MIDI On Your Cell Phone

Origins

MIDI ringtones are those created by musicians, hobbyists, and digital enthusiasts and are provided for you to download to your cellphone. Some are quite good, especially if you go for the more basic and muscular rhythms. Most MIDI ringtones are free for you to use for personal use. Use them for commercial purposes and you may trample all over that poor artist’s copyrights. MIDI ringtone and music files usually come bundled with author information embedded in the piece, so if you are looking to use their work for money-making purposes, contact them. Also, some people become fans of an artist’s work, another reason to know how to contact them.

Making Free Digital Music into Ringtones

MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is the digital communications standard that allows communication between digital equipment such as electronic musical instruments and the software and equipment that formats, modulates and exchanges it with other digital devices. The introduction of the MIDI standard in the 1983 heralded the beginning of the digital and electronic music age. When electronic instrumentation arrived on the scene the music industry at large decided it was time to produce a protocol that would make for electronic compliance between instruments and devices.

Almost anyone is capable of authoring music as long as they know a bit about electronic music and synthesizing equipment. MIDI standards allow such self-authored works to be exchanged between MIDI devices. Your computer is a MIDI device if it has a soundcard and can produce complex musical sounds. Have a music making application like Mac Garage Band? You can make your own MIDI ringtones.

Test Drive Your Tones

You can listen to your MIDI ring tones online from your computer before you download. Some sites only allow you to download to your PC while others will allow you to bypass the PC and download directly to your cellphone.

MIDI sites typically categorize tones into genre and sub-genres everything from classical to raw hip-hop and rap and everything in between. Some allow you to rate the selections and choose among a number of different versions of the same ringtone.