I'm  wondering if anyone has had experiance getting a midi file to trigger certain external devices (namely turning on an led) it took a look at the "wiring" project and it seems that throug the use of there circuit board it's possible, but it seems like there must be an easier way to get a midi note to light up an LED. Any help would be great.

As far as I know there's not really any way to avoid using a microcontroller (like Wiring or Arduino) since you'll have to have a device that interprets the MIDI data and controls the LEDs.

I've used Arduino to blink LEDs along with the MIDI clock signal like a metronome.  I used processing to interpret the MIDI data and then send commands to the Arduino board via the serial library.

However, if you want to connect a piece of MIDI hardware *directly* to Arduino or Wiring, I can't really help you (although I know it's possible from what I've read on the forums).  Keep in mind that if you want to do any real fancy or complex programming you'll quickly run out of memory/CPU power on the Arduino.  Just blinking lights should work fine though.

If you do want to use Processing to interpret the MIDI signals, I'd recommend that you play around with the proMIDI library and get comfortable with the basics, then maybe buy an Arduino board to start learning about the electronics.  They're not too expensive and are really great for learning how to do this sort of stuff.