When you open the C:\Windows\Media folder, you will notice that it includes Windows sounds & sound schemes. Among them, you will find 3 MIDI sequence sound files: onestop.mid, flourish.mid & town.mid.

I happened to be browsing this Media folder when I decided to click on the 39 KB onestop file, out of curiosity. I loved what I heard!

This led me to search for it on the net. And this is all that I found, scattered in different places.

Onestop.mid, Flourish.mid, Town.mid Music Files

There are 3 such .mid files, with rather enthralling music!

C:\Windows\Media\flourish.mid

C:\Windows\Media\onestop.mid

C:\Windows\Media\town.mid

MIDI stands for “Musical Instrument Digital Interface”, a compression format for encoding music.

These MIDI sequence music files have existed in Windows Vista & XP, and maybe earlier versions too.

Flourish and Town were made by Nathan Grigg & Onestop by David Yackley, for Microsoft in 2000.

Flourish, it seems, is used, when you run a DirectX diagnostic test for DirectMusic.

I have no idea what the others are used for. Were they once used to showcase Media Players’ capabilities?

Why they exist, is still unanswered, it appears…

You can always get the 3 files from your Media folder, or alternatively, click here to download, if you’d like to hear them.

Incidentally, here is a nice video, the search threw up.

If anyone has any ideas about these 3 files or why they are there in the first place, please do share in the comments below.

I’d love to know more about them!