hey accordion. here's the story. first of all, yes, midi files are those little 20k things, although they could get much bigger depending on how much data there is and the length of the song. you can play most midi's on your arranger. if you have a recent yamaha, then you have the XG voices and a lot of midis take advantage of those instead of using the plainer and more limited GM ones. you can turn off any channel you like in a midi and you can mess with it and even substitute your own style instead of the one they use, if your keyboard supports that feature. the problem with playing live with midis is that first of all if it's a situation where you need constant music then you can't wait the 2 seconds it takes for the board to load the next one. also if you do it that way, it's very hard to choose to make the song longer or shorter. hope this helps. Zack