed, as discussed above.

Please read and understand the shareware license agreement included with these products before using them.

5. How can I play MIDI files using QuickTime?

• QuickTime 3.0 (or greater) extension, which ships with Mac OS 7.5 and newer operating systems. The latest version is also always available at Apple's QuickTime Site.
  
• QuickTime Musical Instruments Extension, usually comes with QT 3.0.
  
• A QT 3.0-compatible movie player, such as Apple's Movie Player, or QuickMovie.

1. Perform any decompression and change the Macintosh file type (see above)
   
2. Load your QuickTime movie player
   
3. Select Open from the file menu
4. Select your MIDI file from the list (if it doesn't appear, you don't have QT 2.0 or you didn't change the filetype properly)
   
5. A Save dialog will appear, where you can save a converted version of this MIDI file. The saved version is a QuickTime movie with only a MIDI soundtrack (no video).
   
6. Play your MIDI movie just like any other QuickTime movie.
   
7. As an alternative to saving the converted file, you can select 'Options' from the save dialog. This is designed to allow you to change which instruments are on which tracks. However, you can also play the MIDI file here without actually saving it.

Instruments in italics are not available, and will be mapped to a 'similar' instrument. If you don't like the sound quality, read the next two sections

Yet another, and the easiest, method of converting standard MIDI files to QuickTime movies is using the program All MIDI, which you can download here by clicking on its name or by clicking here. I haven't tried this, but if it works as advertised, it will allow you to simply "drag and drop" your SMF onto it's icon, and create a QT movie, suitable for playing.

6. Why would I want to buy MIDI hardware if I can use QuickTime?

The addition of MIDI capabilities into QuickTime was a great move by Apple. Not only can QuickTime movies take advantage of this capability, using much less data than traditional sound data used in movies, but it also brings MIDI capabilities to a vast number of users who wouldn't otherwise have it

However, this setup isn't perfect. The General MIDI standard, which defines which instrument plays on which voice number, among other things, defines 128 instruments. QuickTime contains only a small subset of these, and the 'missing' instruments must be mapped to the nearest corresponding instrument. This may work will when mapping "Bright Acoustic Piano" to "Acoustic Grand Piano", but what do you map "Applause" to? Therefore, depending on the particular sequence, you may get anything from satisfactory to terrible results.

Secondly, if you have an older Mac, you may lack the horsepower to play all but the simplest MIDI files. A Mac LC II I used to own 'crackled' on even a simple one- instrument sequence, large multi-track sequences could actually crash the system. Owners of newer Macs, especially Power Macs, should have no problems with this, however.

Finally, the sound quality of a hardware MIDI instrument, even a relatively inexpensive one, probably exceeds that of the QuickTime instruments. It was also pointed out to me that the QT instruments only provide 8-note polyphony (only eight notes/voices can be sounding at the same time), whereas even inexpensive MIDI devices usually provide at least 24-note polyphony. The sounds themselves are also of a rather mediocre quality (most likely an attempt to get it to run on the smallest-horsepower machine as possible). If you're finding that the QT instruments don't sound real enough for you, start shopping for a MIDI device (if you own a high-end Mac, also read the next section). Combination midi interfaces/instruments exist for well under $300.

7. Are there any other software-only synthesis options?

If you own a high-end Mac, the answer is ?(Will someone please let me know of there is another alternative). Invision Interactive had a product called Cybersound Studio (which is now discontinued), which is a software only synthesis device. Cybersound requires no hardware other than your Mac, but if you have a MIDI interface, it supports it with either Apple MIDI manager, OMS, or FreeMIDI. Cybersound comes with many excellent sounds, including a full General MIDI set, as well as specialized banks including a piano bank, rhythm/loop bank, and several others. The sound quality is as good as that of many 'real' MIDI instruments.

You need a fast enough Mac to run the program as well. Cybersound Studio requires Power Mac with 16 megs RAM, and would love even more for best performance. Virtual memory is not supported, due to the real-time nature of sound synthesis. I have seen Cybersound VS 1.0x work with RAMDoubler; the results were fair but not excellent and rather unpredictable. I don't know whether this will work the the current release. Cybersound was the first product to fully take advantage of the Mac's own sound capabilities in a MIDI setting. It also contains a basic sequencer/MIDI player, and works with any Midi Manager/OMS/FreeMIDI- compatible software.

8. What's with UUencoding and MIDI files on Newsgroups?

The techniques discussed above should work just fine if you're getting your MIDI files from other users (via disk, for example), or from most FTP sites. However, if you're getting files from Email or a newsgroup (such as alt.binaries.sounds.midi, there's another step you need to be concerned about.

Email and Newsgroups were designed to handle text messages. Standard MIDI files are binary files, meaning they are designed to be computer-readable rather than human readable. Sending such a binary file via normal means would not work correctly, since these files can contain characters other than the standard ASCII character set. To get around this, an encoding scheme known as "UUENCODE" was developed. UUENCODE is similar to the Macintosh "BinHex (.hqx)" format that you may have used already. It converts a binary file into a sequence of ASCII characters that can be sent over Email or posted to USENET newsgroups. The receiver can then UUDECODE the file to return it to its binary state.

There are many utilities for UUencoding and DECODING files on the Macintosh. The Stuffit Expander/DropStuff with EE combination available above will decode this format. The Newswatcher newsreader for the Macintosh is probably your best bet if you have a directly-connected (to the Internet) Macintosh, or use SLIP/PPP and MacTCP or Open Transport for your connection. Newswatcher not only decodes UUENCODED files, but can piece together files split into multiple pieces (a common practice for larger files on newsgroups, in order to get around some sites maximum message-length restriction). Check out your favorite Mac archive for this and other utilities

You will also find things of interest at Macintosh Midi User's Internet Guide. be sure to check out Page 2 as well.

I hope this page was helpful to you.

Twin Cities MIDI Copyright © 1995-96 Timothy S. Fischer

Twin Cities MIDI Copyright © 1997-2001 David L. Stevens