The word ‘MIDI’ often brings to mind a particular type of sound or musical style, but these are just things that were made with the assistance of MIDI. Although the MIDI ‘standard’ encompasses much more, it is fundamentally a method of communication. This is commonly called a ‘communication protocol’. Max was first developed as a way of generating, processing or manipulating data like MIDI, and it is still a core component of the software. Here are some links on how to get started with configuring, sending, and receiving MIDI with Max.