I've recently attended a course about music recording/producing/mastering basics at a small studio, but it didn't really cover the subject of midi music, so I'd like to ask anyone's help who has any experience with making midi music at home or anything. could you please tell me some good sites where I could find some information? I'm interested in info about basics, software, hardware, anything. Thanks.

there's prolly a wiki article on it.

Think of midi as a controller. You essentially are mapping sounds to play whenever and in whatever pitch you want. Obviously this is oversimplified but that is the basic idea. I would think that all recording software is completely midi compatable with piano wheels and soundbanks. When you get in to triggering other devices, that's where I get lost. Also, I believe midi mapping is different on every program anyways so you may be better off looking at program specific instructions.

i do tons of stuff with midi. it's really just a set of messages that allows computers to talk to instruments and controllers. at the most basic level, midi translates notes played to messages specifying note on/off, pitch, and velocity. then there are controller messages for things like sustain pedals, sliders, and pitch wheels. and there are system messages that are unique to the particular instrument or controller you're using.

keyboardmag, mixonline, and emusician are decent sites to check out. pretty much all music software supports midi - protools, logic, cubase, samplitude, live, reason, etc. they all differ a bit in how powerful or intuitive they are, but the basic features are all the same.

another good resource would be a software manual. you could read through live's manual at ableton's site, for example, and that would get you started on figuring out how it works.