social.noyu.me

okay so i saw a tweet with a recording of a midi file with a really nice yamaha xg cover of a song by a former member of casiopea, but i couldn't find the midi file, and i was sad.

today i made a new attempt to find it and… i found it, but what's amazing is where…

apparently, yamaha operate something called the “yamaha music data shop” (https://yamahamusicdata.jp). it's a japan-only webshop that sells digital downloads of midi files that are covers of various songs. this somehow still exists in 2024?

and what's wilder is, if you want to preview a song? they don't give you an mp3. they give you a file that can only be played by ”yamaha midradio”, a free program only in japanese, with both windows 98/me/2000/xp and windows vista/7/8/10 versions available to download…

it's also available for mac os x but unsurprisingly that version does not run on modern macos. the windows vista one does though, under wine!

and… it can play back the preview file, either via an integrated softsynth or… via a connected midi synth? so i try that.

and… it works!!! that a sample of a 1995 yamaha midi file plays back through my 1997 yamaha portable midi workstation is unsurprising, but it is a miracle that the website providing it exists in 2024, and that this 2017 macbook can run the software and communicate with it

that this works is so incredibly beautiful to me. i have so many words i want to write about midi, because it's something incredibly rare in computing: a digital technology that has never become obsolete, where a device from 2024 still fully interoperates with one from 1984

anyway the song was https://yamahamusicdata.jp/data/15250 and the tweet was https://twitter.com/OnlyMIDIs/status/1713585530066333791

XG0093B2.MID
1995 / 72 KB
Minoru Mukaiya - Looking Up
Yamaha XG
「Yamaha Corporation」