The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On • Hacker News Board

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#41

Post by jtheory » Tue, Jan 22, 2013, 11:26 PM UTC

ajlburke wrote: post #11

I had heard about how cool MIDI was, but wasn't blown away until I saw a demo of MAX back in 1992. MAX let you generate and re-wire MIDI signals in real time with a simple but powerful graphical interface (it's still around and now does real-time DSP audio and video processing too). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software) Later that year I got my hands on a synthesizer and a copy of MAX and it became the first 'r…

I remember MAX! The music theory drills that eventually ended up as Java applets on eMusicTheory.com started (a few of them, anyway) as MAX applications, in '95/'96. I helped a music professor develop some of those, then (because we wanted students to be able to practice outside of the music lab, and because I was learning Java in compsci classes) I started rewriting them as applets.

The applet versions even support MIDI input (just plug in your keyboard and you can use it to give answers to the online drills!), but the sequence of Java security disasters will probably spell the death of that feature -- when I drop applets, AFAIK there's no other in-browser way to catch MIDI input; it's frustrating as hell.

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#42

Post by guylhem » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 12:54 AM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #10

My parents bought me a Yamaha PSR-230 on a whim for Christmas when I was probably 14 or 15 in the mid-90's. I had been playing drums for several years and they must have figured I needed to branch out! They had no idea what MIDI was and I was only familiar with it for the cheesy music files you could download off of AOL at the time. I looked into MIDI more and realized you could hook the keyboard up to your computer…

I still remember the day when I started playing these cheesy midi files with "timidity" and a directory full of .pat patches files from a GUS IIRC.

Wow! It sounded great! (a Gravis Ultrasound or even a Soundblaster Wave32 were over my budget)

At that time I was enjoying mods and s3m, and usually found them better sounding, but timidity + high quality patches changed all that.

(I still listed to some midi, mods and s3m converted into .wav and burned then ripped in mp3. good old memories)

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#43

Post by ramses » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 1:27 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #30

largesse wrote: post #16

It was an okay article at the beginning, but I really didn't expect it to start claiming that MIDI alienated women and turned music into a male hegemony.

Anyone who seriously believes that has never heard Imogen Heap.

Not only is she a wizard with current technologies, she is also working on new ways to create music.

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#44

Post by danbmil99 » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 2:23 AM UTC

I did this: http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/phantom

It did all the SMPTE reading & writing in software. Good times.

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#45

Post by teeja » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 3:41 AM UTC

This is one of the most anti-MIDI articles I've read since MIDI was first released. It's pretty much a rag-tag collection of all the cheap shots and whining that have become oh, so familiar in that time.

MIDI has survived for 30 years in an intense, worldwide marketplace without any serious competition. Name any other communication protocols in widespread use that can say that, and you've named another massive success. Most of MIDI's supposed shortcomings (to the extent that they're not operator-related) can be dealt with by extending the default hardware and doing a little programming.

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#46

Post by teeja » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 3:44 AM UTC

th0ma5 wrote: post #5

MIDI in my mind is unfortunately incomplete, or rather, makes a lot of assumptions that are great for contemporary western music, but buckle under the strain of other ideas. I've seen some really great early music (1200s?) MIDIs put together by doctorates, and to simulate the early instruments, each note is hand tuned (or perhaps re-tuned using software, I'm not sure). Those instruments were not diatonic. Additionall…

how could you express a solid sweep from C1 to C8? ... it isn't something MIDI can handle.

The 14-bit pitchbend command can handle portamento of any range since day one. Assuming you can find a synth that isn't aliasing by the time you get to C8 (good luck), it works just fine.

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#47

Post by jamesbritt » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 3:49 AM UTC

tibbon wrote: post #39

jamesbritt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to not see OSC being included in even the upcoming version of Ableton Live. This is one reason I prefer Renoise (though it's a somewhat apples to oranges match-up). It has built-in OSC support, and adding custom OSC message handlers via Lua scripting is relatively trivial.

Is Live removing OSC? That's really unfortunate. I use it with my Monome right now for Live stuff.

Removing? To my knowledge it was never there. Are you sure Monome is not sending MIDI, or going through some intermediary app (MAX for Live or something similar) or an add-on?

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#48

Post by th0ma5 » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 4:24 AM UTC

ominous_prime wrote: post #36

afandian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't quite remember and can't be bothered to look in the spec, but MIDI has multi-byte integer values for use in some cases, and control messages such as pitch bend use this. Could be as little as 2 bytes, but more than 1.

Ah, it's coming back to me now. Haven't really worked with midi in 15 years or so. Correct, pitch wheel is a 14bit message, going from 0x0000-0x3FFF. Though I do remember that stretching that out a few octaves still produces noticeable stepping. Also, forgot that midi has a portamento time controller, where you could program the time to slide between two notes, and leave it up the the tone generator to bend the note…

Yes this is coming back to me now too what my problems were. The aliasing comes in fairly audible no matter what you do, and relying on the synth then prevents you from having any timing control at all, or over the interpolation. I can't remember what exactly I was trying to do, but whatever it was I'm sure I solved it with Chuck probably, hehe.

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#49

Post by aaronblohowiak » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 4:42 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #23

I think MIDI represents a good example of what you can do if you compromise sensibly. I argued with folks over the 31.25K baud vs 38.4K (9600 x 4). I also remember the assertion that it was going to "ruin" music because any 10 yr old could program a computer to play tempo perfect renditions of complex compositions, and yet to this day the accuracy of MIDI was always off putting. One of my personal milestones was havi…

My biggest complaint is 24ppqn :( Otherwise, I love it.

Re: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On

#50

Post by totoe » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 5:47 AM UTC

I love my serial midi cabel since the early 90s. Cant imagine the BIG players sitting on a table discussing a standard for music communication. It feels wrong that technology Manufacturers todays not able to give us a simple way for e.g. charging battery for all mobils with ONE Cable. Happy birthday MIDI.