The Internet is a Cultural Treasure
Among the wonders of the Internet are (no doubt) the web pages that serve as monuments to the bad taste of decades past. And now! You too can build the web page that you have always
dreamed of, and build upon the body of cultural treasures immortalized by technological advances.
And here's all you have to do:
Contribute to Society
First go out and find some really BAD (and we mean AWFUL) midi music. There is a lot of stuff out there that sounds like a six-year old playing by ear on a
1983 Casio keyboard. You can start at:
MidiCity
This is truly amazing site. Where else can you find a Hebrew midi music link on the same page as a link to Yanni? (Kind of boggles the mind, doesn't it...)
If you can't find it here, you probably won't find it. A lot of midi sites have had to shut down due to massive copyright violations. Picky, picky, picky!
But, even with that in mind, you can still try:
Midi Farm
which boasts of 15,000 midi files.
Midi Farm wants you to register with them before you can get your little hands on the goods, however.
Then there always is:
A Nasty-Looking Page Devoted to the '70's
just because it has such a great name. Be patient - it takes a long time to load...
Are We
Witnessing the End of Civilization?
For those of you with more than a shred of good taste, there are a lot of very nice midi files out there too....punch out Gloria Gaynor up there at the top
of the page and try this:
Holberg Suite, Opus 40, Mov.1, by Edvard Grieg
Classical piano music is at your fingertips: CLICK
However, for those of you who believe that "good taste" describes the music of Metallica, well, you can find it....but they might come after you.....
Let's Rock and Roll! (or whatever)
After you have downloaded the gem of your choice, here is how
you get your midi file onto your page:
The tag "autostart = TRUE" means that the music will automatically start playing when the page loads. You've already had a sample of that....
If the tag says "autostart = FALSE", that means that the play button has to be activated on the midi console in order to hear the music.
"LOOP= TRUE" indicates that the song will play over and over and over and over and over and over and over until the stop button is punched. Some people are mean and hide the button so you HAVE to listen to their song of choice. Just how annoying you want to be is entirely up to you.
"LOOP = FALSE" indicates that the song will play just one time and stop. Whew!
Midi Gets By With A Little Help From Its Friends
See?
A midi file is recognized by the browser as an "embedded source." The midi file needs to be in the same directory (folder) as the html file, or else (just like
with the graphics), you have to put exact directions as to where the browser should look to find it. Keep in mind that even if you have things set up perfectly, your fabulous musical selection will absolutely refuse to perform if your ISP's server is not set up correctly. This situation was common in the early days (oh..about 1996..) of the midi revolution, but is rather unusual now.
Now, for the
music to play properly, you also need to have the right plug-in for your browser.
The Apple Quicktime plug-in handles a wide variety of files and is very versatile.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a place where you can just download the plug-in by itself. The entire QuickTime download file is very large, and it will take quite a while to download. It's worth it though, because it does a whole lot more than just play your favorite BeeGees tunes.
A FREE!
(and we love FREE) midi plugin called Arnold's Midi Player for PowerMacs is available at Arnold's Midi Home Page. This gem is brought to you by Arnaud Masson, a nice Frenchman who is apparently unaware that the name "Arnold" is (for millions of Americans at least) hopelessly associated with the cute little pig on Green Acres. Arnaud was considerate enough to develop a Windows version of his player too. What a guy!
Other plug-ins that can handle midi files are Crescendo, and Maczilla. Some companies sell very fancy shareware plug-ins, such as Beatnik. Midi plug-ins are available at Netscape's Audio Plug-in Page.
Let's Make Fools of Ourselves!
Karaoke. Need we say more?
There are some...hmmmm...interesting....karaoke files available on the web. You can get them onto your web page using the same tag as you do for a regular midi. However, you need to make a few changes in the attributes. You need to designate a larger area on your page for the karaoke files so that there will be room for the words to scroll by. Notice the 300 x 300 size and the elimination of "small console." You may be able to get by with a smaller area than 300 by 300 - it depends on how many words the karaoke file is set up to display at one time.
A karaoke file is characterized by the ending extension.kar instead of .mid. If your browser is configured correctly, it should be able to read the file, especially if you have the Quicktime plugin, and your preferences are correctly set to use the plugin. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one's perspective on the whole situation (and the end of civilization thing that I mentioned earlier) for some reason the .kar files are not recognized by every server. A prime example is the server that this page is located on. (Maybe they know something that you don't know..?)
All I can say, is just pretend that you see the little words dancing by as the song plays. My you DO have a vivid imagination!
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: This file is truly awful
You Too Can Edit Midi Files!
There are midi editing programs available out there in the wild blue yonder. Unless you are somewhat of a computer nerd, or unless I simply have not yet found one that is really easy to use, I would recommend that you best leave this sort of thing to the eight year olds, because it can be a fairly confusing process. However, midi editing makes it possible to change that 1983 Casio keyboard sound into something much more digestible. A good midi editing program is:
Midigraphy.
It has recently been updated, and is easier to use than it used to be so just get silly and TRY IT!
Before:
After:
This midi file was edited using MIDIGraphy
1.40.
And now, back to disco!
For those of you with Real Guts:
