electronic music

MIDI serves as a crucial tool for musicians, enabling instrument synchronization, effects control, and electronic music creation. It began at the 1983 NAMM Show with the introduction of MIDI 1.0, which transmitted messages over a DIN serial cable. MIDI 1.0 has limitations, such as a control parameter range of 0-127 and inadequate support for orchestral articulation. In 2020, MIDI 2.0 was introduced, offering improvements like bidirectional communication, automatic device discovery, and high-resolution controllers. Windows 11 now supports both MIDI 1.0 and MIDI 2.0 through Windows MIDI Services, which includes features like multi-client support, customizable MIDI endpoints, built-in loopback, and tighter message timing. A new USB MIDI 2.0 class driver has been developed, and tools for MIDI scripting will be released soon. The development of Windows MIDI Services involved community collaboration, and future enhancements are planned for music creation on Windows.