Midi files were such a joy in the '90s! I remember when I would get a new computer or upgrade sound cards, one of the first things I'd do was play some midi's

Midi files were such a joy in the '90s! I remember when I would get a new computer or upgrade sound cards, one of the first things I'd do was play some midi's to see how they sounded. At some point, I got a Yamaha keyboard for a gift and it happened to have a midi interface. With that, I could play my midi files through the keyboard, which sounded so much better than what the sound card could do. The keyboard also featured LED's above each key and you could isolate a midi channel to see what notes were being played. It was such a neat way to learn songs. I actually still use midi files today if I want to do things like analyzing the chords or harmonies of a song, or if I'm learning it on guitar and a midi file is available, I can use it and easily do things like slow the track down, learn the parts, and then gradually speed it up. Some of the midi's produced for popular songs are also very well done (although some are pretty bad!). If you're into music production, you can easily import them into your DAW and assign the channels to high-quality plug-ins and have something that actually sounds close to the real recording. Although it's understandable why midi's days as a consumer music format are over (it was never meant to be that, anyway), it's somewhat a shame since there aren't a ton of midi files out there for songs after 2000 or so.