MIDI. cool, i can send midi, but, can i read?

Hi! im a designer, and all my work with arduino is a constant fight. What im now onto, is a modular midi controller. what i want to get is to write midi signals, which can be done easily: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Midi
the problem is that i want also to be able to read midi signals... how can this be done?
also, as im thinking on attiny's. those doesnt have serial.write, how can that function be replaced?
i was thinking onto write the serial communication in c, but it scared me out, i mean to be able to read and write bytes at their real speed (cuz digitalRead takes more than one cycle)
who can give me insight onto this? im not experienced programmer, electronic, nor a genious
thanks!

also, as im thinking on attiny's. those doesnt have serial.write, how can that function be replaced?

SoftwareSerial works.

One of the unlabeled pins is the output counterpart of the pin connected to pin 1. You have a 50% chance of getting it right.