MIDI, those cheesy sounds from the 90s? Wrong! Symbolic music vs Python

“MIDI, those cheesy sounds from the 90s?" is an actual question some guy asked me at an AI conference one day. What an inspiring question! This talk flips the outdated view of MIDI as retro noise, showcasing it as a powerful format for representing and analyzing music. While some think it’s obsolete, MIDI remains the backbone of modern music production and a very active research topic in machine learning. This talk unpacks MIDI’s structure and demonstrates how Python libraries like mido, pretty_midi, and MidiTok turn it into a tool for research and creativity. From visualization to music generation, practical examples reveal the modern applications of symbolic music. The takeaway? Python makes it easier than ever to explore MIDI’s potential and apply it to a wide range of musical and analytical tasks.