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Asked: 2026-06-02T17:03:14+00:00

I am writing my own MIDI parser and everything seems to be going nicely.

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I am writing my own MIDI parser and everything seems to be going nicely.

I am testing against some of the files I see in the wild. I noticed that a MIDI track never appears to have more then one note on at once (produces more then one tone). Is this by design, can a midi track require more then one note to play at once?

(I am not referring to the number of simultaneous tracks, I am referring to the number of tones in a single track.)

The midi files I have tested look like this:

ON_NOTE71:ON_NOTE75:ON_NOTE79
ON_NOTE71:OFF_NOTE71:ON_NOTE75:OFF_NOTE75:ON_NOTE79:OFF_NOTE79

Can it look like this?

ON_NOTE71:ON_NOTE73:OFF_NOTE73:OFF_NOTE71

How do I detect this alternative structure?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Yes. Playing more than one note at once is known as polyphony. Different MIDI specifications define support for different levels of polyphony.

    See http://www.midi.org/techspecs/gm.php

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