MINI: Making MIDI Fit for Real-Time Musical Interaction over the Internet

While MIDI is still the most viable music proto- col, it is not appropriate for use in live networked mu- sic performances. We propose a network data format called MINI. It eliminates the disturbing arpeggio ef- fect caused by network packet delay jitter, and yields smaller packets that can be further reduced by omit- ting marginal MIDI features. MIDI­MINI transcoding is transparent, and works with standard MIDI instru- ments. We present the MINI design rationale, protocol, and empirical performance results.