MIDI Music

MIDI music is music defined by the sound of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface standard and, above all, the General MIDI instrument set built into 1990s sound cards, keyboards and game consoles. Its voices are instantly recognisable stock approximations of pianos, strings, brass, guitars and percussion, rendered with limited polyphony and expression and played back identically on any compatible device. First encountered as the functional medium of PC and console game soundtracks, karaoke files and arranger keyboards, the default MIDI palette was later adopted deliberately by internet-era artists such as *James Ferraro* as an aesthetic of synthetic artifice and corporate nostalgia.