The Mystery of the 3 Music Files in Windows 7

Author: AnandK@TWC Category: Windows Tags: ,

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!

If you have liked this post, you might want to check out some more, on topics like , .

About AnandK@TWC

Anand aka HappyAndyK is an end-user Windows enthusiast, a Microsoft MVP in Windows Desktop Experience since 2007, and the Admin of TheWindowsClub.com, TheGeeksClub.com & WinVistaClub.com. Creating a System Restore Point before trying out a new software or a tweak is always recommended.

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  • J.K.

    Jammin’ now?

    It’s not half bad

  • nithinr6

    Onestop was there in XP also although i am not sure about the other two

  • http://evilfantasy.wordpress.com Kevin

    Maybe they are used at the factory for testing purposes?

  • wonder-boy

    They sound good. there must be there for some reason

  • Serpher

    For me personally its nothing new. I heard “onestop” years ago :P

  • WaZZy

    Maybe for the phone in Windows?

  • Ernie

    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

  • Harris

    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…

  • Harris

    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…

  • RandomInternetGuy

    Harris that post of yours is WAY too long to read, but I have to tell you that .mid is just another music file format. I double click the file, music comes out of my speakers – no different than .mp3 or .wav as far as I can tell.

  • DJ_X3R

    @RandomInternetGuy: Untrue. Everything Harris said is right, it’s just that almost any music player for your computer these days supports .MID files. I guess it has something to do with what your sound card supports as well; MIDI files sound slightly different on different machines.

  • Mathman54

    Midi differs from sound files such as MP3 or WAV in that, while MP3 and WAV are recorded from a sound source, MIDI is not a recorded sound but digitally coded input from a midi enabled musical instrument or software. MP# or WAV require a microphone, MIDI does not use a microphone. Analogy, I could have spoken this all into my laptop’s microphone and recorded it as a WAV or MP3 for you to listen to. Instead, I used a digital interface, my keyboard, to encode my verbal data. To hear what I typed, you will still need a text-to-speech translator. And to be like MIDI, the translator will need info as to how my voice sounds so that it can play it back to you in my voice with my vocal inflections and at the pitches and volumes I used as I spoke. MIDI playback sound will differ from sound card to sound card because different card makers use different instrument sound profiles, so an electric guitar sound from card A may sound very different from the same electric guitar sound from card B.

  • blahblahblah

    I posted a comment on Reddit, detailing what I think is the origin of this song.

    >I believe that it is included with the NVIDIA nForce Control Panel. That program allows you to configure audio output, such as by adding echo or reverb. It is one of three songs (onestop.mid, flourish.mid, town.mid) included with the program to test audio output. I listen to this song with the nForce Control Panel when I’m waiting for Windows to update.

  • K-Anator

    It isn’t just for nVidia users, I’m an ATI’er and I have them

  • poopluvr

    these midis were packaged with windows 3.1 and they just never took them out of the distro cus they rocked so hard! that’s why they’re included in every windows version.

  • Flak

    This is obviously what Bill Gates what listening to while he created Windows.

  • pacman

    randominternetguy,

    it’s not like midi is a new format people, choosing to be ignorant if you ask me

  • Dave

    Hmmm, flourish actually actually sounds like some gamemusic, is there some hidden game in all windows games?

  • Dave

    FAAAIL, i did not ment windows games but just windows computers >.>

  • Armando

    I dont know why but i love the town mid cause it reminds me of when i was younger and just discovered Windows Movie Maker

  • nightrising

    flourish.mid is actually for dxdiag.exe and is used to test sound output methods… finding rest

  • Marco

    @poopluvr: I think they rock too and I also think that you might be right about Windows 3.1. Especially “Onestop” sounds like it is made in the late 80′s or early 90′s. Especially at 00:30 and at 01:22 :-)

  • Marco

    Sorry, 00:40 is what I mean.

  • Dalokin

    the songs themselves are originally from the game “Transport Tycoon Deluxe” why on earth are they in windows..

  • http://iann0036.com iann0036

    Onestop.mid sounds SOO much like Donkey Kong Country

  • zack

    lol 0:40 of onestop sounds like seinfeld

  • tomy

    My Windows XP computer has one has one called “PINBALL.MID” (8:48) and it’s ummm, kinda weird

  • Take1ne

    Dalokin, none of those songs are from Transport Tycoon or TT Deluxe. There are a couple of parts in onestop.mid which sound VERY similar to songs from TT, though.

  • Bill

    The songs are supposed to be used when your computer crashes, it is played and will not stop until you send it to microsoft. once you send it, the music will determine what is wrong with your comp. onestop means that the computer has come to the end of the road, or in other words, is obsolete. Flourish means it is fixable, and town means that you have had you comp shut down by a higher level of management, once they figure out why they will come and get you.

  • Dan

    These 3 songs are also in Silvercreeks Hardwood Hearts game.

  • Cherri

    Thanks Bill! You’ve cleared that right up for me.

  • Keavon

    @Bill
    Mmmhmmmm…
    (Is this Bill Gates?)
    Why would a computer play music when it’s dead? And why would it be music? Not like a voice that says “go get a new computer.” And how would you send a crash report to MS if the computer died? xD

  • Steve

    You all have never heard of CANYON.MID back from Windows 3.1, I take it?

  • anonymous

    ^ Is that Steve JOBS?

  • VelociraptorSaur

    Hey, that is MY video! ;)

    You can continue to use it. Hell, it probably increases my traffic. :)

  • Bunker

    wow, I had no clue that these .mid files existed. they are very cool and though it is nice to share in the excitement i dont know if i trust “Bill” to be telling me what they are actually used for because if i believe everything i have read about these MIDI files then they would not only tell you what is wrong with your computer but also the listening material that bill gates used to test your hardware on your computer and at the endo of the day make you donuts…. *sigh* dont ask about the donuts one.

  • Jordan

    Yo, steve. I’d love to hear canyon.mid… youtube link please? :D

  • Francesco

    ahahahah i love you guys

  • Ben

    Somebody posted this before, and I shall go into some more detail. These are not for dxdiag, they are not from some game, they were samples included with Windows 3.1! They were written for Microsoft and Windows 3.1 because 3.1 included a midi library, making it capable of playing back midi files. These songs were included to show off the midi capability in Windows 3.1. They are just such great songs that they were left on the system.

  • Anon

    Maybe little bill gates as a child had a dream of making his very own Jrpg (As the music sounds like something from an old jrpg). The other possibility is he made music for a hentai game (As it also sounds like something from a hentai game). Pick your poison

  • Barbara

    Jordan here’s the link for canyon.mid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIW4F285QjA :)

  • sbmaner

    I heard onestop.mid in windows NT4.0, when the setup completed and “Discover Windows NT 4.0″ window appeared. I found an other weird file in Win XP prof. It is in %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM folder and it called setup.ini. It is a file from Windows 3.1 and i think that’s a little bit funny, because windows 3.1 was released in ’93:D

  • MattiFS

    Flourish is used as default by a Vista alarm clock widget

  • Alfie

    Flourish ROCKS!

  • Alfie

    On shortcut put down media and media again then you will get the 3 songs onestop flourish and town!

  • JustAGuess

    How about this? ‘Onestop’ is similar to one-stop-shopping. Whatever your musical needs may be (intro, exit, transitional) this will satisfy your needs by simply fading into and out of this one track. Presentation-music problems solved.

    Just a thought.

  • http://www.olivertreend.com Ollie Treend

    Yeah, this is nothing new. I found them back in the XP days.
    Still a mystery as to why they were there, though. Even more of a mystery why they’ve kept them all the way through to Windows 7!

  • Nope.avi

    I came for the origin of onestop…

    I laughed for the pure autistic garbage in some of these comments. With adenoids: “I’ll have you know, sir, that midi files are different than other audio files…” Keep on assping your assburgers, asspies. I’ll be over here listening to onestop.mid while being touched by a woman.

  • http://www.xfilescabinet.com/ clarjon1

    Sorry to say, but MIDI is NOT a music compression format. It’s actually a file that contains instructions for digitally controlled instrument devices, such as a synthesizer. Think of it as a pianoroll file — as the screenshot of the song demonstrates :P

  • http://youtube.com/sajwa52 I like turtles

    Anyone here play Source games by Valve?
    Also cinematic for Call of Duty is the same.

    Think about a MIDI file as a demo file for, lets see.. Counter-Strike: Source. The .dem file contains all the information from the game round. Players, weapons, explosions, score, movement etc. but it is NOT a video.

    A video is pre-rendered frames, so can we say about WAW, WMA, MP3 etc..
    So a video will run MUCH smoother than a COD demo file (cinematic) on a crappy PC, because the video is pre-rendered. But every PC now can handle MIDI files without problems.

    A demo file, or a cinematic captured round in Call of Duty is not pre-rendered frames. You can change players, fly around, see the kills in slow motion etc..

    So a MIDI file is like a game demo, but it doesn’t take much more resources than a mp3 file.

    Midi files contains the information about the different instruments, and if you open it with a MIDI editing program, you can change the beat of 1 single instrument and leave the rest being normal. You can also change more instruments if you want. You cannot do that with a MP3 file, you will have to use a professional audio editing program if you want to change the music, but that will never end good, just disorted. (actually it won’t work in most situations)

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