In this site you'll find MIDI versions of quality greek songs, mostly rembetika and classic oldies. Also, I'll be offering other kinds of music, as my time, resources and interest permit over time. Keep checking back often, as I'll be adding new songs regularly. And, by all means, feel free to send me e-mail about the material in the site. I'll be happy to chat and exchange views on anything relating to quality greek music. Any comments, suggestions, or criticism on the songs included are particularly welcome.

Happy listening.

George Logothetis - george@greekmidi.com

• Where do the songs listed here come from?
• How are the songs put together?
• Why am I doing this?
• MP3 versions of the songs.

Where do the songs listed in this site come from?

I myself have built the MIDI files for each and every song listed in this site. Nothing here is copied from somewhere else, whether from Internet or other sources. This is not because I believe that I can do MIDI orchestration better than others. Far from it. Simply, it is a sure way, albeit laborious, to avoid disputes over ownership, terms of fair use, freedom to modify, etc.

Of course, these MIDI files don't come out of my labor and thin air alone. I am not a professional musician, I have no formal music education, and I couldn't possibly orchestrate all these songs from memory (much as I would like to). I rely on printed music for the songs. I've bought and own many such books, and they are my primary source for the MIDI orchestrations of the songs in this site.

I have taken some liberties with the melodies here and there, to better match my recollection of performances I like. Occasionally, I also add a voice or two to enrich the texture (to my ears, anyway) whenever I feel bold and adventurous. On the other hand, I stay very faithful to the chords and bass line in the printed music for the simple reason that I have yet to develop any comfort with harmony.

Although I haven't done it yet, I would like to display in the site the music books I've been using as sources for the songs, together with their tables of contents, and link each song to the corresponding book. It is high in my stack of priorities, but the thought of the effort required keeps deflating my desire to start work on that. Who knows, perhaps soon.

How are the songs put together?

People proficient at playing the keyboard can build wonderful MIDI versions of songs by recording their playing. I am not one of them. I am an amateur player of bouzouki and baglama, but that doesn't help with MIDI.

Instead, I've been using so-called "music notation" software to construct the MIDI files for the songs. There are many of these around, ranging in level and capabilities from the rather simple to the quite sophisticated. Basically, these programs act as a kind of "word processors" for music notation, enabling someone to describe a song via the traditional music notation, producing a document that looks, and can be printed, like a traditional music sheet. The kicker, though, is that these programs also produce a MIDI file for that song that can be used to play it, and sound the way it's supposed to.

The software I've been using is called Noteworhty Composer and is a shareware program for the PC, running on Windows.. When I bought it, in late 1998, it cost $40. It came highly recommended then, and my own experience with it has been very positive. If anyone is interested to find more about it, you can visit the company's Web site.

Why am I doing this?

Using the program mentioned above, I had been building MIDI versions of greek oldies for my own fun for well over a year. At some point, I thought it wouldn't hurt to put them on the Internet for others to enjoy also. This is my only motive for the site, and I derive absolutely no financial benefit from this. As you can see, there are no commercial adds anywhere in the site, and I don't intend to put any. So enjoy the songs here, and feel free to drop me a line via email. Knowing that there are others out there with similar interests will help me keep going.

MP3 versions of the songs

The quality of playing back songs in MIDI format depends heavily on the quality of the soundcard and the speakers in one's computer. When I orchestrate the songs, I try very hard to make them sound as good as possible in my home system, a 500MHz Pentium 3 PC with a SoundBlaster Live! sound card and a pair of of self-amplified Cabridge Soundworks sitelite speakers with a subwoofer. Hearing them played back at several other computers, the results vary tremendously. In many cases, they sound bad. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about that, as I have no control over the playback environment.

To give you an idea how the songs in this site sound to me, with the sound card and the digital samples in my home system, I am putting MP3 versions of the 30 most recent songs in a separate page. These are all converted from MIDI to MP3 in my system, and will sound to you very close to how they sound to me, independent of your sound card. They will be affected, however, by the quality of your speakers. In particular, the more bass you have, the better they'll sound (especially if you have a subwoofer).

I would have liked to keep MP3 versions for all songs in the site. Unfortunately, space restrictions by my Web host don't allow me to keep more of them around at once.

Try the MP3 songs, then, and let me know what you think.