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MIDI turns 30!!


Ashville.Guru

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MIDI turns 30! MMA is kicking off a year-long celebration.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/01/midi-30.jpg

 

Would be a nice occasion to reflect on the way this beautiful piece of technology has enriched our musical lives.

 

- Guru

This is really what MIDI was originally about encouraging cooperation between companies that make the world a more creative place." - Dave Smith
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Sold my Prophet-600 earlier this year, the Commodore sits in the garage, and the Drumtrax is up for sale. I believe it was the first complete midi system. The Sequential stuff is still usable in the right context. Somewhere out there is someone with the same setup, a DX-7, and LinnDrum and simply doesn't understand all the fuss over the last 30 years :)

 

 

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Started out sequencing on a DOS PC. I remember when Windows updated from 3.0 to 3.1 and suddenly we could sequence in Windows with ease. By "with ease" I mean use a mouse and create macros to insert groups of repeating notes. We had a Roland MIDI card in the PC and was pushing a Yamaha drum machine and a TX7. The band consisted of a singer, guitarist and two keyboardists. No drummer or bassist. That is the parts that I sequenced along with some synth lines in dance songs.

 

I remember discovering a "feature" of the MIDI software while using the TX7 to sequence bass parts. If you put too many notes in a measure, i.e., a 4/4 measure with and extra 16th note it would cause a glitch that would make a note pop. I learned how to control that glitch and sometimes used it to create pops and slaps in the bass line.

This post edited for speling.

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It's a little uncomfortable for me to think that it has been 30 years... I still have my original dog-eared 8.5" X 11" MIDI spec from my membership in the International MIDI Association (IMA). I think there were about a dozen corporate members at that time.

I was in engineering school then and made a MIDI record/playback sequencer based on a Syntertek SYM-1 6502 microcontroller board as a term project. Hitched it up to my brand new Roland JX3P for the demo IIRC.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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Remember this ?

 

mini-SC%2064%20Seq%201.JPG

 

This was the 1st MIDI sequencer I had.

I still have it so that´s my original pic here,- kept it as a collectors item.

 

Inserted in a Commodore SX64 portable computer w/ SCI Prophet 5 and EMU Drumulator connected, that was a killer rig for synth studio work early 80s.

Minimoog D w/ Roland MPU-101, OBie-8, DX7, Fender Rhodes 73 mk I, Clavinet D6 included in that rig.

 

I also had one of the 1st ever made sysex applications for Commodore 64 and Prophet 5, coded by (now Dr.) Gerhardt Lengeling (mastermind of Logic) when he was a student and lived in my hometown.

 

When I buyed the Yamaha TX816 & QX-1 sequencer, I pulled my hair reading the manuals under pressure being busy to get my rig prepared for a concert tour.

It cost me days and nights without sleep.

The Commodore and Lengelings sysex app were still w/ me on that tour.

That was 1985.

 

A.C

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New (at the time) Prophet 600 back in the 80's. Didn't learn much about MIDI then - I didn't have anything else to connect to it.

Howard Grand|Hamm SK1-73|Kurz PC2|PC2X|PC3|PC3X|PC361; QSC K10's

HP DAW|Epi Les Paul & LP 5-str bass|iPad mini2

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Jim

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Remember this ?

 

mini-SC%2064%20Seq%201.JPG

 

This was the 1st MIDI sequencer I had.

 

A.C

 

Then I hooked a Matrix-12 to it and hit the wheels and applied the pressure and the Commodore freaked and froze. Simple bass and drum tracks it was good for. Add some velocity and mod and it got dicey real quick. Pressure? Fuhget it.

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I was using Cakewalk with DOS, a DX7 and a Kurzweil 1000PX rack.

 

I was working with a drummer/friend who brought over his drum machine. However, he programmed all the drum tracks - and sounded really good, considering the limitations of the hardware.

 

I do remember thinking that if timing quanization equals "perfect timing", then we should quantize EVERYTHING!. Big mistake. But we learned from that, and we recorded onto a (believe it or not) Sony Hi-Fi Beta video recorder - because that was the best-sounding two-track recorder I owned. (It didn't use volume leveling, so it was kinda OK.)

 

We did have to assemble all the MIDI instruments in the room and do the mixing on the fly for the 2-track machine.

 

My takeaway was that making music and being creative is one aspect of this that works well on its own. However, when you have to stop doing that in order to fix a technical problem (and there were LOTS), it destroys the vibe. It's very hard getting back into the zone to be creative again.

 

Finally, at the end of the project, we were calling ourselves "Stan & Ollie". And our favorite question when we had technical problems was, "Well Ollie... izzit plugged in?"

 

This is the same guy who would call me on the phone and the first thing out of his mouth was (singing)... "Is There Gas in the Caaaaaaar?" :laugh:

 

Good times.

 

Of course, I don't remember many more details, seeing that it was 30 years ago and I was only 9. :rolleyes:

 

ITGITC? :cool:

 

http://rogercatlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/laurelhardy.jpg

 

 

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent." - Victor Hugo
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MIDI was great. My first use was to drive a 360 Systems Midi bass module into a bass guitar amp so we did not have to pay someone to play bass guitar.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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The keyboard mag (I think it actually costs money to get a subscription sent to region Amsterdam..) videos about the Dave Smith office in San Francisco said somewhere that the original MIDI built in the Prophet T8 (isn't that the one with the two manuals ?) was 10 times faster...

 

DSI instruments and others from the US at the time (when I was still teenager) were expensive, it appears the Dutch and other Europeans find it OK to stimulate their own economy by simply adding more than a few tens of percent of tax money, for which they do nothing. So at the time the cheaper synths with MIDi were the Korgs and maybe some other brand, so I got the Poly 800 a little after it came out, which is a nice machine, though not as huge sounding as most anything else. I designed my own TRS-80 MIDI interface for it, and programmed a note-entry steo sequencer as well. Bach is wonderfully mathematical.

 

I hated MIDI because it was too slow, and I mainly wanted to be able to play, and if possible record: so I had an Atari ST with pro24 (the very very first Steinberg, officially bought), but I didn't like the lack of polyphony and the problem with (lack of) multi-timbrality of the sequencer+synths_modules for recording, even though the pro24 worked good (the Atari of course being fast enough for serious work). Of course the "live" mix from the MIDI-ed stuff is preferable over a multi-track recording, but for most things I wanted, MIDI was too slow or too unpredictable.

 

I had a asmall business as a student to write Atari Midi programs for sysex purposes, that was fun.

 

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Remember the Atari ST with MIDI built-in??

 

Why remember ?

I still have 4 ATARIs and C-Lab/Emagic/Steini & Digidesign programs, C-Lab/Emagic & Soundtools hardware in my home studio.

Never sold the stuff. :D

 

ATARI came after the Commodore for me as soon as C-Lab Notator was stable and tight.

Had Cubase 3.1 too and still have 2 red MIDEXes.

 

A.C.

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Then I hooked a Matrix-12 to it and hit the wheels and applied the pressure and the Commodore freaked and froze. Simple bass and drum tracks it was good for. Add some velocity and mod and it got dicey real quick. Pressure? Fuhget it.

 

LOL, but that was just only the beginning.

When I got a Steinberg MIDI interface for the Commodore, that was better already.

When C-Lab Supertrack came for the Commodore, we already did pro multitrack work w/ it, combined w/ a 24-track 2" reel-to-reel.

 

When ATARI appeared and applications became really usable, Commodore was history.

 

A.C.

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MIDI is still cool today. People who complain it is too slow are doing something wrong.

 

I remember when MIDI was introduced and I held off until 1987, some real duds introduced during those early years. I bought an used Elka DMP-18 bass pedal MIDI controller a few years ago that was made during those early years, that thing was a dog. And remember Roland's misinterpretation of "All Notes Off"?!?

 

My college senior project in 1988 was an 8086-based MIDI controller using a pratt-read keyboard and a couple of Moog wheels.

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It would be great if the major manufacturers would get together again and update the MIDI spec. My only major complaint at this time is the 5 pin DIN cable- I would love some kind of USB cable or whatever that would reduce the amount of cabling to something like one cable between all devices- should be fast enough in this day and age? Or how about completely wireless?
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USB over MIDI might soon be what most systems use. MIDI could carry over any kind of low-level protocol and wiring system, Ethernet et rest. I suspect some manufacturers don't include USB as a cost saving and using plain MIDI ports instead... Hope that will change. That way the MIDI latencies will be reasonable, too.

 

My biggest gripe is the lack of bits for more expressive control, there are all kinds of higher resolution ad hoc solutions but no decent standard.

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Midi "note on" at 31.25kb/s takes about a milli sec. Playing bass note, 5 note chord, bass drum, tom and hihat takes long enough to be annoying. Of course you could *interpret* certain midi messages in certain ways, but that delay will remain. And I like to play many more notes, and back in the 80s had more than enough polyphony do so.
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MIDI still just plain works, which is amazing. I still use it to play an E-mu module that appeared before USB and in an odd sort of hail Mary play, I used Redmatica's Autosampler, which requires MIDI, to save the high points of my older Korg. It worked when I hooked a Prophet-600 to a Mirage years ago and it worked 4 months ago when I preserved years of programming work that now reside in my Logic library. I think a 5-pin MIDI jack makes a classy tattoo, for all of the obvious reasons.

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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My only major complaint at this time is the 5 pin DIN cable- I would love some kind of USB cable or whatever that would reduce the amount of cabling to something like one cable between all devices- should be fast enough in this day and age?

 

Still exists and works extremely good w/ MUCH less latency and jitter.

MIDI over LAN using Cat5e cable and network switch.

2 softwares: RTP MIDI or Copperlan

Hardware interface boxes: KISS Box or Alyseum

 

Alyseum ALeX is what you need to build into your keyboards (and modules).

ALeX

 

Needs 3 holes, 2 for the screws and the one for the connector-jack itself.

 

Or how about completely wireless?

 

Not good. Latency is up to 300ms for wireless LAN.

 

Latency of MIDI over LAN is extremly low,- 20-40 nano seconds for a 30 bucks Netgear switch w/ 8x 10/100 ports and gigabit port for computer/laptop connectivity.

It´s nearly jitter free and not to achieve w/ USB.

 

A.C.

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Midi "note on" at 31.25kb/s takes about a milli sec. Playing bass note, 5 note chord, bass drum, tom and hihat takes long enough to be annoying. Of course you could *interpret* certain midi messages in certain ways, but that delay will remain. And I like to play many more notes, and back in the 80s had more than enough polyphony do so.

 

That's with the standard plain wiring. Using USB or even better, Gigabit Ethernet and the latencies are gone. Or USB 3.0/Thunderbolt et rest. Not that I think Ethernet would be the best as the cabling is cheap and you could put routers between if needed.

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Using USB or even better, Gigabit Ethernet and the latencies are gone.

 

As good as USB works in hardware keyboards (like KURZ PC3 p.ex.),- when connected to a computer via USB, only MIDI-In to computer is good, MIDI-Out from computer is not good.

USB MIDI-Out running from computer to external hardware is never latency or jitter free.

The difference to MIDI over (Gigabit) LAN is significant.

LAN is a high priority task in every computer out there, PC and MAC.

You will have a computer in the rig somewhere, not urgently live, but in every studio and it should work perfect for both tasks.

So,- MIDI over LAN is better than USB.

 

Or USB 3.0/Thunderbolt et rest.

 

USB 3 or Thunderbold wouldn´t improve MIDI, you simply don´t need the bandwidth.

You´re able to create 4 MIDI ports (64 MIDI channels) w/ USB2.

 

For MIDI over LAN, 10/100 is more than enough for the single devices, but it´s good to use a/the Gigabit connection at the computer for the network switch, this offering several 10/100 connectors for the "star type" network.

 

I doubt (many) keyboard manuafacturers will jump on that train, maybe some boutique companies, we´ll see.

 

Not that I think Ethernet would be the best as the cabling is cheap and you could put routers between if needed.

 

For MIDI over LAN you don´t need a router, just only a switch.

You´re free to connect that switch to a router though, for different network purposes p.ex..

In a studio, where several computers are connected to the switch/Router combo,- for office AND audio/MIDI work,- Copperlan seems to be better than RTP MIDI because Copperlan isn´t IP based,- RTP MIDI is.

Non IP based MIDI system prevents from catching viruses from the web and office tasks (IP) works flawlessly while not affecting you MIDI system.

 

Network cable is lockable, USB isn´t (never seen one though).

 

There´s pro cabeling and connectors for digital domain made by Neutrik, not cheap, but much more reliable than stock consumer stuff.

 

A.C.

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First sequncer was Bars & Pipes on the Amiga 500 with my DX7 and my TG33 (in 1992). Thanks to MIDI I could do so much music with that setup! The things I learnt are still the basis of everything I do today. Nice one MIDI!
Roland Fantom G6, D-70, JP-8000, Juno-106, JV-1080, Moog Minitaur, Korg Volca Keys, Yamaha DX-7. TG33, Logic Pro, NI plugs, Arturia plugs etc etc
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  • 5 months later...

Non IP based MIDI system prevents from catching viruses from the web and office tasks (IP) works flawlessly while not affecting you MIDI system.

Sorry, but this is completely false : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTP_MIDI

The problem does not come from using IP or not. It comes from security holes in the operating system being used.

 

Yep, but because these security problems in operating systems will exist forever and in unforeseeable manner, using a non IP based MIDI over LAN system on computers in a network w/ other machines connected to the web IS a protection against virusses and malware for the machines in the network you use for audio/MIDI.

 

A.C.

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Gee is it that long already :) I can still recall the total joy at utilising my JX3P (the first "serious" Roland synth to be fully MIDI equipped) with my Atari STe. It was a killer combo with the dyno'd Rhodes 73 flat-top.

 

I some ways it was all so much easier then with no REAL computers doing anything even remotely audio...

 

It all gets a bit overwhelming these days, well at least for me :)

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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Non IP based MIDI system prevents from catching viruses from the web and office tasks (IP) works flawlessly while not affecting you MIDI system.

Sorry, but this is completely false : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTP_MIDI

The problem does not come from using IP or not. It comes from security holes in the operating system being used.

 

Yep, but because these security problems in operating systems will exist forever and in unforeseeable manner, using a non IP based MIDI over LAN system on computers in a network w/ other machines connected to the web IS a protection against virusses and malware for the machines in the network you use for audio/MIDI.

A.C.

 

You make a mismatch between the protocol and the physical connection being shared internally in your computer.

 

A security problem in an OS will be here for every use of your network card, whatever the protocol you use, IP based or not. A non-IP protocol will never protect your computer against a viral attack, simply because the OS activates automatically software support for this card, to make it visible by your computer software.

 

And that's easy to see : just install a new network card in your computer, and let's decide that this card will be used only for non-IP MIDI communication. And now, check what will happen in your OS : your network card is now visible for all applications, and it can be used for Internet access, even if you do not want it. If you connect this card to network used for Internet access, your computer is exposed. And installing any non-IP driver will not change this.

 

So, whatever the solution you use (IP based or not), the only solution to prevent any risk with a network card is to use a separate physical network between the MIDI related communication and the web access network.

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