"Natural" sound ?

Someone in a music newsgroup was asking on the Internet : "can I have MIDI files that sound like they are played by a human, not by a computer ?"

A good question. What makes a music sound synthetic or natural ? It is essentially irregularities in tempo and dynamics. A music with constant, imperturbable speed where all notes have exactly the same length and loudness sounds utterly mechanical. Of course, the difference is more audible, I would even say spectacular, with Chopin or Schumann than with Bach or Vivaldi, but even those should not be played like a clockwork.

I have thus selected in my collection of classical MIDI files a few that sound natural. Some of them have been recorded "live", the sequencer playing the piece on the keyboard without a fixed measure. You see the details only when you open the MIDI file. But you don't need to open them, really. Just enjoy...

The creator of the MIDI file (or "sequencer") is shown in grey italics.