When you open the C:\Windows\Media folder, you will notice that it includes Windows sounds & sound schemes. You will find 3 MIDI sequence sound files: onestop.mid, flourish.mid & town.mid. They are seen on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 11/10 too.
I was browsing this Media folder when I clicked on the 39 KB onestop file out of curiosity. I loved what I heard! This led me to search for it on the net. And this is all that I found, scattered in different places.
Onestop.mid, Flourish.mid, Town.mid Music Files
There are three 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. Where were they once used to showcase Media Players’ capabilities?
Why they exist is still unanswered, it appears…
You can always get the three files from your Media folder or click here to download them if you’d like to hear them.
Incidentally, here is a nice video; the search threw up.
If anyone has any ideas about these three files or why they are there in the first place, please share them in the comments below. I’d love to know more about them.
How to Play MIDI Files?
A MIDI file is a Musical Instrument Digital Interface file. It is an audio file; you can open one with VLC or Windows Media Player. These players are more than enough and support all types of codecs, including this one.
Why are Midi Files in Windows?
Windows used to include sample pictures, music, and videos so users could try out the media-playing features. Playing media on Windows is commonplace these days, and users no longer need to rely on samples to test the functionality. Today, it is common to play media files on a computer. However, Microsoft never removed some of the old sample media files.
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 :P
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…
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.
@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.
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.
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.
It isn’t just for nVidia users, I’m an ATI’er and I have them
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.
This is obviously what Bill Gates what listening to while he created Windows.
randominternetguy,
it’s not like midi is a new format people, choosing to be ignorant if you ask me
Hmmm, flourish actually actually sounds like some gamemusic, is there some hidden game in all windows games?
FAAAIL, i did not ment windows games but just windows computers >.>
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
flourish.mid is actually for dxdiag.exe and is used to test sound output methods… finding rest
@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 :-)
Sorry, 00:40 is what I mean.
the songs themselves are originally from the game “Transport Tycoon Deluxe” why on earth are they in windows..
Onestop.mid sounds SOO much like Donkey Kong Country
lol 0:40 of onestop sounds like seinfeld
My Windows XP computer has one has one called “PINBALL.MID” (8:48) and it’s ummm, kinda weird
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.
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.
These 3 songs are also in Silvercreeks Hardwood Hearts game.
Thanks Bill! You’ve cleared that right up for me.
@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
You all have never heard of CANYON.MID back from Windows 3.1, I take it?
^ Is that Steve JOBS?
Hey, that is MY video! ;)
You can continue to use it. Hell, it probably increases my traffic. :)
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.
Yo, steve. I’d love to hear canyon.mid… youtube link please? :D
ahahahah i love you guys
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.
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
Jordan here’s the link for canyon.mid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIW4F285QjA :)
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
Flourish is used as default by a Vista alarm clock widget
Flourish ROCKS!
On shortcut put down media and media again then you will get the 3 songs onestop flourish and town!
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.
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!
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.
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
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)
Or, you can think of it as a piece of sheet music since that’s what it’s trying to emulate; time and note info that can be played by any instrument without any additional audio samples. The benefit is tiny files, whose quality can improve over time with newer drivers/programs with higher quality samples to use for playback.
the MIDI called town reminds me of pokemon. ^_^
these are the song we will be forced to listen to everyday when windows is going to take over the world after Jobs is dead. Windows Union is what the world will be called and this will be the 3 anthems, why 3 ? because world will be divided into 3 parts: Europe with Africa will be called the Start button, Asia with Australia will be the Taskbar and America the BlueScreen of Death
I first saw Onestop in windows 98 and I first saw Town and Flourish when windows ME millennium edition came out.
To prove that it’s not a normally “recorded” song, just press the pause button when you’re playing a MIDI file and the notes will sustain.
Also, if you play the song from the beginning, at 0:03 there’s a bass drop that sustains for a couple of seconds. But if you start playing the song at, let’s say, 0:04 onward, it won’t output the bass drop. This is because the MIDI info from the bass instrument is never sent to the computer after 0:03.
Also, there are elves in your computer that play music.
yea you people (most of you) are idiots. Just because sound comes out does not mean it’s just like MP3.
In n00b terms, this is what MIDI Does (imagine we’re programming in a strange BASIC dialect here:)
SELECT INSTRU PIANO
VOL 127
PLAY “A”
PLAY “A#”
PLAY “C#”
PLAY “D”
PLAY “Fb”
and the Microsoft GS Wavetable processes that information and makes it into sound.
What MIDI most deffinately is NOT, is a compression format for music…
They’re in there because they are fucking awesome.
When Jesus, Lord our God, rose on the third day he composed onestop. It has been in every version of Windows since the late 16th century, when Pope Johnson decreed it so. This is the music of the Resurrection and it is played to all souls before the enter our Father’s Kingdom.
It’s on Win 7 Ultimate as well. Someone make up a conspiracy theory we can all belive in.
yeah, that post is at LEAST 150 words…you fucking idiot.
“I’m not going to read your well informed post, so here’s some completely untrue bullshit I just guessed at”
prick
MIDI is not a compression scheme, it is an encoding method…
You are like.. So cool..
I became to be a midi lover after first I heard this on my xp. Is there any advanced midi, than 128 ins, can some one tell me more about XG, GS
Jobs is dead and i am already listening to this shit, CRAP ITS THE WORLD DOMINATION GOING ON…
Became a midi lover? Please, the music makes my ears bleed.
MIDI files don’t contain any audio themselves. Actually MIDI files can even contain no notes at all, just Control Messages that are used to control MIDI-enabled devices, such as live rigs (i.e.: for guitarists). But the most common use is to include information for pitch, duration, and velocity of a sequence of notes that is then interpreted by the MIDI soundbank of your sound card. So the sound produced actually is determined by what sound card you have, since each card may have a different MIDI soundbank, unlike MP3, WAV’s and other audio files that playback the same everywhere independently of the sound card you have.
MIDI files don’t contain any audio themselves. Actually MIDI files can even contain no notes at all, just Control Messages that are used to control MIDI-enabled devices, such as live rigs (i.e.: for guitarists). But the most common use is to include information for pitch, duration, and velocity of a sequence of notes that is then interpreted by the MIDI soundbank of your sound card. So the sound produced actually is determined by what sound card you have, since each card may have a different MIDI soundbank, unlike MP3, WAV’s and other audio files that playback the same everywhere independently of the sound card you have.
here is to old times… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwgSmXkIQf8
They are probably there to reward adventurers, like myself, who love finding these things.
I Remember these from my Windows 95/98 Days
There are a lot of hidden songs on windows that aren’t even mentioned. Some didn’t make it to Windows 7 though…
canyon.mid
clouds.mid
CSSAMP1.mid
passport.mid
Don’t forget on Windows XP there is a song in the oobe folder called title.wma. Search it.
oobe stands for Out Of the Box Experience. Windows XP just stands for Windows Experience. The oobe folder in the Windows directory is simply for the Exploring Windows XP popup that comes after installing Windows XP, and title.wma is the song that plays.
These were all included in windows 98se, which was their first appearance.
I already heard the song at the end of the file (excuse my english i’m french) , but don’t know where or when, if someone can help me… ;)
this thread is like, so dead
Flourish actually came in windows 98 my fav computer!
YES YES YES! THEIR IS ONE CALLED CSSCAMP1! SO IM NOT ALONE!!!!
U KNOW IT TOO! YAY!!!!!!!
sorry imean cssamp1!
The Onestop music plays when you beat Windows XP :)
Onestop is pretty awesome. My guess is they just left them there as a little treat. I remember the Windows95 startup CD had a lot of goodies.
SUBLIMINAL MASSAGE!!!! lol
This is made for aliens, windows is a enormous system that was made for aliens. Reptil Aliens.
lol hahaha I bet!!
Wait wait… the “town.mid” file i heard it in a sonic fangame…
hipster …
hey did you burn your mouth because you ate your dinner before it was cool?
Soooo… like.. apparently, it’s not an alien transmisson -sadface- Only a little let down by that. But it seems to me that ever since windows began they started to implant “easter eggs’ into the hard drive of every computer. There for all of us having acces to those songs. It was just the songs they picked. I don’t think it’s much more than that.
Onestop is my favorite.
Onestop: 1:30 FTW
No, it’s when right after you install WinXP and you have to fill out the users form and stuff
And Win98SE had a bunch of games
Good accurate info. Except for the part about MIDI being a music compression format. MIDI is simply a set of instructions. The file itself contains no audio what so ever.
Lol, Harris is so right you dumbs xD Windows Media player just knows how to use the MIDI soundbank to get music out your speakers, with the given instructions from the .mid file.. A MIDI file is basically just a list of instructions
Did you also mean “They’re” instead “THEIR” and “I’m” instead of “IM” and “You” instead of “U”?
F*&K. “There” not “they’re”. That’s what I get for mocking grammer.
Muphry’s Law strikes again!
All three are on Vista.
grammar*
Speaking of MIDI files…I’m only curious to know. Other than “Onestop”, “Town”, and “Flourish”, does anyone else know the names of the OTHER MIDI song files that Windows XP has provided? I don’t have Windows XP ( Old computer error gone terrible) anymore so I am using the Windows 7. So I can’t find the other names of those songs and I don’t remember them. Can anyone please help me? Thank you, if you help! :)
Murphy*
The files are just there so that you can test MIDI programs. So if you wanted to run a program that plays .mid files, you can use these to stock files test it. That’s what I read.
**stock files to test it**
spelling*
Muphry’s law is actually a play on words on Murphy’s law. Muphry’s law states that no matter how many times a book or somesuch is edited, there will be a mistake. The more you know :)
That is for the pinball game. You can enable it In-game by clicking Options and clicking “Music”
Go Joe!
Bill Gates wanted to troll
All three are on Windows XP
Me and my brother LOVED Onestop when we were kids! We had a Windows 2000.
I remember listening to ONESTOP and FLOURISH as a 6-year-old on Windows ME. I dunno about TOWN though.
Its a awesome music file.
It won’t. Windows ships with its own software MIDI synthesizer (those are shit, BTW). Most sound cards nowadays don’t have MIDI synthesizing capabilities. If you use a different OS or a different SW synthesizer/soundfont it will sound differently.
the size of mid files is much smaller than the size of any digital audio format.. it’s measured in kilobytes often..
mid to mp3 is like svg to jpg :)
What you did there.
I see it.
Flourish and Town are in XP as well.
Flourish.mid is a DirectSound test MID file, but onestop.mid is a easter egg music running automatically when in cmd typed “wininit”. That’s a “biography of Bill Gates”.
Are they possibly old leftovers from the days when Encarta was part of the Windows package? Some kind of nostalgic easter egg left in there for older users by the MS staff, perhaps. There are a couple of parts from ‘onestop’ that sound familiar but I’m not sure that I mightn’t be simply confusing it with the music from Theme Hospital!
it installs a trojan on your pc
They were there since at least Windows 98, as my discovery of them was one of the highlights of the year for me growing up!
Windows includes a number of MIDI files for troubleshooting purposes. In Windows 3.1, CANYON.MID and PASSPORT.MID can be found in the directory :WindowsMedia, with some .WAV and .RMI files. In Windows ME and later versions, these were replaced by ONESTOP.MID, FLOURISH.MID, and TOWN.MID. These files allowed for product support technicians to diagnose problems with MIDI playback without requiring the user to go to a Web page and download a known-good MIDI file.
Its thinked that these programs can cause earshots and death if an attacker plays these songs. Or its thinked that its used to test if sound is broken, for the developpers.
I just remixed town in FL Studio. http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/589246
reason this existed was for pure testing purpose about what the new windows could do (playing music) so i think microsoft wanted to keep it and they did keep it
Onestep? I think this is Bill Gates biography music.
Also, all thos folders in there, afternoon, characters, Landscape, etcetera, it suggests a hidden game or something, anyone knows anything about this? they’re all empty (with hidden files on) folders.
And they’re still there, even in the latest build of Windows 10.
I found 2 files as well on my Windows 98 PC. CANYON.MID and PASSPORT.MID. I’m assuming it came from the unofficial service pack I installed, but don’t know where they come from.
MIDI is NOT IN ANY WAY a compression format, you, complete disappointing failure who found out about Microsoft MIDIs in Windows 7 for Christ’s sake!
Breaking news just in…
You could’ve waited for Windows 10.
onestop, flourish and town (and pinball) were included since windows XP however they may be produced earlier – But in my windows 98 I’ve never found them and I did search very carefully about midis on all my devices. Every time I got a new CD-ROM I was looking for midis. And one day I found a real nice one called “19plus” and I never found it again. Sadly I delted one time my midi collection, because I thought it would be better on a CD-ROM but I loosed it finally so I don’t have any of this gorgeous files anymore…
And I was really surprised to find these new Midi Files on VISTA-Computers, however there were in XP too. (I never owned a XP, even so 3.1).
And YES, canyon & Co they were included for testing purposes, but many old Games and Applications (like WebSite-Builder, Presentation Software, Encyclopedies) had some wonderful Midis too.
like if youer reading this in 2015
cuz im not
Basically these MIDI files have been added to diagnose problems when playing with MIDI
canyon.mid is in xp i think.
MIDI isn’t a compression format for encoding music. It is a standard that enables a variety of different MIDI devices to link with each other, for example I controlled a 2000s sequencer with a much older 1980s keyboard of a different brand (OK I lie, they were both Yamaha, but different brands will work together!) after linking them with a MIDI cable, that’s how flexible MIDI is! MIDI music files contain only “data” (no audio) that basically tells the MIDI instrument(s) what notes to play.
Onestop was also in Windows ME
Those were sound schemes used in Windows 7. Microsoft just haven’t got their lazy selves around to removing them out of Windows 8 and Windows 10 after they removed the sounds contained in the folders.
It isn’t. That’s Windows 3.1.
These were first on Windows ME. Prior to that, Windows had various MIDI’s of Classical music such as Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and In the Hall of the Mountain King. Then there were also Canyon and Passport way back from Windows 3.1x
These 3 MIDI files in particular are from Windows ME. Windows 3.1 had CANYON.MID and PASSPORT.MID. Those were included up to Windows 2000. Then there were some classical music MIDI’s from Windows 95 to 2000 as well.
These have been in the C:WINDOWSmedia in almost every OS I’ve had.
Though, they at least date back to the Windows NT days. They’ve been in XP, 2000, ME, 7, 8, 10, 95, 98, etc. Flourish is my favorite though. They were probably tests.
The video doesn’t work.