What is MIDI?
From N-Track Wiki
There is a lot of confusion as to what MIDI is or isn't. MIDI (which stands for "Musical Instrument Digital Interface") is, at it's most basic level, nothing more than a triggering mechanism. This can mean the triggering of a note or an action from a peice of hardware or software.
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MIDI in Music
The most common usage of MIDI is in musical performance. In this instance, the MIDI information is triggering a MIDI Instrument to "play" a set of notes in a specified way. What that means is that MIDI acts as a "performer" of a piece of music. Just like a trumpet player needs a trumpet to make music, MIDI information does not make music within itself. MIDI needs a MIDI Instrument to produce the sound. The MIDI file is just controling the performance, like a trumpet player controls the performance of the trumpet.
MIDI Instruments
MIDI Instruments can be hardware or they can be software. In the early days of MIDI, MIDI devices were actual peices of hardware to which physical cables were plugged in. Now days, most computer soundcards come equipped with a MIDI instrument built in (MS Wavetable Synth for one), so casual users of MIDI often does not think about such devices, if they are even aware of them. however, there are superior software-based MIDI instruments avaliable. N-Track 5 is capable of hosting three of the most common formats of MIDI instruments: DXi, VSTi, and ReWire. It also comes with two MIDI instruments built in.
MIDI as a Device Controller
MIDI also has the capability to be used to control features in other devices and in programs. The most relevent example in audio editing is with regards to fader control. When set up properly, a MIDI device can be set up to control faders and other elements of n-Track via a hardware control. The device sends the information via MIDI to n-Track, which then alters the assigned element.
How MIDI Works
There are really two aspects to MIDI. The first and most important is that it's a set of messages to send between devices and/or programs so that one can "play" the other: this is the MIDI message protocol.
The second is a set of hardware specifications for transmitting these messages on wires (MIDI cables). We can usually ignore this part and just be happy that when we plug MIDI cables in, it works. (Mostly ...) It's important to note that you can use MIDI messages without using MIDI cables, though.
The MIDI message protocol is made up of MIDI events. Each event tells a MIDI device to do something. This can be anything from telling a synthesizer to play middle C to telling a hardware effects unit to change the currently loaded effect from flange to chorus. if one were really clever, one could program MIDI to raise and lower garage doors, turn lights on and off, or anything else that would need to be triggered in a relative time scale. If you remember that MIDI is simply a triggering protocol, your journey into MIDI will be much smoother.
Of course, the meaning of many MIDI messages is standardized: like, "middle C key pressed down", "middle C released", "sustain pedal down", and "sustain pedal up".
Many messages are partially standardized, like "Controller number 120 set to level 63". Well, that part of the meaning is standard, but there's no standard for what controller 120 does. Or, "change to bank X program Y". (Many of the program change messages are standardized as part of General MIDI, and others aren't.)
And there's a kind of message that's intentionally unstandardized, called "System Exclusive", or Sysex. These are intended to allow manufacturers to invent their own message for their own purposes, for things like loading and saving patches.
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