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Tokyo Gakki Expo Logo

Tokyo Gakki Expo 2024

Written by The MIDI Association on . Posted in MIDI 2.0, MIDI 2.0 Resources for Developers, MIDI Association Event List, MIDI News, MIDI Product News.

We said we would be traveling the globe and promoting MIDI 2.0 around the world.

Our friends from the Japan Programmers Association and Association of Musical Electronics Industry (AMEI) recently helped to put on the Tokyo Gakki Expo.

Just set your browser to always translate Japanese, click on the Tokyo Gakki Expo link above and you can surf the site and see all the cool events that were held, but here is a sampling (pun intended!).

MIDI 2.0 Seminar

This is a MIDI 2.0 seminar held by the Association of Musical Electronics Industry (AMEI).
The latest MIDI 2.0 compatible devices will be operated and their functions will be demonstrated.
Some unreleased driver information will also be made public. This is a great opportunity to learn about the future of MIDI.

Cast: Daisuke Miura (Yamaha Corporation), Takayuki Tomizawa (Roland Corporation), Toshihiro Sugawara (Korg Inc.), Takashi Uesugi (JSPA)

JSPA members’ top pick! Highlights of Tokyo Musical Instrument Expo 2024!

We will introduce the booths that JSPA members are personally looking forward to and paying attention to at this year’s Tokyo Musical Instrument Expo! If you check this out, you will definitely be an information expert at this year’s Tokyo Musical Instrument Expo! There will also be an announcement about the concept of this year’s event by the creator of the “unofficial” song for Tokyo Musical Instrument Expo 2024!

Cast:Yusuke Asada, Takashi Morio, Masaaki Enatsu, Miki Nomiyama, Mion Tsuruta

Synthesizer Battle Royale 2024

Following on from last year, the three major synthesizer brands, Korg, Roland, and Yamaha, will be holding the “Synthesizer Battle Royale 2024.” Don’t miss the battle between the cutting-edge synthesizer sounds and specs of the most talented keyboardists representing each company.

Cast: tatsuya (Korg), Keiki Uto (Roland), Yuzo Okusu (Yamaha)

Children’s Synthesizer Workshop

Let’s experience the mechanism and performance of an analog synthesizer using KORG’s monotron DUO! You can also touch modular synthesizers and rhythm machines! Calling all future music producers!

Target audience: 3rd grade elementary school students to 3rd grade junior high school students.
Cast:Masaaki Enatsu

Cute gadget experiment time

Using cute battery-powered gadgets, we will experiment with making sounds and sampling! We will create simple music using sounds recorded in mono with a mini plug. What will the sound produced by the JSPA director’s collaborative experiment be?!

Cast: Miki Nomiyama Mion Tsuruta

Yamaha MONTAGE M Synth 50th Anniversary Special Demo by Katsunori Ujiie

Talk and demonstration by Katsunori Ujiie of the MONTAGE M special sound to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Yamaha synthesizers.
Look forward to famous songs by famous artists and sounds of rare synthesizers.

Cast: Katsunori Ujiie

Avant-garde stage keyboard AstroLab feat. Kurumi Fujioka

A new era for Arturia’s new stage keyboard.
Kurumi Fujioka plays and Nicolas Woolley explains AstroLab.
Witness the many new features of AstroLab!

There were a lot of MIDI Association companies participating in the event (not just Japanese companies) including Ableton, Arturia, Hammond, Korg, Melbourne Instruments, Mellotron, Oberheim, Roland, Sequential, Spectrasonics, Udo and Yamaha.

Ivory 3 American Steinway with MIDI 2.0 support

Synthogy Releases Ivory 3 American Concert D

Written by The MIDI Association on . Posted in MIDI 2.0, MIDI News, MIDI Product News, MIDI Software.

Synthogy has released  Ivory 3 American Concert D, the 2nd virtual piano for its Ivory 3 platform.  Ivory 3 American Concert D features their legendary recordings of a vintage New York Steinway D Concert Grand, now fully realized through the power of the Ivory 3 engine.

This 1951 New York Steinway D (CD 121) was handpicked by Steinway & Sons Concert & Artist department for artist promotion. The instrument has received praise over the years from some of the world’s greatest concert artists, with the signatures of masters like Glenn Gould and Rudolph Serkin gracing its plate. 

Powered by Ivory 3’s RGB engine, the Continuous Velocity feature provides smooth, seamless velocity-to-timbre on every piano strike. This technology, unique to Synthogy, behaves like modeling yet maintains the complex, rich and realistic sound of real-world instruments.  It is the foundation of a new generation of expressive capabilities in Ivory 3.

The Ivory 3 American Concert D instrument also features 4 stereo microphone positions. Multiple close and ambient choices are instantly available for detailed presence and depth of field. The on-board Ivory 3 mixer enables fine levels of control over the sound.  

In addition, the Ivory 3 engine is MIDI 2.0 ready for support of MIDI 2.0 high resolution velocity. 65,536 velocity-to-timbre levels are manifested by the RGB engine, opening the door to new possibilities of musical expression with myriad degrees of tone color.

Ivory 3 American Concert D is available now for Windows and Mac, as a digital download purchase direct from Synthogy’s on-line web store, or from any of its authorized resellers.

Upgrades are available for Ivory II American Concert D owners.

Ivory 3 American Concert D MSRP $249 USD
Ivory 3 American Concert D Upgrade (from Ivory II American Concert D) MSRP $139 USD

For more info visit:

www.synthogy.com

Watch the premier video of Ivory 3 American Concert D with Geoffrey Gee live in studio:

Windows MIDI 2.0 Detailed Architecture picture

Microsoft’s Major Moves To Make Making Music on Windows Easier

Written by The MIDI Association on . Posted in Developers, MIDI 2.0, MIDI 2.0 Resources for Developers, MIDI Association Event List, MIDI News, MIDI Product News, MIDI Software.

Pete Brown is both the MIDI Association Exec Board Chair and a Principal Software Engineer in the Windows Developer Platform team at Microsoft. He focuses on client-side dev on Windows, apps and technology for musicians, music app developers, and music hardware developers, and the Windows developer community. 

For musicians, there are two key enabling technologies for making music – MIDI and Audio.  Microsoft announced updates to both are coming soon to Windows. 

Microsoft announced updates to both MIDI and Audio at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit 2024.

What did we announce today for musicians and other audio professionals?

Musician Software coming to Arm64
Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo in preview this week
Cockos Reaper in preview today
Reason Studios Reason in preview in early 2025

Audio Hardware coming to Arm64
Vendor-specific USB Audio / ASIO driver preview from Focusrite early in 2025
Vendor-specific USB Audio / ASIO driver preview from Steinberg/Yamaha in 2025

In-Box Support coming to Arm64
ASIO and low-latency USB Audio Class 2 driver previews mid 2025, in-box in Windows when complete
MIDI 2.0 (Windows MIDI Services) previews in Windows Insider builds this November, in-box in retail Windows early next year.

From my own use and from working with others in the music industry, I know we need to have support for two major features on Windows for musicians to have a great experience:

Better APIs which support MIDI, including MIDI 2.0, with backwards compatibility with MIDI 1.0 APIs and devices. Our older MIDI stack hasn’t kept up with current needs, and needed replacing so that we can grow and innovate.

Full support for low-latency, high-channel-count audio, using standards already accepted by the industry

Pete Brown-Microsoft

Windows MIDI Services: The New Windows MIDI Stack

Windows MIDI 2.0 Detailed Architecture picture
Windows MIDI Services supports MIDI 1.0 as well as the MIDI 2.0 Universal MIDI Packet (UMP) standard. Together this provides compatibility with existing MIDI devices as well as the new MIDI 2.0 devices already in-market or coming soon (I have several MIDI 2.0 devices here in my studio).

MIDI CI, which bridges the gap between MIDI 1.0 and MIDI 2.0 UMP, is supported through normal SysEx support, and we recommend the use of open source cross-platform libraries which help with creating and parsing those messages. 

Pete Brown-Microsoft

Backwards compatibility with the WinMM MIDI 1.0 API

AMEI to Fund Open SourceMIDI 2.0 Driver for Windows

The Association of Musical Electronics Industries (AMEI), the organization that oversees the MIDI specification in Japan, committed to funding the development of an open-source USB MIDI 2.0 Host Driver for Windows Operating Systems under a memorandum of understanding between AMEI, AmeNote Inc, and Microsoft.

AMEI is underwriting the cost and has engaged AmeNote Inc. to develop the driver because of AmeNote’s extensive experience in MIDI 2.0 and USB development. In addition, concurrent to this, Microsoft has also agreed to start development of a Windows standard open-source MIDI 2.0 API.

The driver and API will be developed in accordance with Microsoft’s quality control standards, and will be managed as a permissively licensed (MIT license) Microsoft open-source project. As a result, anyone can participate in the development as an open-source contributor in the future, or use the code in their own devices or operating systems. Because of this open source arrangement, continuous and timely improvements and enhancements to the USB MIDI 2.0 Host driver and MIDI 2.0 API are expected.

Here is a list of the AMEI companies supporting this work.

l   AlphaTheta Corporation

l   INTERNET Co., Ltd.

l   Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

l   CRYPTON FUTURE MEDIA, INC.

l   CRIMSON TECHNOLOGY, Inc.

l   KORG INC.

l   Educational Corporation Shobi Gakuen

l   SyncPower Corporation

l   ZOOM CORPORATION

l   -SUZUKI MUSICAL INST. MFG. CO.,LTD.

l   TEAC CORPORATION

l   Yamaha Corporation

l   Yamaha Music Entertainment Holdings, Inc.

l   Roland Corporation

l   Analog Devices, K.K.

For the full blog from Pete on the New Windows MIDI Stack, please click on the link below.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/windows-midi-services-oct-2024-update/

Make Great Music with Windows on Arm

We’ve recently kicked off a project with Qualcomm and Yamaha to create a brand new USB Audio Class 2 Driver in Windows, with both WaveRT (our internal audio) and ASIO interfaces, following the latest standards for Windows driver development using the ACX framework.

The new driver will support the devices that our current USB Audio Class 2 driver supports, but will increase support for high-IO-count interfaces with an option for low-latency for musician scenarios.

It will have an ASIO interface so all the existing DAWs on Windows can use it, and it will support the interface being used by Windows and the DAW application at the same time, like a few ASIO drivers do today. And, of course, it will handle power management events on the new CPUs.

This driver will work with USB Audio Class 2 devices, so you can plug in your device, and get right to making music.

Finally, we’ll make the class driver source available to others on GitHub, just like we have with MIDI, so that any company creating their own USB Audio Class 2 drivers will be able to learn from how we handled events and also give us suggestions for how we could do better. It’s a two-way conversation.

Pete Brown-Microsoft

Announcing: Hardware-optimized USB Audio drivers on Arm64

Our new in-box driver needs to work well for all compliant USB Audio Class 2 devices. But some hardware developers are expert driver authors, and for years have known that if they write their own optimized drivers for their USB Audio Interfaces, even on other platforms with built-in drivers and low-latency APIs, they can achieve even better round-trip latency at the same levels of stability. Every millisecond counts!

Pete Brown-Microsoft

Focusrite – Native on Arm64

“Focusrite is targeting releasing native Arm64 drivers for all of its supported USB audio interface products in early 2025, bringing compatibility with all ASIO and non-ASIO applications running on the platform.”

Tim Carroll, CEO Focusrite Group

CEO Focusrite Group, President of The MIDI Association

Yamaha – Native on Arm64

Yamaha creates the Steinberg-branded USB audio interfaces, which are fantastic performers on Windows and loved by their customers. In addition to working on the in-box class driver for Arm64, they are going to release optimized device-family versions of their audio interface drivers for Windows on Arm, giving users of their devices the best of both worlds.
We’re excited to see these drivers coming out for Arm64 in 2025!

Pete Brown- Microsoft

Announcing: New Musician-focused apps coming to Arm64

With the new MIDI stack and in-box ASIO, these three killer DAW apps, and two families of audio interfaces with optimized drivers for Arm64, we’re set up to help make the experience of creating music amazing on Windows. I am beyond excited for so many of these efforts to come together at this point in time. A huge thanks to all our hardware and software partners who have stepped up to help musicians and other audio creators on Windows.

Pete Brown-Microsoft

Cubase x Snapdragon: Redefining mobile music production

For the full blog from Pete on Make Great Music with Windows on Arm, please click on the link below.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/making-music-on-windows/

The MIDI Forum at Music China 2024

Written by The MIDI Association on . Posted in MIDI 2.0, MIDI 2.0 Resources for Developers, MIDI and Artificial Intelligence, MIDI Association Event List, MIDI News, Music China.

With the help of Geoffery Ge from Medeli and Yitian Zhao from CME Pro, Music China arranged for a MIDI Forum with experts from all over the world. The setup was actually quite amazing. There was a very nice AV setup, but most impressive was the simultaneous translation.

When MIDI Association members were speaking English, Chinese people were provided translations into Chinese and when Chinese MIDI Association members spoke Chinese, the English speakers were provided English translations. This was not just for the panel participants, but for the entire audience which consisted of over a 100 people. Even Miura-san from AMEI had translation as Music China had arranged for a brand ambassador from Shanghai Conservatory of Music who spoke fluent Japanese. It was impressive and really underscored that MIDI is the universal digital language of music. People on the panels spoke different languages, but they all spoke MIDI!

Future Music Technology and International MIDI Technology Development Forum. Forum time 14:00-17:00 p.m., October 12, 2024

Organizer China Musical Instrument Association, Shanghai Intex Exhibition and Convention Center Co., Ltd.

Facilitator Future Music Technology Committee of China Musical Instrument Association and Sound and Music Technical Committee of China Electronic Audio Industry Association

Co-Facilitator The MIDI Association

Shanghai Pudong New Area Advanced Audio and Video Technology Association

Forum content:

Panel Discussion: Progress in the Global Application of MIDI 2.0 Technology

Zhao Yitian, The founder and CEO of CME, Member of the Executive Board of the MIDI Association

Guests:

1) Athan Billias- Member of the Executive Board of the MIDI Association.

2) Daisuke Miura-Chairman of the MIDI Standards Committee of the Japan AMEI Association

3) Mike Kent-Chairman, MIDI 2.0 Working Group, Chief Strategy Officer, AmeNote Inc.

4) Joe Zhang-Director of R&D Technology of Medeli Electronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and Member of the Technical Standard Board of the MIDI Association

First, Athan Billias, MIDI Association board member explained some basics about The MIDI Association.

Daisuke Miura from AMEI, the Japanese MIDI organization explained about AMEI’s role in the world of MIDI.

Then Mike Kent (Exec Board member and chair of the MIDI 2.0 Working Group) explained the current state of the technical specifications with an emphasis on the new Windows MIDI 2.0 open source driver that his company is developing with the support of AMEI.

After Mike, it was Joe Zhang from Medeli’s turn to explain the state of MIDI 2.0.

Joe is on the Technical Standards Board of The MIDI Association and gets up at 3 am in the morning to attend this meeting every 2 weeks. With members in Europe, the United States, Australia and China, there is no perfect (or even good) time to schedule a meeting for everyone. But Joe has been getting up at 3 am for 6 years now so maybe it is time to shift and pick a time that’s more convenient for him.

2.Keynote Speech: Review and Prospect – The Convergence of Music Technology

Guest: Yu Yang- Dean and Professor, Department of Music Engineering, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Doctoral supervisor and famous composer

3.Dialogue between two people: Will Artificial Intelligence Destroy Everything?

Guests:

1) TamiX Tang Nan- Buchla modular synthesizer artist, visual artist, and the founder of Midifan.com

2) L+R Wang Lu- Sound artist, electronic music producer, arranger, sound interaction producer, independent radioanchor

4.Keynote Speech: Automatic Music Transcription: A Bridge to the Symbolic Representation of Music in the Future

Guest: Wu Yulun- Ph.D., School of Computer Science and Technology, Fudan University

5.Keynote Speech: Jam with Things: Music Geeks’ Improvisational Instrument Modification

Guest:Robin Zhang

Founder of Digishow – digital performing arts open-source project

We are going to do a separate article on Digishow and Robin because we got a chance to visit him on Sunday night at what was once the Lester Institute and were blown away by the creative things he and his team were doing.

6.Roundtable Discussion: Discussion on the development of future musical instruments and music technology in China

Ge Xinghua- General Manager of Deli Electronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd

Guests:

1) Zhao Yitian- The founder and CEO of CME

2) Chen Guobin- Deputy General Manager of Ringway Electronics (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd.

3) Huang Jianheng,- Director of Longjoin Group, CTO, Co-founder of MIDIPLUS brand, CEO of MIDIPLUS

4) Zhang Guangzhong- Director of R&D Technology of Medeli Electronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.

5) Cao Qiang- Deputy General Manager and CTO of Changsha Hotone Electronic Technology Co., Ltd

We hope this gives you a bit of feel of how much there is going on in China with MIDI 2.0. There is a tremendous energy there. During the roundtable with the Chinese members, Joe Zhang said that China hadn’t been able to participate in MIDI 1.0’s development because the technical level in China wasn’t ready at the time. But he said that with MIDI 2.0, it was the time for Chinese companies to not just participate, but lead in MIDI 2.0 development.

Looking at the technical level of all our Chinese members and their openness to new ways of using tools like AI, it’s clear that Joe Zhang was right.

To see Music China’s coverage of Music X and the MIDI forum, click the link below.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aPkYKMMLZr61Tp5UhfEKXQ