Was May Is MIDI Month 2020 really only a year ago?
It seems that everyone has had a bit of trouble keeping time this year. Not musically as that is the one place where time remains constant.
But in talking to people , they often say that one moment last May seems like it was last week and the next it seems like it was 10 years ago.
In the late spring of 2020, the world was in the beginning of the global pandemic and there was a huge amount of uncertainty about what the future would hold. The MIDI Association decided that instead of raising money for ourselves for May Is MIDI Month 2020, we would raise money for people affected by the global pandemic.
Our first plan was to give the money to the Grammy Foundation’s Musicares Coronavirus Relief Fund. Joe LaMond, president of NAMM urged us to find something we could be more directly involved in.
We were on a call with LA studio legend and Grammy award winner Michael Boddicker discussing our Orchestral Articulation profile.
He mentioned his long-time affiliation with the Children’s Music Fund (CMF), and that’s when we knew we had found the perfect partner.
UCLA professor of allergy and pediatric pain specialist Raffi Tachdjian MD, MPH founded the organization in 2002, after he was inspired by a patient during his pediatric residency at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital.
Here is a picture of Raffi with the young patient who inspired him to form Children’s Music Fund. That patient sadly passed away, but lives on in the work that Raffi continues to this day.
In the past decade, CMF has become a leading organization to deliver research on the positive effects of music therapy in sick children and young adults.
The MIDI Association and Children’s Music Fund
CMF maintains a network of carefully screened, board-certified music therapists (MT-BC), and follows the practices and standards established by the American Music Therapy Association.
Due to the pandemic, CMF music therapists were unable to do in person sessions and had to switch to remote telehealth sessions. The MIDI Association donated the $18,000 we raised from our May Is MIDI Month 2020 donation drive to help support CMF’s move to telehealth.
After a few meetings with the CMF board, The MIDI Association realized that we should not just be donating money to CMF, but working closely with them on an exciting new area, using MIDI for remote music therapy.
Many MIDI controllers bring a level of accessibility and ease of use that is impossible with traditional instruments and Web MIDI has the capability to add smartphones and tablets to that mix.
This is a vast as yet untapped area in music therapy and we know we have the right partners to significantly improve the lives of many sick children for years to come.
Watch Lisa Harriton from Smashing Pumpkins, Serj Tankian from System of a Down, Scott Shriner from Weezer, and actress/singer/songwriter Minnie Driver explain the important mission of Children’s Music Fund.
You Give a Dollar. We’ll Give $10. Let’s Give 24 in 21.
It’s just that simple. If we can raise $2000 in donations from individual MIDI Association members, our MIDI Association corporate sponsors will match it with $22,000.
Where else can you spend $1 and get $11?
The MIDI Association is committed to raising $24,000 to help sick kids through the healing power of music and MIDI with caring sponsorships of Art+Logic, Audio Modeling, Bome, imitone, IK Multimedia, Korg, NAMM, Steinberg, Steinway, Sweetwater, and Yamaha.
