Ringtones can be sounds in various formats. There are a lot of identified formats specific for the ringtones. One of them is the MIDI ringtone format. Midi files are complex files often containing thousands of notes, and many channels. This makes a midi file ‘polyphonic’ and to use a midi file on a standard ‘monophonic’ phone we need to simplify it.. MIDI is the acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI was introduced in 1983 as a music industry standard communications protocol that lets MIDI instruments and sequencers talk to each other to play music. The sounds are defined by the hardware instruments used for playback. MIDI files are complex files often containing thousands of notes, and many channels. This makes a midi polyphonic. MIDI (.mid) ringtones are compatible with any phone that supports MIDI. There are many websites out there with premium or free MIDI content. MIDI ringtones help you to identify your phone ringing in a crowd and can be used as message alert tones and as sound effects in mobile phone games. Polyphonic midi tones are downloaded over MMS or WAP or from PC via Bluetooth, infrared or cable.
It is important to understand MIDI and what the format enables, (and also what the restrictions are). Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) enables the creation of Polyphonic musical compositions with different sounds.
A MIDI file is not an ‘audio’ file. It is not a recorded sound. MIDI is a set of instructions that tells the device which instruments to play and how. A MIDI player has a set of instruments. QuickTime is capable of playing MIDI files and has its own set of instruments. A phone also has a set of instruments. A MIDI file contains a set of instructions as to which instruments to play and how – therefore a MIDI file will sound different according to the instrument set on your phone or player.
MIDI can tell a device to play more than one note at a time by more than one instrument. MIDI means the file size is low. It doesn’t contain ‘recorded sound’ – if a MIDI file contains a piano it will play the piano instrument contained on the device, not the recorded sound of a piano.
SP-MIDI – The SP-MIDI (Scalable Polyphony MIDI) specification was co-authored by Nokia Corporation and Beatnik Inc. This is the MIDI standard for Polyphonic ringtones and multimedia messaging. Nokia 3510, 3585, 3590 and 7210 mobile phone models all support SP-MIDI for ringtones, game sound and messaging.
