BaWaMI

BaWaMI is an effective piece of software that was developed to function as a MIDI synthesizer, enabling you to play such songs on your computer, as well as prepare them for live rendering.

Appearance-wise, the application is made up of a medium-sized, non-adjustable window in bright colors, most of its functions and features being hidden in context menus.

Consequently, BaWaMI may seem slightly counter-intuitive at first, particularly to inexperienced individuals, but after playing around with it, it will start to make a whole lot more sense than initially perceived.

MID files can be loaded in the program using the ‘Open’ button in the left lower corner, then browsing through your folders, for the targeted file. Optionally, you can play it on a ‘Loop’ by checking the corresponding box.

The utility supports sixteen different channels, allowing you to customize them individually, from the dedicated menus. As such, you can simply click on a channel’s number and enable or disable the ‘Lock Instrument’ feature or activate its ‘Percussion Mode’.

Moreover, you can change the instrument for each channel, with several options to pick from, for instance: ‘Piano’, ‘Organ’, ‘Guitar’, ‘Bass’, ‘Strings’, ‘Brass’, ‘Pipe’, ‘Ethnic’, each category offering multiple choices, in its turn. You can even insert sound effects, such as ‘Seashore’, ‘Breath Noise’, ‘Applause’, ’Gunshot’ and others.

'Channel Volume’, ‘Expression Controller’, ‘Pan’, ‘Modulation’ and ‘Pitch-Bend’ values can be manually adjusted, with your mouse, from the main window. An added benefit is the fact that you can convert your MID files to WAV or OGG, without resorting to other software.

Though slightly confusing at first, overall, BaWaMI proves to be a useful tool that you can resort to for manually customize the rendering of MIDI files on your PC or for live performances, with little to no effort entailed.