You buy a MIDI pack, drag a file onto your favourite synth, hit play — and your synth jumps to an empty patch, or your channel fader yanks itself to a level you didn't set. That file was carrying baggage from whoever made it. A professional MIDI file carries the music and nothing else. Here's exactly what should be in one, what should be ripped out, and why it matters whether you're buying MIDI or selling it.
A MIDI file holds two very different things
Inside any .mid there are notes (pitch, timing, length and
velocity) and there's control data (everything else — volume, pan, preset
changes, modulation, system messages). The notes are the musical idea. The control data is
a recording of how it sounded on one specific instrument on one specific day.
When you hand that file to a different instrument, the notes translate perfectly — and the
control data, at best, does nothing, and at worst breaks your workflow.
What to strip (and the workflow each one breaks)
- SysEx (System Exclusive) — manufacturer-specific blobs tied to one piece of hardware. Useless or error-prone anywhere else. Delete entirely.
- Program Change & Bank Select (CC 0 / CC 32) — these force the receiving synth or sampler to switch presets, often to a blank slot. You wanted to pick the sound; the file overrides you.
- Volume (CC 7) & Expression (CC 11) — embedded levels fight your DAW faders and re-write your mix on every play.
- Pan (CC 10) — stereo placement is your decision, not the file's.
- Resets / All-Notes-Off (CC 120 / 121 / 123) — these can cut off reverb tails and long releases early in some DAWs.
What to keep
- Velocity — this is the dynamics and the human feel, and it's portable to every instrument. Keep it untouched.
- Note length — how long each note is held. This is also how sustain should be expressed: a held pad or piano chord is just a long note, which is far more reliable than a baked sustain-pedal (CC 64) message that can leave notes ringing or stuck on a synth that doesn't release cleanly.
- Pitch-bend / mod-wheel — only when the gesture is the music. A guitar bend or an expressive lead glide can be integral. But on electronic parts these are usually patch-specific modulation, and most slides (acid lines especially) are already carried by note overlap/legato — so they survive in the notes without the bend data.
Why note-only wins for construction kits
When you buy a chord pack, a bassline or a melody, you're buying the idea — the voicing, the groove, the voice-leading — to route through your sounds and finish with your automation. Strip the file to notes + velocity and it drops cleanly onto any VST or hardware synth, in any DAW, every time. That's why the serious libraries ship note-only, and why it's the form that's actually worth more to a working producer.
The one exception
Performance MIDI built for a specific sample library — a scripted "realistic" sax or guitar tuned for one Kontakt instrument with CC 1/CC 11/keyswitches — is a different product. It's powerful, but deliberately less portable, locked to the library it was made for. For genre construction kits you route to any synth, note-only is the right call.
How we ship ours
Every Sonic Attraction MIDI pack is exported note-only: notes, lengths and velocity preserved; all CC automation, program changes, pan and SysEx stripped. Files are labeled with key and BPM, split into clean per-part stems plus a full arrangement, and they're royalty-free. Drag, drop, route to your sounds — no surprises.