The Mystery of the 3 Music Files in Windows 7
When you open the C:\Windows\Media folder, you will notice that it includes Windows sounds & sound schemes. Among them you will find 3 MIDI sequence sound files: onestop.mid, flourish.mid & town.mid.
I happened to be browsing this Media folder when I decided to click on the 39 KB onestop file, out of curiosity. I loved what I heard!
This led me to Google, err Bing on the net. And this is all that I found, scattered in different places.
There are 3 such .mid files, with rather enthralling music!
C:\Windows\Media\flourish.mid
C:\Windows\Media\onestop.mid
C:\Windows\Media\town.mid
MIDI stands for “Musical Instrument Digital Interface”, a compression format for encoding music.
These MIDI sequence music files have existed in Windows Vista & XP; and maybe earlier versions too.
Flourish and Town were made by Nathan Grigg & Onestop by David Yackley, for Microsoft in 2000.
Flourish, it seems, is used, when you run a DirectX diagnostic test for DirectMusic.
I have no idea what the others are used for. Were they once used to showcase Media Players capabilities?
Why they exist, is still unanswered, it appears…
You can always get the 3 files from your Media folder, or alternatively, click here to download, if you’d like to hear them.
Incidentally, here is a nice video, the search threw up.
If anyone has any ideas about these 3 files or why they are there in the first place, please do share in the comments below. I’d love to know more about them!
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Comments
Jammin’ now?
It’s not half bad
Onestop was there in XP also although i am not sure about the other two
Maybe they are used at the factory for testing purposes?
They sound good. there must be there for some reason
For me personally its nothing new. I heard “onestop” years ago
Maybe for the phone in Windows?
On my XP pro installation I also have one called
CSSAMP1.MID (all in uppercase)
New about them but just assumed that they were there to allow you to check out speakers and sound card (or built in)before you actually installed any music of your own.
Ernie
MIDI is NOT “a compression format for encoding music.” it is not audio but a record of information entered from a midi controller, for example a midi keyboard. what is essentially does if record what note you played, how hard or fast you hit the note and how long it was held for. it can also record other info such as pitch bend or modulation. once you have record a midi sequence you can assign that information to another instrument. for example you could play a part with a piano sound and assign to be a guitar part or a trombone part or even assign the notes to different drum sounds. to be able to edit a midi song file you need a sequencer program…there are a couple of free ones – thanks to gizmos – called darkwave studio and temper. i personally use cakewalk home studio xl. most sequence programs allow you to record midi info as well as record audio ie vocals or live guitar parts. commerical sequence programs allow you to enter notes via notation and then have that part played back with any instrument you choose. with midi you can enter notes in step time or play it very slow and then speed up the tempo without affecting the pitch. hope this gives a little info about MIDI…
a correction on my comment yesterday. darkware studio is not a midi sequencer…it is an audio recorder. there is another program called music studio producer which is a sequence program…my apologies for any confusion…
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