The world broadcast premiere is scheduled for Saturday. May 6 at 10 am Pacific. Click on the Youtube link below to watch the trailer and signup for a notification.
The MIDI@40 Concert on the Yamaha Grand Plaza stage on Saturday, April 15 2023 celebrated the incredible possibilities created by MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) in the 40 years since its public introduction.
The musicians, composers and performance artists selected as MIDI brand ambassadors represent the beautiful diversity of cultures and people from all over the world and music from different genres and generations brought together by music and MIDI.
At the April NAMM show, The MIDI Association honored the people who created the modern music production environment of synths, drum machines, and sequencers, including Bob Moog, Don Buchla, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Tsutomu Katoh, Roger Linn, Tom Oberheim, Alan Pearlman, Dave Rossum, and Dave Smith.
A significant portion of The MIDI Association booth was dedicated to the Lifetime Achievement Award (LTA) display and there were even the instruments that represented the LTA winners.
Roland provided a TR909 and a Jupiter 6, Moog provided a brand new Mini Moog Model D, Sequential provided both a new Prophet 5 and an OB8X, Korg provided an FS700s and a Arp Odessey. There were even Buchla products including the Thunder and Lightning, Dave Rossum not only provided SP-1200 Reissue (serial #12) and Eurorack case holding Rossum modules: 2 Locutus 2 Assimil8or”, an Morpheus”, a Panharmonium, but he took the time to come by and help set all the gear up correctly.
The banners have a QR code that will take you directly to the MIDI Association article about that Lifetime Achievement Award winner.
Ikuo Kakehashi in front of his father’s banner and a TR-909
The Lifetime Achievement Award product display was a very popular spot with many people taking and posting photos with the historic gear. One of the great parts of this story is that these are not just historical instruments from the past, but many of these products are recent re-releases that are currently available in the market. This underscores that these music production innovators are still impacting music today.
Lifetime Achivement Award winners at the MIDI@40 Concert
At the MIDI@40 concert on Saturday, April 15 2023, the video above was played at the concert and then awards were given out to the winners or the people who were representing the winners.
Each person received an individualized award.
From right to left in this picture are:
Michelle Moog-Koussa receiving the award on behalf of her father, Bob Moog.
Ezra Buchla receiving the award on behalf of his father, Don Buchla.
Dina Pearlman receiving the award on behalf of her father, Alan R Pearlman.
Morgan Walker of Korg USA receiving the award on behalf of Tsutomu Katoh with Jeff Babko from the Jimmy Kimmel show.
Ikuo Kakehashi receiving the award on behalf of his father, Ikutaro Kakehashi.
Denise Smith receiving the award on behalf of her husband, Dave Smith.
Marcus Ryle receiving the award on behalf of Tom Oberheim.
Dave Rossum receiving the award on behalf of Roger Linn and his own Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ikuo Kakehashi with his father’s MIDI Association lifetime achievement award
Denise Smith, Marcus Ryle, Dave Rossum, Mark Isham, Dina Pearlman, Ikuo Kakehashi, Jeff Rona, Michelle Moog-Koussa
KORG’s founder, Tsutomu Katoh was born in Nagoya on August 28, 1926 (Taisho 15) to a merchant family that ran a livestock feed wholesale business along the Iida Highway. These were tough times in Japan. The Great Kanto Earthquake had hit the capital city of Tokyo directly in 1923, leaving 140,000 people dead and missing. The impact of the earthquake and a recession, plunged Japan into financial crisis in 1927.
Tokyo After Great Kanto Earthquake
The musical instrument industry was also in a state of turmoil. In 1927, the largest musical instrument manufacturer – Nippon Gakki Seizo (now known as Yamaha) experienced a labor dispute that lasted for 105 days.
Nippon Gakki Seizo (Yamaha) factory in early 1930s
When new management took over control of Yamaha’s company because the piano industry was faltering in Japan, Koichi Kawai (who had been Torakusu Yamaha neighbor in Hamamatsu and one of the primary engineers in early Yamaha acoustic piano development) left Yamaha to establish a new musical instrument workshop. That company founded in 1928 is Kawai and in the early 1980s would be one of the 5 companies that would help develop MIDI along with Sequential Circuits, Korg, Roland and Yamaha.
Early picture of the Kawai piano factory with Kochi Kawai in the center of the picture.
World War II and the aftermath of the war
In 1937 (Showa 12), when Katoh was 12 years old, the China-Japanese War broke out, and the following year, the National Mobilization Law was enacted, and the whole nation was involved in the war. When World War II broke out in 1939 (Showa 14) and a price control order was issued in Japan, the Katoh family was unable to conduct normal business activities. Katoh studied hard during the war and graduated from the prestigious Nagoya Commercial High School in 1944 (Showa 19).
Katoh was old enough to be drafted, so he decided to join the navy and was assigned to a special unit at Yokosuka near Tokyo training for missions in a five-seat submarine, known as the Koryu.
Koryu midget subs in dry dock after WWII
It is lucky for the music industry that the war ended in 1945 (Showa 20) without Katoh going on a mission because the Koryu were kamikaze submarines. They were supposed to go out and find American battleships and then ram directly into them. Though originally designed to carry two 17.7-inch torpedoes externally, a torpedo shortage caused most, if not all, to be fitted with a 1300-pound internal warhead for employment on suicide missions.
Inside a Kamikaze Submarine
After the war ended, Katoh ended up in nearby Tokyo.
Japan was decimated after the war. In addition to the destruction of Japan’s social infrastructure, the product distribution system had completely collapsed due to shortages of supplies and state control during the war. In Tokyo, large-scale black markets were born in Shinbashi, Shinjuku, Yotsuya, and Ikebukuro, and played a role in improving the serious food situation in the capital.
Katoh always had a keen business sense and he realized that even though his family’s background was in food wholesale, that the profit margins were far higher for electric wires and automobile parts for which demand was rising amid post-war reconstruction.
The American army was basically running Japan in the early years after the war so Katoh went to the Occupation Forces office with what little money he had and an English dictionary. At first, he was turned away, but eventually he managed to get people to listen to him, and he was able to purchase electric wires. This wire was sold at a price several dozen times higher than the purchase price.
Dai Ichi Building- US Army Headquarters after WWII
By about 1947, as food and commodity supplies began to improve, the black market dwindled and was replaced by formal traders. At that time, Katoh packed the money he earned into his rucksack and traveled around the country. By the time he reached Sapporo (the capital of Hokkaido in the far north), all the money he had earned had run out, and had no money to return to Nagoya. All he had left was his Japanese- English dictionary so he took this dictionary to a pawn shop and somehow managed to raise the money to get to Tokyo.
Katoh did a number of odd jobs including selling newspapers on the street and then he joined the Odakyu Construction company which was involved in the development of the Kabukicho area in Shinjuku. At that time, Kabukicho was becoming Tokyo’s entertainment district, with new stores opening one after another.
The area in Kabukicho where Katoh-san ran several nightclubs
Through his workplace connections in 1950, Katoh was approached with the idea of becoming the owner of a club (Minx) in Kabukicho. He decided to quit his job at the real estate company and become involved in club management. Katoh was a shrewd businessman and eventually he was managing four businesses – Minx, Club Hana, a high end nightclub with hostesses and nightly music ranging from popular to classical, Lausanne a restaurant and Phoenix, a store that sold all different kinds of general merchandise.
Koma Stadium was a famous theater in Kabukicho where the first NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen was run in 1951
Music was starting to be a big deal in Japan especially when NHK began its New Year’s Eve television NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen ( “NHK Red and White Song Battle”). Starting on radio in 1951 and then on both radio and TV in 1953, this year end celebration launched the careers of many Japanese pop performers and continues as a tradition today.
Although Katoh was not a musician himself it was his days managing a club where he developed his ear and learned alot about how musicians felt about their craft.
Katoh came up with the idea from a toy keyboard that was sold at the Kabukicho operations he ran and the transformation from night club management to musical instrument company was about to take a dramatic turn based on a musician who played at Katoh’s nightclub.
When keyboard player and author Julian Colbeck came to Japan in 1990, he asked Chairman Katoh what led him to start Korg. Much to both Julian’s (and the translator’s) surprise Katoh said “to finance a gambling trip to Las Vegas”.
Fumio Mieda, Tsutomu Katoh and Tadashi Osanai
Tadashi Osanai was a professional accordion player who had three passions in life- accordion, electronics and gambling. Osanai-san was a frequent player at Club Hana with a trio of comprised of himself on accordion, a bass player and a drummer. He convinced Katoh to lend him the equivalent of $500 to go to Akihabara and buy parts to build a drum machine. Osanai–san had seen the Wurlizer Sideman and thought he could build a better one. He also told Katoh that all the drummers he knew were a bit unreliable in their timing especially after drinking and that a machine could be more precise.
Osanai-san dream was to go to Las Vegas and gamble at one of the famous casinos.
So Katoh and Osenai-san developed the Doncamatic. The name comes from the sound -Don represents that Bass Drum sound and Ka the sound of the Claves/Snare.
A few years later Katoh met and started a partnership with Fumio Mieda who would develop the first Korg synthesizer
Japanese video of the Doncamatic in action
Fumio Mieda and the first Korg synthesizer
A few years later Katoh met and started a partnership with Fumio Mieda who would develop the first Korg synthesizer labeled the Prototype Number 1. It featured some incredible innovations including a slider labeled Traveler which controlled a filter making the the double manual organ more of a polyphonic synth. In 1970, it was far ahead if it’s time.
By 1967, the world was becoming interested in electronic keyboards and the new field of music synthesis, and it was in this year that an engineer named Fumio Mieda approached Katoh, asking for backing to develop an organ. Apparently, Katoh was impressed by Mieda’s enthusiasm, so he offered to finance the development of a marketable instrument.
by Gordon Reid for Sound on Sound
Fumio Mieda
The essence of Chairman Katoh
Tsutomu Katoh was a truly unique character. He was a shrewd businessman, but often made decisions with his gut. He often said that if Korg spent lots of money developing a new product and only one musician discovered it and truly loved playing it, he would be satisfied.
He had an innate sense of style and fashion. When he was shown the first prototype of the Korg M1, he looked at it and within a couple of seconds said “The design is quite right, it doesn’t look appealing. It should be softer and have curves. You should want to pick it up.” He pointed to an area and suggested a dimple. The result was the little round indentation that became an integral part of the M1’s distinctive look. He was always listening to the musicians and their needs.
Katoh-san suggested the round area at the back of the M1 side panel.
Katoh believed that the people at Korg should be craftsmen building musical instruments, not just engineers (Japanese video with subtitles)
There are more stories ahead about Korg, Yamaha and Dave Smith
Full disclosure (a note from the author Athan Billias)
I have written many of the articles on this site, but this article was special to me and took a long time because it is not just Chairman Katoh’s story, it is also partly my story.
I went to Japan for the very first time in the spring of 1986 on a business trip working for Korg USA.
Katoh-san had the idea that there should be an exchange program between Korg USA and Korg Inc. I went to Japan for what was supposed to be three months in the fall of 1986 and returned 7 years later after working as the head of product planning and sound design at Korg Inc in Japan for all those years. I had the honor of working closely with all the Korg people who made the Korg M1 the most successful commercial synthesizer of all time including the group of sound designers who still call themselves proudly “the MIDI Patch Boys”.
Chairman Katoh and all the people at Korg Inc in Japan changed my life and I would not be where I am today except for their mentoring and guidance.
When I think of Chairman Katoh, I am often reminded of the Japanese proverb -地震雷火事親父 . These are the four things you should be afraid of “Earthquakes, Lightning, Fire, and the Old Man”.
Somehow it seems fitting that Katoh-Kaicho (Chairman Katoh) passed away on MARCH 15, 2011 only 4 days after the great earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima area. He was himself a force of nature.
This article focuses on the early history of Chairman Katoh and the very beginnings of Korg (thanks to a book on Korg’s history provided to me by Korg Inc.)
Below are links to several great resources about Korg’s history and even a song by Keith Emerson dedicated to Katoh-san. He touched so many artists and musicians lives both directly and through the products his company made.
But in an upcoming article after the April NAMM show, we plan to tell the intricate story of the relationship between Yamaha, Korg and Dave Smith and reveal some details that have never been made public before.
Over the 40 years of their existence, Korg have produced a huge variety of groundbreaking music gear, from electronic percussion to industry-standard synths, and from guitar tuners to digital recording workstations. This month, we look back at how it all started…
In the 1980s and early ’90s, with Yamaha’s help, Korg expanded dramatically, producing some of the first affordable digital recorders and physical-modelling instruments. But it was their world-class synths, such as the M1 and Wavestation, that made them the company they are today…
Cutting-edge innovation is by no means a guarantee of commercial success, but Korg have had a flair for both – although not always simultaneously. We look at how this continued to be true throughout the ’90s to the present, when the company pushed the boundaries of physical modelling while refining their world-beating workstations.
Tsutomu Katoh had many ideas for using electronics to improve the way people make music in their homes. As the founder of KORG, he was able to see his ideas turn into successful musical products. The
The April 2023 NAMM show is going to be a very special event for the MIDI Association. 2023 marks the 40th anniversary of MIDI and we have been working closely with NAMM on special MIDI@40 events including:
The MIDI Showcase at the front of Hall A
A MIDI@40 exhibit at the NAMM Museum of Music Making
A MIDI@40 concert on the Yamaha Grand Plaza Stage on April 15, 2023
You may have noticed a flurry of articles over the holidays from The MIDI Association.
We created stories about the key figures who helped create the modern music production environment (Alan Pearlman, Bob Moog, Don Buchla, Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi, and Roger Linn).
A it turns out many of those people were also influential in the creation of MIDI.
The MIDI@40 Concert on the Yamaha Grand Plaza Main Stage at the NAMM Show on Saturday, April 15 celebrates the incredible possibilities created by MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) in the 40 years since its public introduction.
During the anniversary celebration, the people who created the modern music production environment of synths, drum machines and sequencers will be honored with lifetime achievement awards for Alan Pearlman, Bob Moog, Don Buchla, Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Roger Linn, Tom Oberheim and Tsutomu Katoh.
The musicians, composers and performance artists selected as MIDI brand ambassadors represent the beautiful diversity of cultures and people from all over the world and music from different genres and generations brought together by music and MIDI.
We are creating a unique innovative experience to celebrate how MIDI has been connecting people and products since its debut at the 1983 Winter NAMM show.
In Chapter 6 of the History of MIDI, we left off with the demonstration of MIDI at the 1983 NAMM show.
John Bowen, head of sound design for Sequential had recounted that he had been busy finishing the presets for the Prophet 600 and that although Sequential had tested the Prophet 600’s MIDI connecting to another Prophet 600, they really had no idea if it would work when they connected it to the Roland Jupiter 6. But it did and everybody was pretty amazed.
We also documented that at the time there were only 5 companies working on MIDI- Sequential Circuits, Kawai, Korg, Roland and Yamaha. That is pretty easy to confirm because here are the SysEx IDs in the Prophet 600 manual from December of 1982.
The People Behind MIDI
In Chapter 6 we also introduced a lot of the key players involved with MIDI.
Dave Smith and John Bowen had developed the Prophet 5 with a remote keyboard.
Oberheim and Roland and other companies had developed proprietary control protocols to connect multiple products form the same company together.
Ikutaro Kakehashi from Roland had approached Tom Oberheim at a NAMM about the idea for a Universal Synth Interface (USI) in 1981.
Dave and Chet Woods had presented an AES paper on USI in October of 1982 after talks with four Japanese companies at the 1982 Gakki Fair in Tokyo.
Bob Moog had first announced MIDI to the public in a Keyboard Magazine article in 1982 and Brian Vincik from Hewlett Packard had connected with Sequential.
Jeff Rona was working for Roland and Marcus Ryle was working for Oberheim.
One of the things that struck us when doing the research was how young many of the people who worked on MIDI were at that time.
Dave Smith and John Bowen were just 32 years old, Brian Vincik was 26, Jeff Rona was 25 and Marcus Ryle was 21.
Whose in charge of MIDI in 1983?
The four Japanese companies had been meeting regularly for over a year since the 1982 Gakki Fair.
However there was still no official organization in charge of the MIDI specification.
And the situation was even less clear in the rest of the world because it was only Sequential Circuits in the United States who had copies of the MIDI specification that existed at the time.
In the summer of 1982 when the Prophet 600 was still in development, Brian Vincik, a young engineer from Hewlett Packard (HP) took a tour of the Sequential Circuits factory and started discussions with John Bowen and Sequential about MIDI.
Brian had studied at Cal Polytechnic and his first job (similar to Dave Smith and Don Buchla) was in the aerospace industry working for Hughes Aircraft.
But his background at one of the most advanced computer companies of the time (HP) led him to immediately understand the vast potential that MIDI had.
He and John Bowen started to form ideas about what would be necessary to promote MIDI, not just to musical instrument companies, but to computer companies as well.
That suited Dave Smith because Dave was not a big fan of meetings and committees and much preferred to focus on designing new products.
Soon after the January 1983 public demonstration at NAMM, Sequential started getting phone calls and letters from individuals and companies requesting more information on this new thing called MIDI.
So Brian and John put together a plan for a MIDI Users Group (MUG).
Here is a copy of the initial goals of the MUG which were pretty expansive and included responding to all letters (yes, letters- remember this was all before not just the Internet, but the fax machine!) about MIDI, providing the MIDI specifications to anyone who wanted it , assign SysEx IDs and maintain a database with ALL user names and concerns.
MIDI User Group MIDI Committee Proposal
As a synthesizer enthusiast and engineer, Brian graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1979 and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when many of the most innovative synthesizer companies were designing new musical products. Brian became friendly with many of the designers and engineers including John Bowen from Sequential Circuits and Dave Smith (who would write the MIDI Spec.) Brian formed the first MIDI user group called the International MIDI Association in 1983 and was the sole source for the MIDI specification 1.0 in those early years in MIDI’s development.
by NAMM Oral History
Brian soon realized that the organization’s name would need to be changed because there was already a Macintosh Users Group (MUG) so the International MIDI Association was settled on for the name and the IMA was created.
Having someone like Brian from the computer industry was significant because the same month that MIDI was introduced at the 1983 NAMM show, this was the cover of Time Magazine.
Time Magazine cover January 1983
NAMM International Music & Sound Expo
Chicago, Illinois
June 18-21 1983
Brian attended the 1983 NAMM show and was in the Sequential Circuits booth promoting MIDI and the International MIDI Association (IMA).
In fact, here is a picture at McCormick Place where the Summer NAMM was held that Brian took of a regular visitor to NAMM shows for many years, Eddie Van Halen.
The Japanese MIDI Standards Committee (JMSC) is formed
Tokyo, Japan
June 29, 1983
The Japanese MIDI Standards Committee trademarked the MIDI logo in Japan in 1983
Not surprisingly the Japanese were more organized and formalized in their approach to MIDI and associations.
The Japanese Electronic Music Industry Association (JEMIA) had been formed in 1976 and was a professional association that included manufacturers like Yamaha, Roland, Kawai and Korg.
On February of 1983 just a month after the 1983 NAMM show, the Japanese formed the MIDI Standard Liaison Committee and later the same year changed the name to the Japan MIDI Standards Committee (JMSC).
By October of 1983, JMSC had 28 corporate members and 24 individual members and was keeping them all informed about updates to the MIDI 1.0 specification.
In November of 1983, JMSC was granted a trademark on MIDI in the Japanese market.
Japan was viewing MIDI as a business strategy and not simply as a technical specification.
Compare this with the situation in the rest of the world where the IMA was struggling to keep up with the worldwide demand for information on MIDI and where the MIDI Manufacturers Association (driven strongly by Jeff Rona who worked for a Japanese company) was still 2 years away from becoming an established company.
Bob Moog Keyboard Article
MIDI- What is it, what it means to you
July, 1983
The first person to do an in depth article about MIDI was Dr. Bob Moog in his July 1983 Keyboard Magazine article.
IMA Director Roger Clay
Roger Clay and Bob Moog at the first (and last) meeting of the MIDI Evolutionary Committee at the 1984 Winter NAMM show
It’s time now to introduce another person who was involved with early MIDI and particularly with the IMA.
In interviewing many people about that first tumultuous year of MIDI almost everyone would have to stop when asked about Roger Clay and say something like “Roger was a real character” or “Roger was good at promoting things (mostly himself)”.
Roger got involved in the IMA because he had been working on setting up user groups for the Prophet 5 and the Rhodes Chroma and when he heard about a user group for MIDI, he saw a big opportunity to get in front of a lot of people.
Roger was involved setting up IMA in 1983 , but left the organization in November of 1984.
No one we talked to knew what happened to Roger Clay after the IMA, but if anyone knows, please contact us at info@MIDI.org.
Here is the first communication to companies and people interested in MIDI from the International MIDI USer Group that soon became the International MIDI Association.
You can see how bold (and perhaps unrealistic) the IMUG’s goals were (for example setting up a testing lab to test all MIDI products before they were shipped to ensure that they were interoperable or keeping a database of every person who used MIDI).
Ikutaro Kakehashi joins the IMA
Sept. 27, 1983
Communications between IMA and JMSC
In the days after the 1983 June NAMM show, there were a number of important communications between the International MIDI Association and the Japanese MIDI Standards Committee.
In particular, Matsuki-san expressed that the Japanese felt strongly that
MIDI should remain open to the public
That both the Japanese MIDI Association and the International MIDI organization should agree together on any changes to the specification
The MIDI organization need to rely on the individual manufacturers to be responsible for their implementations.
It’s interesting that 40 years later, MIDI still operates under the same fundamental principles.
The IMA- Where is this whole thing going? We’re not quite sure.
As the IMA was dealing with communications with JMSC, they were also putting some some ambitious plans. But at least, the IMA was honest in their Membership brochure when they said “Where is this whole thing going? We’re not quite sure”.
The IMA laid out their plans for many things including a MIDI Evolutionary Council (MEC), a MIDI Database, The IMA Network, and an annual convention of “all the MIDI-related products in one place at one time.
IMA Membership Brochure Page 1
IMA Membership Brochure Page 2
The MIDI Evolutionary Committee
January 1984
Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim
Roger Clay at the Anaheim Marriott showing the actual votes for the MEC
The International MIDI Association had put formed a MIDI Evolutionary Committee that included Anne Graham from Oberheim, Bob Moog (now at Big Briar) , Curt Simmons, Jim Smerdel from Yamaha, John Bowen from Sequential Circuits as well as Brian Vincik and Roger Clay from the IMA itself.
Apple and Lucas Films join the IMA
February, 1984
MIDI Soft’84
Two Day Event in Bay Area
May 24-25, 1984
MIDISOFT’84 is a two day conference on software for one of the most exciting developments in the music field – MIDI, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface.
MIDISOFT’84, to be held at the renown Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, California, will bring together in one place for the first time, the molders and shapers of music software and will offer an open forum for the discussion of standards and practices concerning this new phenomenon.
MIDISOFT’84’s main goal and purpose is to establish a MIDI Software Standards Board and to provide a introduction to Music Software and the MIDI phenomenon to the software developer and end-user alike.
Scheduled Speakers and Topics (confirmed with outlines):
Jaron Lanier (Software Author -“MOONDUST”)
“MIDI/Music Software and the Consumer Market”
Alan Marr (Software Developer, LUCASFILM, LTD)
“The Uses and Development of Icons and Glyphs in Music Software”
Dr. Charles Goldfarb (Senior Analyst, IBM)
“Formats and Standardization Proposals for Musical Databases”
Robert Barkans (Documentation Consultant, DOCUPRO)
by International MIDI Association
We found a pretty accurate contemporary summary of what happened at MIDIsoft’84 from the British Music Magazine “Electronics and Music Maker from their November 1984 issue.
MIDIsoft
At long last, some feedback on the two-day MIDIsoft event held back in May in a San Francisco hotel under the banner of the IMA (International MIDI Association). Given that this wasn’t a free event ($35 for IMA members, $60 for non-members), the quoted attendance of 219 was pretty good. The major problem with this sort of umbrella event is that everything stands or falls on the support of the manufacturers, and unfortunately, Korg, Kurzweil, Oberheim, and E-mu were as far as the manufacturers’ conclave went. And with the exception of Korg, all those names are of companies that have come late (Kurzweil and E-mu) or reluctantly (Oberheim) into the MIDI game.
Anyhow, what transpired from the various question-and-answer sessions over the two days was that (a) most of the attendees were there for serious software purposes, (b) much thought was being devoted to getting around the very obvious limitations of the MIDI standard (parallel ACIAs, use in conjunction with memory-mapped sound generators, and so on), and (c) many felt that they were being cold-shouldered by the manufacturers.
Curiously, most of the timetabled lectures were somewhat detached from the MIDI pure and simple.
For instance, Dr Gareth Loy gave a talk on software (running on a sizeable minicomputer) that has been developed at the Computer Audio Research Laboratory at the University of California in San Diego; Robert Barkan of DocuPro suggested how to write decent manuals; Dr Charles Goldfarb spoke on musical databases; and Alan Marrs from Lucas Films discussed the subject of glyphs and icons in the context of constructing film soundtracks with the infamous Audio Signal Processor.
All in all, a lot was said, a good deal was discussed, and plenty of confusion reigned about where things are going to go next.
Clearly, an unbiased arbiter of the MIDI standard is needed – and the IMA would seem to be in a good position to offer this role – but how do we go about convincing so many large and powerful manufacturers that we’re not just a bunch of jokers out to extract freebies and the like from gullible publicity departments? Very difficult, I’d say. What’s more, the situation is complicated by the fact that the big boys – Roland, Yamaha, Sequential Circuits – are planning their own meeting at the forthcoming NAMM convention, and of course, the IMA, haven’t been invited along.
by Electronics and Music Maker from their November 1984 issue.
Turmoil in MIDI land
Keyboard Magazine
June, 1984
MIDI was developed in a very short period in two different places (Japan and the United States) separated by different languages and a large ocean in a time when there was no Internet and not even fax machines. A whole lot of companies from different backgrounds in both software and hardware jumped on to MIDI very quickly in a computer industry that itself was still just getting started. It really shouldn’t have surprised anyone that there were bumps in the road. Not everyone implemented arpeggiators the same way. Some sent out the notes from the keyboard and some sent out the notes from the arpeggiator. There are inconsistencies in how Pitch Bend was implemented, and famously the DX7’s keyboard (one of the first MIDI instruments and one of the most successful) only went up to 100 in MIDI velocity so it sounded fine when played from its own keyboard, but could get pretty nasty when played from an external MIDI controller from another company.
All these issues and many more were pointed out in this June 1984 Keyboard Magazine article.
MIDI Manufacturers Association Meeting
Winter NAMM
Anaheim, California
Feb 1-3 1985
At the next NAMM show, the major manufacturers got together and decided on a strategy to make sure that MIDI would be stable and could grow over the next decades.
At that meeting, Jeff Rona stepped up to volunteer to put together a MIDI Manufacturers Association. The new MMA and the existing IMA came to an agreement about how they would work together. This arrangement between the MMA and IMA was probably made easier by the fact that Roger Clay who had been somewhat antagonistic to the manufacturers (as seen in his comments in the Turmoil in MIDI Land article) was no longer with the IMA.
First Public Meeting of the MIDI Manufacturers Association Summer NAMM New Orleans, Louisiana June 24, 1985
Jeff Rona, the first President of the MIDI Association documents the details of that meeting very well in his article “MIDI from the Inside”.
He did get one small detail mixed up.
He got the place right (who could forget the heat in New Orleans that NAMM show), but the year is incorrect as the NAMM show was only held in New Orleans once and that was in 1985 (not 1983).
Updated with a new Youtube video We found this excellent Youtube interview by Orchestral Tools and thought it would be a great addition to this article with the first President of the MIDI Manufacturers Association, Jeff Rona.
Acknowledgement of the people who made these articles possible
Before we dive into the history of the creation of MIDI, we wanted to acknowledge the key people who made this official history of the birth of MIDI possible.
These are people who were directly involved with the creation of MIDI in its early days. Some of these people have never been appropriately acknowledged for their contributions and that is one of the reasons for creating this detailed history of how MIDI came about.
Also it became clear in the two years of intense research that went into this article, that MIDI was always about connections and not just connections between products, but more importantly connections between people. There is the well known phrase “it takes village” and MIDI is a great example of how that is true. MIDI was not developed by two people or two companies, it was a group of individuals with different backgrounds and motivations who came together to do something for the greater good.
That said, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge several key people who contributed first person resources and interviews to this article.
John Bowen– Head of sound design for Sequential Circuits, Korg R and D and now President of John Bowen Synth Design, maker of the Solaris synthesizer.
John provided insight into the interconnections between Moog and Sequential as well as multiple interviews on the early days of MIDI.
Hideki Izuchi– Roland Engineer from 1979 to his death in 2019
Izuchi-san created a report about the birth of MIDI that was presented in 2018 at the Japan National Museum of Science in Ueno Park, Tokyo. His incredibly detailed 72 page report entitled “Technical Systematic Survey on MIDI” provided much of the information for this article and confirmed many details from the Japanese side about the development of MIDI.
Jeff Rona– Composer and Founder and first President of the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA, now known simply as the MIDI Association)
Jeff provided the MIDI Association access to the very earliest communications of the MIDI Association in its infancy and of course as the very first President of the MIDI Manufacturers Association his contribution (along with Chris Meyer who worked at both Sequential Circuits and Roland and was the first chair of the MMA Technical Standards Board) guided MIDI through its formulative and frankly most turbulent early years.
In researching this article, we realized that the simple story that Roland and Sequential connected a Prophet 600 and a Jupiter 6 together at the 1983 NAMM show and that instantly MIDI became an overnight success was very far from the reality of what was happened between January 1983 and May of 1985 when the MIDI Manufacturers Association was formally created as a non-profit trade association.
Brian Vincek– Vice President at Hewlett-Packard and co-founder of the International MIDI Association
Brian provided access to all of the early files of the International MIDI Association (IMA). Brian and John worked closely in the very early days of MIDI and the IMA was responsible for the distribution of the initial MIDI specification to both MMA companies and individuals. His contributions to the very early days of MIDI were substantial and the files he provided for this article were invaluable.
In researching this article, we realized that the simple story that Roland and Sequential connected a Prophet 600 and a Jupiter 6 together at the 1983 NAMM show and that instantly MIDI became an overnight success was very far from the reality of what was happened between January 1983 and May of 1985 when the MIDI Manufacturers Association was formally created as a non-profit trade association.
Many other people and organizations including NAMM and AMEI provided access to their files and we thank everyone who contributed.
Thanks to those contributions, we believe that this article is the official definitive history of how MIDI got started.
Dave Smith was born in San Francisco in 1950 and like Dave Rossum grew up in the Bay Area in the 1950s.
He took piano lessons as a child and started playing bass and guitar in rock bands in high school because it was after all the 1960s in San Francisco.
When the record Switched on Bach came out in 1968, Dave bought a copy of the record and was intrigued by the sounds coming from the Moog modular synth.
Just like Don Buchla 10 years earlier, he went to college at the University of California, Berkeley where he earned a degree in computer science and electrical engineering.
One of his college projects was a very primitive program to write music on a printer plotter.
After graduating he got a job in the Aerospace industry.
Yes, I was working in the aerospace industry. This was a time when nobody wanted to hire engineers. I was in what was to become Silicon Valley, but it was not quite Silicon Valley yet, so it was very early on in the technical revolution, I suppose you might say.
So I worked at Lockheed doing stupid work, because that was the only place I could get a job, and a friend told me he saw this synthesizer thing in a music store, and I said, "Oh, that sounds interesting."
So I went to look at it, and it was a Minimoog, and I had no idea what it did or how it worked. It just looked cool, and it was as kind of a perfect combination of my music background and technical background.
So the next day I went to the Lockheed Credit Union and got a loan and went back and bought it, and here I am.
by Dave Smith in a 2014 interview with Red Bull Academy
Interconnections -John Bowen, Bob Moog and Dave Smith
John Bowen and Bob Moog in Tokyo, Japan in 1973
John Bowen went to UC Berkeley (as did Don Buchla and Dave Smith) where he was introduced to Moog Synthesizers.
In 1972, he rented a Minimoog to learn synths from Pat Gleason of Different Fur Trading company. He then
went to a CES show and convinced Bob Moog that he was the right person to demonstrate Moog synthesizers and so John moved to Buffalo, New York and became the first official Moog clinician in 1973.
In 1976 he met Dave Smith, and started working with Dave to promote his Model 800 sequencer, and then helped specify the Model 700 Programmer.
So through John Bowen there is a direct connection between Bob Moog and Dave Smith.
This would later be important in the development of MIDI.
John Bowen worked for MOOG Music product clinician demoing music equipment for the major of the 1970s. He later went to work with Dave Smith helping with the early Sequential Circuits products to do limited programming and sequencing for the MiniMOOG as well as suggestions that influenced the design of the PROPHET-5.
Sequential Circuits
MODEL 600 ANALOG SEQUENCER
1974
Dave bought his first synthesizer for $1500 (a Minimoog) in 1972 and immediately started to think about designing peripheral products to get more out of the Minimoog.
He bought books about electronic circuitry and microprocessors and he studied the analog sequencers that Moog and Buchla had designed for their modular synths. Soon his hobby was becoming a business and in 1974 he formed Sequential Circuits, a name that described exactly what he was building and released the Model 600 Analog Sequencer- a 16 step sequencer using analog control voltages.
Sequential Circuits
MODEL 800 DIGITAL SEQUENCER
1975
Model 800 from Sequential website
Dave was gaining more and more experience with microprocessors and the Model 800 had the ability to record 16 banks of 16 sequences. You could input the steps in real time or in step time. The Model 800 didn’t make any sound so you needed a voltage controlled synthesizer to connect it to.
It was similar to the Oberheim DS2 digital Sequencer that Tom Oberheim had released to control the Arp 2600 in 1972.
Sequential Circuits MODEL 700 PROGRAMMER
1976
Model 700 from Sequential website
Sequential Circuit’s next product was remarkable for a number of reasons.
First, it was all about controlling other products (like MIDI would do a few years later). The Model 700 didn’t make any sounds, it actually added programmability to either the Minimoog or the Arp 2600.
It was one of the first products that stored presets. It could store 64 programs (8 banks of 8 programs).
You could store the settings for attack, decay, sustain and release. There was also a built-in sequencer.
Also it’s important to note that the Model 700 was really starting to look like a Sequential Circuits product with the buttons, the knobs and design elements (like the white border around the core programming area) that would soon become famous with the release of the Prophet 5.
Sequential Circuits
Prophet 5
1977
Prophet 5 from GreatSynthesizers.com
Perhaps no other synthesizer had as much impact on the professional synthesizer business around the world than the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 released in 1977.
It didn’t sell the most units -estimates range between 8000 and 6000 units of the three Prophet 5 variations created between 1977 and 1984. The Korg M1 holds the record for largest selling synth of all time with over 300,000 sold and the Yamaha DX7 comes in second.
But the Prophet 5 was the first product where a number of important factors came together.
It had 5 voices of polyphony and each voice had 2 VCOs, a VCF with ADSR and a VCA with ADSR.
Rev. 1 and Rev. 2 models had the SSM2040 filter chip. Rev. 3 (and higher) used the CEM3320 filter.
But what really set the Prophet 5 apart was that the whole synth operated by Z-80 microcomputer that controlled the keyboard scanning and voice assignment (under a patent licensed from Dave Rossum of EMU fame), the storage of sound presets (40 memories, and later 120) and the oscillator calibration to keep the oscillators in tune.
The Polymod section was designed by Sequential’s John Bowen who created all the Prophet 5 factory Presets and who was also instrumental in MIDI’s early development.
Prophet 5 Polymod section from Greatsynthesizers.com
If there was a single feature that defined the Prophet sound, it was the poly-mod section, which enabled you to use the filter envelope and OSC 2 to modulate the frequency of OSC 1, the pulse-width of OSC 1, and/or the filter cutoff frequency. These modulation routings, combined with OSC 1’s sync function, produced the trademark (and at one time hopelessly overused) oscillator sweeping sync sound, usually variations of what was originally factory preset 33.
The PolyMod sound is instantly identifiable on The Cars song “Let’s Go.
The extended version of George Clinton’s Atomic Dog also shows off the Prophet 5 Poly Mod sound. There are also two synth bass parts-one is a Minimoog and the other is a Prophet 5. The drum sound is a Roland TR606 played in reverse!
Before the Prophet-5, synthesizers required users to adjust cables and knobs to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound.The Prophet-5, with its ability to save sounds to patch memory, facilitated a move from synthesizers creating unpredictable sounds to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds". According to MusicRadar, the Prophet-5 "changed the world – simple as that".The Prophet-5 became a market leader and industry standard.The Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes used the Prophet-5 for the band's hits "Let's Go" (1979) and "Shake It Up" (1981).Kraftwerk used it on their 1981 "Computer World" Tour.David Sylvian used it on Japan's 1982 hit single "Ghosts" and Richard Barbieri of the same band has used it frequently.Michael Jackson used it extensively on Thriller (1982), and Madonna used it on Like a Virgin (1984).Peter Gabriel considered the Prophet-5 his "old warhorse" synthesizer, using it for many sounds on his 1986 album So.Brad Fiedel used a Prophet-10 to record the soundtrack for The Terminator (1984), and the filmmaker John Carpenter used both the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 extensively for his soundtracks.The Greek composer Vangelis used the Prophet-5 and the Prophet-10, the latter for example in the soundtrack of Blade Runner (1982).The Prophet-5 was widely used by 1980s synth pop acts such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Tears for Fears, Thompson Twins, Thomas Dolby, Devo, Eurythmics, Soft Cell, Vince Clarke and Pet Shop Boys.Radiohead used the Prophet-5 on their 2000 album Kid A, such as on the song "Everything In Its Right Place".Other users include Giorgio Moroder, Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, Dr. Dre, Richard Wright, Rick Wakeman, Pendulum, BT, and John Harrison.by Wikipedia
The intro to the video for Hall and Oates November 1981 release “I Can’t Go For That” looks like a Prophet 5 demo reel with Hall playing all the intro parts on a Prophet 5 and even changing Programs in real time.
It also features a drum part programmed by Daryl Hall on a Roland CompuRhythm CR-78.
This article focuses on the seminal products that Dave Smith, John Bowen and Sequential Circuits created before 1983,
The Prophet 5 was an important part in the build up to MIDI and we will see how the digital sequencers that Sequential Circuits was working on would lead directly to the need for the universal digital musical interface that we now call MIDI.
In Chapter 6 and 7 of the History of MIDI, we look at how Sequential Circuits, Kawai, Korg, Roland and Yamaha came together to create MIDI and the roles that Dave, John and both Tom Oberheim and Bob Moog had in creating important personal connections for MIDI.
Prophet 600
The first MIDI synthesizer
December, 1983
Prophet 600 from Perfect Circuit Audio
Sequential Corporate History
Sequential Circuits
1974-1987
Sequential Circuits released the products listed above and also the following products-
Max (1984)
Six-Trak (1984)
Drumtraks (1984)
Multitrak (1985) ( replaced the Six Trak)
Split-8 (1985)
TOM (1985)
Prophet 2000 (1985–87)
Prophet-VS (1986–87)
Studio 440 (1987)
Dave Smith Division
Yamaha
1987-1989
Dave Smith was President of the Dave Smith Division of Yamaha based in San Jose.
Sequential Circuits ran into financial difficulties because they had invested heavily in both a product roadmap for sequencing software, the Prophet 2000 sampling technologies.
They met with Bryan Lanser (former MIDI Association Exec Board member) who was working for Otari at the time. Sequential thought that the Prophet 2000 sampling technology would be a really good fit for Otari to get into the hard disk recording business.
Pro Tools founders Evan Brooks and Peter Gotcher had expanded from just making EPROMs for Emu’s Drumulator and developed their Sound Designer program for the Macintosh which worked with to many other sampling keyboards, such as E-mu Emax, Akai S900, Sequential Prophet 2000, Korg DSS-1, and Ensoniq Mirage. Thanks to the universal file specification subsequently developed by Brooks with version 1.5, Sound Designer files could be transferred via MIDI between sampling keyboards of different manufacturers.
But when the second meeting with Otari was scheduled, it was people from Yamaha who showed up instead. John Bowen recounts that when Dave and John first went to Hamamatsu to visit Yamaha in 1987 and saw stacks of Yamaha TX16W samplers, they both realized that Yamaha was probably not interested in Sequential’s sampler technology.
Dave and John (along with a team that included Alex Limberis from Ensoniq) worked for 2 years on physical modeling and softsynths projects, but never came out with a product under the Yamaha brand name.
Korg R&D
San Jose, Ca
1989-1994
In May 1989 he started the Korg R&D group in California, which went on to produce the innovative and commercially successful Wavestation synthesizer and other technology. We will tell the story of the creation of Korg R&D and the Wavestation in another installment of MIDI History.
Korg R&D released a number of spinoff of the Wavestation and also started to work on the core technology for the Korg Oasys.
Seer Systems
San Jose
1994-2001
Smith reunited with Stanley Jungleib who had worked with at Sequential and served as president at Seer Systems which developed the world’s first software based synthesizer running on a PC.
This synth was commissioned by Intel to prove the power of Intel CPUs. The second generation of Seer Systems software was licensed to Creative Labs in 1996 and used in the Creative Labs’ AWE 64 line of soundcards which were developed by Dave Rossum from Emu (EMU having been acquired by Creative Labs in 1993).
The third generation of Seer Systems software synthesizers was called Reality and was released in 1997.
Dave Smith Instruments
San Jose
2002-2015
In 2002, Smith launched Dave Smith Instruments, a manufacturer of electronic musical instruments.
Dave Smith Instruments released the following products:
Evolver (2002)
Poly Evolver (2005)
Mono Evolver (2006)
Prophet 08 (2007–16)
Mopho (2008)
Tetra (2009)
Tempest (2011) co-created with Roger Linn
Prophet 12 (2013)
Pro 2 (2014)
Sequential Circuits
2015-Present
In 2015, Smith regained the rights to the Sequential name from Yamaha, and released the Prophet-6 under that name.
Ikutaro Kakehashi, who had worked with Smith to create MIDI and was in failing health reached out directly to the President of Yamaha, Tak Nakata.
Kakehashi said: “I feel that it’s important to get rid of unnecessary conflict among electronic musical instrument companies. That is exactly the spirit of MIDI. For this reason, I personally recommended that the President of Yamaha, Mr. Nakata, return the rights to the Sequential name to Dave Smith.”
Kakehashi passed away at age 87 in 2017.
Dave Smith Instruments was rebranded as Sequential in 2018.
On 27, April 2021, Sequential announced that it had been acquired by the British audio technology company Focusrite.
Dave Smith passed away on 31 May, 2022 just a few days before his friend for many years Tom Oberheim would launch the OB-X8 at the 2022 June NAMM show.
Sequential Products released since 2015
Prophet-6 (2015–present)
OB-6 (2015–present) (co-created with Tom Oberheim)
Prophet Rev2 (2017–present)
Prophet X (2018–present)
Pro 3 (2020–present)
Take 5 (2021–present)
Trigon (2022–present)
Sequential OB6
Tom designed the VCO and VCF sections and Dave provided the arpeggiator/step sequencer, effects and production capabilities. After 30 years, two of the pioneers of modern synthesis were working together to design new products.
2022 -Oberheim Electronics reopened and Oberheim OB-X8 released
At the 2022 June NAMM show, Oberheim Electronics showcased the new OB-X8. What was supposed to be a joyous celebration was dampened by the news that just days before the June NAMM show, Dave Smith had passed away.
This is a picture from 2019 of Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim, Marcus Ryle (an engineer at Oberheim when still in his teens and founder of Line 6) and Roger Linn.
For more information about Dave Smith and Sequential, please see these excellent resources.
Sequential was founded led by legendary instrument designer and Grammy-winner Dave Smith. In 1977 Dave designed the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, the world’s first fully-programmable polyphonic synth, and the first musical instrument with an embedded microprocessor. Sequential released many innovative instruments and drum machines over the next 10 years.
Today, Sequential’s talented and dedicated team of designers and synth fanatics continue Dave’s legacy in accordance with the spirit of innovation and ingenuity Dave embodied and imparted during his lifetime.
Roger Linn was born in Whittier, California in 1955.
Roger learn to play guitar growing up in the 1960s and when he was in high school, he started messing around with electronics.
While in high school I modified a fuzz tone product called the Foxx Tone Machine with some simple filters to make it sound more like real guitar amp distortion. I sold one to a little-known girl band at the time called Fanny. It apparently failed on stage, causing a news station to come through the P.A. Also during that time I had an after school job installing pickups and electronics in guitars, and had more switches in my guitar than an electronic voting machine in a California governor recall election.
by Roger Linn in an interview for Sonic State
Billboard promoting a Fanny concert at the Whiskey in the late 1970s
Career as a Songwriter and Guitarist
In 1976 at age 21, Roger went out on tour as a guitarist with the pianist/songwriter Leon Russell. That’s Roger on the left.
Roger Linn also wrote several hit songs including “Promises” for Eric Clapton in 1979 and “Quittin’ Time” penned with Robb Royer from Bread and covered by a number of people including Mary Chapin Carpenter.
The first sampled drum machine- the LM-1
Roger was doing well as a songwriter, but had a simple problem. He wanted to have realistic drum parts for his songwriting demos and there was nothing that sounded like a real drummer back then.
Plus he was on the road with Leon Russell and wanted to be able to work on songs in his hotel room.
So at age 22, he started working on the LM-1.
Two years later he was ready to announce the first drum machine to use samples- the LM-1. It was Steve Porcaro from Toto who it is rumored to have suggested to Roger that he should look at using real samples in a drum machine.
He started a company called Moffett Electronics with Alex Moffett. The LM in the product name is for Linn and Moffett.
LM-1 Drum Computer
When I would do demos of the early LM–1 prototype, people’s jaws would drop. They were amazed to hear the sound of a real drum when they hit a button. So I knew I was on to something.
by Roger Linn in an interview with Reverb
Life and Love Leon Russell 1979
Leon Russell is probably not the first name you think of when mentioning synthesists of the 1970s.
But as we documented in our article about Tom Oberheim, Leon Russell had purchased an ARP 2600 from Tom when Oberheim was the ARP dealer in LA.
On his album “Life and Love” released in 1979, Leon was the first artist to use a sampled drum machine on a record.
In fact, Roger Linn not only played guitar on the record, he is credited as a co-producer because he wrote the drum parts on the LM-1. In fact, there is NO drummer on the record so all of the drums were done by the LM-1.
Credits for the album Life and Love.
Leon Russell – guitar, keyboards, piano, vocals – Producer – Written-By
Roger Linn – Co-producer – drums – Moffett Electronics – Engineer – Guitar
Marty Grebb – guitar, saxophone
Jody Payne, Roger Linn – guitar
Here is the title track from Leon Russell’s 1979 album.
Russell is also given credit by Roger Linn for adding two important features to the LM-1 that would become staples of almost all digital drum machines in the future- Handclaps and a Swing feature.
At first Roger didn’t think handclaps were necessary because you could record them so easily. Russell convinced Roger that after three choruses of hand claps, your hands would be pretty beat up so it would be better to have a consistent recorded sample.
In his NAMM Oral history interview below, Leon Russell talks about how he convinced Roger to add Handclaps ot the LM-1. Russell also talks about admiration for Hal Chamberlin who developed the Mellotron and how Ikutaro Kakehachi, President of Roland came to visit him in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s a surprising look at how into technology Leon Russell was.
It was Leon who taught me about swing timing, which he called ‘shuffle. He explained that one of the big factors in a drummer’s feel was the degree of shuffle timing in his playing. Some drummers played straight sixteenths with a hint of shuffle.
I added the code to delay — by a variable amount — the alternate 1/8 or 1/16 notes, thereby turning a straight beat in a shuffle/swing 1/8 or 1/16 beat and by an adjustable amount. This allowed me to dial in the exact groove I wanted.”
by Roger Linn in his Reverb interview
Getting the LM1 off the ground
Things weren’t easy at the beginning because Roger didn’t have experience in producing products, he was a songwriter and guitarist. He borrowed $20,000 from his father to help fund the development and when that ran out, he paid the person who designed the printed circuits boards for the LM-1 by giving him Roger’s 12 year old Porsche.
He had a prototype designed, but the exterior case wasn’t ready yet so Linn would haul the LM-1 around in a cardboard box to Hollywood parties and got a number of people including Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, and Stevie Wonder to put down 50% deposits ($2500) on an LM-1.
Who recorded the samples for the LM-1
There were many stories about who recorded the samples for the LM-1, but in an August 15, 2017 interview for Reverb by Lou Carlozo, Roger Linn put all the rumours to rest.
It was a drummer named Art Wood, a good friend of mine with whom I had been in bands. It seems that no matter how many times I tell people that Art played the original drum samples, no one believes it, and they love to create myths. I’ve heard that the original samples were played by Steve Gadd, Jeff Porcaro, Dave Garibaldi, and others, but it was all Art.
by Roger Linn in an interview for Reverb
Art Wood played with Bette Midler, Tina Turner, Cher, James Brown, Gary Wright, Peter Frampton and Michael Penn
The LinnDrum (LM-2) released in 1982 was the less expensive version that had the most commericial success
Roger Linn Corporate History
Linn Electronics -1980-1986
Linn Electronics released the following products.
The LM-1- 1980
The LM-2 LinnDrum-1982
The Linn 9000 -Sampling drum machine with a 32 track MIDI hardware sequencer- 1984
The LinnSequencer- Rackmount 32 track MIDI hardware sequencer from the Linn 9000-1985
The LinnDrum MIDI Studio-A sampling drum machine, 32 Track MIDI hardware sequencer and a pad controller -1986
LinnDrum MIDI Studio Ad from 1986
AKAI MPC 60 and MPC3000
After Linn Electronics, Linn was contacted by the Japanese company Akai and worked to design the MPC60, an integrated digital sampling drum machine and MIDI sequencer released in 1988.
The MPC60 was followed by the MPC60 MkII and the MPC3000.
All the MPC products had a major influence on the development of hip hop and electronic music and the 4×4 grid of pads was adopted by numerous manufacturers.
Linn left Akai when the company went out of business in 2005.
AKAI MPC60 by Roger Linn-1988
AKAI MPC60 by Roger Linn-1994
Roger Linn Designs
In 2001 Roger Linn founded a new company, Roger Linn Design. With the help of Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim, Roger developed the company’s first product offering – the AdrenaLinn, a digital multi-effects unit combined with a drum machine and amp modeler.
The AdrenaLinn Series of Products
Select one of the 200 presets, play simple chords or arpeggios in time to one of the drumbeats, and listen as AdrenaLinn III transforms them into looped rhythmic patterns of spiked, swooped, swirled, chopped and mangled tonal variations, inspiring you to new and unexpected compositional ideas. Or simply use a tremolo, flanger or delay that moves in perfect sync to the beat. All the modulation effects you know and love now sync to you. The built-in compression keeps the filter peaks in check, and reverb tops it off.
It’s a sequenceable filter, it’s an amp modeller, and it’s a drum machine… it’s the AdrenaLinn, the new guitar processor from famed designer Roger Linn, best known for his classic drum machines and sequencing workstations.
Roger Linn and Dave Smith had always remained friends often sharing booth space and traveling to trade shows together. In 2011, they worked together and released the Tempest, a product that used Dave Smith’s vast knowledge of analog synthesis and Roger’s passion for drum machines, beat synched effects and sequencing to bring the world a new take on what a drum machine could be.
The Linnstrument Roger Linn and Geert Bevin 2015
The Linnstrument
At the Winter NAMM show in 2014, Roger introduced his newest design, simply called the LinnStrument.
Roger had teamed up with Geert Bevin, who has been a major propropent of MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) and is also a member of the MIDI Association’s Technical Standards Board.
Roger was a guitarist and had always been frustrated with the limitations of MIDI and the fact that MIDI did not seem capable of expressing all the subtleties of expression that were possible with a six strings. Geert had already worked on many expressive controllers like Eigenharp.
Together their goal was nothing short of completely re-inventing the MIDI controller.
MPE created a way to get around some of MIDI 1.0’s limitations by using channel rotation so each note could be assigned its own channel and allowing Channel messages like Pitch Bend, Cutoff to be independently controlled for each voice in the Linnstrument.
In fact, Geert has described MPE as the bridge between MIDI 1.0 and MIDI 2.0 (MIDI 2.0 has Per Note Controllers and Per Note Pitch Bend).
The LinnStrument is velocity sensitive, grid based MIDI controller that senses three dimensions per finger, polyphonically. It is available in two sizes- 8 by 25 (in the case of the original Linnstrument and 8 by 16 in the case of the slightly smaller LinnStrument 128.
Linnstrument firmware engineer and MIDI Association TSB member Geert Bevin
For more information about Roger Linn and Roger Linn Designs, please see these excellent resources.
On May 26, we held the very first MIDI Live! chat with a panel of MPE specialists. We recorded the session and it is here as a podcast. Roger Linn demoed the Linnstrument for us.
Roger Linn forever changed the way people dance! As the inventor of the electronic Linn drum machine, he ushered in the new wave of electronic dance music beginning in the 1980s. The Linn drum machine also brought new meaning to the term “re-mix” and opened up a new era of sampling for club dj’s around the world. Roger worked closely with David Smith and others in the early efforts of MIDI in the 1980s. Roger has since created a host of successful products, including the AdrenaLinn guitar synth, which uses modern technology to bring some of his early concepts into the digital age.
Leon Russell was the noted musician and songwriter who contributed greatly to popular and rock music during his long career. As a studio musician, Leon was active in the development of the Linn Drum Machine having provided Roger Linn with several ideas to create new sounds, such as the hand clap and longer loops. He recorded extensively with other artists and on his own as a solo performer. He was also an award-winning songwriter who penned classic hits for himself as well as many other artists.
Roger Linn’s name may be forever associated with the birth of the first serious, sample-based drum machine in 1979, but now, after years away from instrument design, he’s back with a new guitar-oriented product offering rhythmic filter effects.
Previously dismissed as toys, drum machines soon had sticksmen running scared after the arrival of these two credible, powerful instruments in the early 80s
Tom Oberheim was born in Manhattan, Kansas in 1936.
In junior high school, he started building HiFi amplifiers for friends probably based on the same articles in Popular Mechanics that his contemporaries Bob Moog (1934) and Don Buchla (1937) were reading.
He was also listening to a lot of Jazz music and when he read an ad in Downbeat Magazine about an LA jazz club you could get into at no charge, he made the decision to save enough money to go to LA.
He arrived in LA in July of 1956 with $10 in his pocket.
Of course, he needed to find a job so he applied to be an apprentice draftsman at National Cash Register (NCR). NCR was a very large company at the time (but would soon become the Blockbuster Video of its era).
NCR were experimenting with a new brand new technology, computers. Of course at the time, a computer was not something you put on your lap, it was a room full of large bulky devices. But computers fascinated Tom and he continued to find jobs in the fledgling computer industry in Los Angeles. Tom Oberheim held a variety of part time jobs in LA between 1956 and 1969.
In 1966 he found a job where they would let him work part time and go to school so he enrolled in UCLA.
At UCLA, he started studying physics (like Don Buchla) and he would also spend time in the music department (like Dave Rossum).
That is where he met two people who would change the course of his life.
Joseph Byrd and Dorothy Moskowitz were in a band called “The United States of America” which had made a couple of records. When one of the band members quit and took his Ring Modulator with him, Dorothy asked Tom to make the band a new one.
The experience of designing a Ring Modulator and seeing how musicians used it to create unique tones led to Tom’s fascination with manipulating sound.
Music Modulator & RM-1
The first commercial product that Tom produced was the Music Modulator which was the result of combining Tom’s experiments with ring modulators with other circuitry to create a device that could be used in live performance. This product was used by a number of contemporary musicians including innovative trumpeter Don Ellis, and experimental composer Richard Grayson, who played the units with Tom in improvised live performance concerts. Tom was asked by the acclaimed film composer Leonard Rosenman to provide a ring modulator for an upcoming movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970).
The Music Modulator was also sold by the Chicago Musical Instrument Company (later Norlin Corporation) under the Maestro name as the RM-1.
by Tom Oberheim Website
By 1969, Tom Oberheim was doing contract work designing effects processors for Maestro like the Maestro PS-1A Phase Shifter which was inspired by the Leslie speaker for Hammond organs.
Tom Oberheim Designed Maestro Phase Shifter
Having gotten the bug for the musical instrument industry, at the 1971 NAMM show Tom went to the ARP booth and asked Alan Pearlman if he could become the company’s first Los Angeles dealer for the ARP 2600.
Tom became very familiar with the ARP 2600 and 2500 synthesizers selling them to musicians like Leon Russell, Robert Lamm, and Frank Zappa. It is amazing how all the founders of the modern music production environment were interconnected and we will see more of those interconnections soon.
Tom realized that the ARP 2500 though more difficult to use then the 2600 could play two notes at the same time which the ARP 2600 could not do so he designed a modification to give the ARP 2600 two note polyphony. In those days of modular synthesis, two notes of polyphony was a really big deal.
Tom Oberheim’s practical experience with computer programming led to his next breakthrough product.
Oberheim DS2 Digital Sequencer
The DS2 Digital Sequencer was released in 1973 and was one of the very first digital music sequencers. As it didn’t make any sounds, it was a peripheral to existing modular synths in particular the ARP 2600 that Tom Oberheim was distributing in LA.
Tom Oberheim’s next product the SEM (Synthesizer Expansion Module) would be significant for several reasons.
It was the first Oberheim product to make its own sounds (not process sounds from another source).
It was also the first product to bear the Oberheim name.
Finally it was the first product that was a collaboration with another of the founders of the modern music production environment, Dave Rossum.
All of the pieces were starting to come together.
Using Dave Rossum’s technology for polyphonic keyboard scanning and Tom’s computer programming experience, Oberheim could now build portable polyphonic synthesizers with different modules for different purposes that would work together.
By 1977, Oberheim had released Oberheim 2 Voice, the Oberheim 4 Voice and the optional Programming unit.
You could buy a two Voice or 4 Voice synth with a 2 channel voltage controlled sequencer and if you needed Preset storage for use on stage, you could add a programmer module that would digitally store 16 different sound settings.
Finally there was company offering keyboard players something that had a keyboard, a programmable polyphonic synthesizer with preset program storage and a sequencer in all in one product.
But the design was bulky and each expander module had to be programmed separately unless you had the Programming unit which could only store 16 sounds.
The price was also pretty steep coming in at $5700 ($28,000 in today’s dollars!) with the programmer.
Plus you needed a mixer because each of the expander modules had a seperate audio out.
Soon the competition (Sequential Circuits) would catch up and lead frog everyone with the microprocessor driven, 5 voice polyphonic, programmable Prophet 5.
In ten short years, that same concept would add MIDI, ROM based samples and effects and be called the Korg M1 Music Workstation, but that is a story for another day.
Pictured below is a Oberheim Four Voice with the programmer module from the Horniman Museum
By Oberheim_Four_Voice_at_Horniman_Museum.jpg: Robert Brookderivative work: Shoulder-synth (talk) – Oberheim_Four_Voice_at_Horniman_Museum.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7509844
The Oberheim System (a precursor to MIDI)
In Chapter 5 of the History of MIDI, we look at the precursors to MIDI including Control Voltages and Gates, Roland’s Digital Control Bus (DCB), and the The Oberheim Parallel Bus introduced in 1980.
The Oberheim 37-pin D-SUB connector that allowed the OB-8, The DMX Drum Machine and the DSX Sequencer to connect together into the Oberheim System was one of the inspirations for MIDI and Tom Oberheim was the first person that Ikutaro Kakehachi from Roland reached out to about his dream of a universal digital musical instrument interface.
Only three short years after the Oberheim System was launched, Sequential Circuits and Roland would demonstrate MIDI at the 1983 NAMM show.
Oberheim Corporate History
Oberheim Electronics -1969-1985
Oberheim Electronics released the products listed above as well as the Matrix 12 and Matrix 6 in the early 1980s.
ECC Oberheim & Gibson buys ECC Oberheim -1985
By May 1985, Oberheim Electronics was struggling the company was taken over by Oberheim’s ex lawyer who promptly sold the company to the Gibson Guitar Company.
Two years later, Tom Oberheim departed the company he had founded and filed a lawsuit against his ex-lawyer for legal malpractice.
Marion Systems -1987-2000
In 1987, Oberheim formed Marion Systems (named after his daughter Emily Marion) and did consulting work for Roland and Akai. The company also released the Marion Systems MSR-2, a modular synthesizer concept.
Many musicians recording with their computer find that they need to buy — and wire up — separate mic preamps, guitar preamps and monitor mixers as well as their soundcard. Martin Walker tries out a products that aims to combine all of these elements in one system.
Tom Oberheim returned to hand-building and selling updated SEM synthesizers , but the Oberheim name is still owned by Gibson.
2016- Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim collaborate on the OB-6
Sequential OB6
Tom designed the VCO and VCF sections and Dave provided the arpeggiator/step sequencer, effects and production capabilities. After 30 years, two of the pioneers of modern synthesis were working together to design new products.
2019 -Gibson return the Oberheim Electronics name and other intellectual properties to Tom Oberheim
2022 -Oberheim Electronics reopened and Oberheim OB-X8 released
At the 2022 June NAMM show, Oberheim Electronics showcased the new OB-X8. What was supposed to be a joyous celebration was dampened by the news that just days before the NAMM show, Dave Smith had passed away. This is a picture from 2019 of Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim, Marcus Ryle (an engineer at Oberheim when still in his teens and founder of Line 6) and Roger Linn.
For more information about Tom Oberheim and Oberheim Electronics, please see these excellent resources.
Tom Oberheim is the inventor of the first polyphonic music synthesizer, who played a vital role in the establishment of MIDI standards back in the early 1980s. The Oberheim Company created a long list of innovative products, which remain sought-after as vintage instruments including the Oberheim 4 and 8 Voice instruments. In 1987, after the sale of the Oberheim Company, Tom established Marion Systems and later Seasound. In recent years Tom reissued one of his first products, an analog synthesizer he calls SEM, the Synthesizer Expander Module.
Marcus Ryle began his career in the industry as an engineer for Oberheim while he was still a teenager. In those pre MIDI days, Marcus designed a series of sound controllers as well as providing several modifications to the company’s synthesizers. He later co-founded Fast Forward in 1985 with Michel Doidic, which provided engineering for over 40 of Alesis’ products including ADAT. At the same time, Marcus and his team worked on their own guitar electronics, which eventually became the foundation of their new company, Line 6.
Acknowledgement of the people who made these articles possible
Before we dive into the history of the creation of MIDI, we wanted to acknowledge the key people who made this official history of the birth of MIDI possible.
These are people who were directly involved with the creation of MIDI in its early days. Some of these people have never been appropriately acknowledged for their contributions and that is one of the reasons for creating this detailed history of how MIDI came about.
Also it became clear in the two years of intense research that went into this article, that MIDI was always about connections and not just connections between products, but more importantly connections between people. There is the well known phrase “it takes village” and MIDI is a great example of how that is true. MIDI was not developed by two people or two companies, it was a group of individuals with different backgrounds and motivations who came together to do something for the greater good.
That said, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge several key people who contributed first person resources and interviews to this article.
John Bowen– Head of sound design for Sequential Circuits, Korg R and D and now President of John Bowen Synth Design, maker of the Solaris synthesizer.
John provided insight into the interconnections between Moog and Sequential as well as multiple interviews on the early days of MIDI.
Hideki Izuchi– Roland Engineer from 1979 to his death in 2019
Izuchi-san created a report about the birth of MIDI that was presented in 2018 at the Japan National Museum of Science in Ueno Park, Tokyo. His incredibly detailed 72 page report entitled “Technical Systematic Survey on MIDI” provided much of the information for this article and confirmed many details from the Japanese side about the development of MIDI.
Jeff Rona– Composer and Founder and first President of the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA, now known simply as the MIDI Association)
Jeff provided the MIDI Association access to the very earliest communications of the MIDI Association in its infancy and of course as the very first President of the MIDI Manufacturers Association his contribution (along with Chris Meyer who worked at both Sequential Circuits and Roland and was the first chair of the MMA Technical Standards Board) guided MIDI through its formulative and frankly most turbulent early years.
In researching this article, we realized that the simple story that Roland and Sequential connected a Prophet 600 and a Jupiter 6 together at the 1983 NAMM show and that instantly MIDI became an overnight success was very far from the reality of what was happened between January 1983 and May of 1985 when the MIDI Manufacturers Association was formally created as a non-profit trade association.
Brian Vincek– Vice President at Hewlett-Packard and co-founder of the International MIDI Association
Brian provided access to all of the early files of the International MIDI Association (IMA). Brian and John worked closely in the very early days of MIDI and the IMA was responsible for the distribution of the initial MIDI specification to both MMA companies and individuals. His contributions to the very early days of MIDI were substantial and the files he provided for this article were invaluable.
In researching this article, we realized that the simple story that Roland and Sequential connected a Prophet 600 and a Jupiter 6 together at the 1983 NAMM show and that instantly MIDI became an overnight success was very far from the reality of what was happened between January 1983 and May of 1985 when the MIDI Manufacturers Association was formally created as a non-profit trade association.
Many other people and organizations including NAMM and AMEI provided access to their files and we thank everyone who contributed.
Thanks to those contributions, we believe that this article is the official definitive history of how MIDI got started.
Dave Smith, Bob Moog, Ikutaro Kakehachi, Tom Oberheim
NAMM International Music & Sound Expo Chicago, Illinois June 27-30 1981
Ikutaro Kakehachi, President of Roland first approached Tom Oberheim at the June 1981 Chicago NAMM show about the idea for an international industry standard for communication between synthesizers because Oberheim already had the “Oberheim System”, a proprietary system for connecting the Oberheim DSX sequencer, Oberheim DMX drum machine and either OB-8 or OB-Xa synthesizers.
Tom recommends that the Japanese contact Dave Smith from Sequential Circuits as well.
Sequential and Oberheim meet Los Angeles late summer 1981
Dave Smith first came down to Oberheim’s office in late summer of 1981 to preview his AES paper to Tom and me and discuss if it could be something Oberheim was interested in.
Although we had a parallel interface solution, we were interested in something that could be more affordable and more universal.
The next meeting Dave and I had was with the Japanese manufacturers during the Gakki fair in Tokyo in mid-October.
This was also before the AES show, and the USI proposal had not yet been released, so our meeting was in secret.
At that meeting there were good discussions about the speed (several of us of the opinion that 19.2Kbaud was too slow, etc.), the data messaging format, connector choices (1/4″ vs DIN vs XLR), and ground loop solutions
by Marcus Ryle
Gakki Fair Tokyo, Japan October 15 1981
Dave Smith’s Universal Synthesizer Interface (USI) proposal is discussed at Japan’s Gakki Fair.
Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim and Marcus Ryle met and discussed the proposal with Roland, Yamaha, Korg and Kawai and shared ideas and suggestions.
The Japanese companies agreed to meet about once a month to respond to and improve on Dave Smith’s initial design.
The 2nd Synthesizer Interface Conference Tokyo, Japan October 24, 1981
Mieda-san from Korg responds on behalf of the Japanese companies to the meetings at the 1981 Gakki Fair with Sequential and Oberheim and confirms the discussion that were they had at the Gakki Fair.
19.2kbps is too slow
¼” Jacks will have ground loop problems
There is no concept of synchronization, clock or the ability to start and stop sequences
The response is sent to Dave Smith of Sequential and forwarded to Tom Oberheim and Marcus Ryle.
Audio Engineering Society Los Angeles October 30, 1981
Dave Smith and Chet Woods AES Proposal for a Universal Synthesizer Interface
The Universal Synthesizer Interface is a specification designed to enable inter-connecting synthesizers, sequencers and home computers with an industry-wide standard interface. This is a preliminary specification; comments, criticism, and alternative proposals are welcome. This interface specification has not been tested and would need to be retrofitted to any equipment presently in the field. The interface is basically specified as one-to-one between two units; ie, a synthesizer and a sequencer. Under certain circumstances, however, more units may be placed on a single line.
Authors: Smith, Dave; Wood, Chet Affiliation: Sequential Circuits, Inc., San Jose, CA AES Convention: 70 (October 1981)Paper Number: 1845 Publication Date: October 1, 1981 Subject: Electronic Music and Musical Instruments
by Smith, Dave; Wood, Chet
Dave Smith and Chet Woods present a Universal Synthesizer Interface running at 19.2 kBaud, using regular 1/4″ phone jacks, but there are already on-going discussions about data speed, data format and different choices for connectors.
The 3rd Synthesizer Interface Conference Tokyo, Japan December 24, 1981
The Japanese companies propose some significant changes to USI.
Using a 5 PIN DIN cable or XLR cables (a locking cable was better for on stage use)
Adding a UART with grounding to prevent noise (design by Karl Hirano from Yamaha)
The Yamaha proposal shown in Fig. 3.6 was submitted by Katsuhiko Hirano, who was then Chief of LM Design at Nippon Gakki Co., Ltd. Tetsuo Nishimoto from the same department was in charge of drafting the plan.
The idea is to use an isolator to isolate the ground. A photocoupler is used for the circuit.
Figure 3.6
Roland proposed a slight modification of the hardware design and using a 5 PIN DIN which Roland was already using for DIn Sync although at the time, 5 PIN DIN. connectors were still rare in the US.
Fig. 3.9 Roland’s hardware proposal
Tadao Kikumoto, General Manager of the Roland Osaka Technical Center made suggestions for Tempo, Start, Stop, Forward and Backward messages and also introduced the concepts of Running Status, and Status Bytes and Data Bytes.
All of these were significant additions to the evolving MIDI Specification
Figure 3.10
Roland’s proposal for timing information and channel messages
An alternative specification was presented by some of the Japanese companies which had grown out of their own research.
Whereas the USI was basically content to specify note on/off codes, this new proposal went on to define many more complex operations. It also offered a different data structure, with status and data bytes being flagged by bit 7 O=status, O=data). This greatly simplified the protocol by eliminating all the checks which were otherwise needed to distinguish the data category. With the most significant bit now defined as a “flag,” data is thereby limited to 7 bits, but this is sufficient for most synth data, and when not, can simply be sent as multiple 4–bit nibbles.
by Stanley JungLeib in the Preliminary Prophet 600 Manual
MIDI Gets Its Name Musical Instrument Digital Interface
At around the same time, there were discussions about the name of the new standard. There was concern that Universal Synthesizer Interface might cause some antitrust problems. The Japanese suggested UMI Universal Music Interface (You-Me) and Dave Smith countered with the name we all know today- MIDI or Musical Instrument Digital Interface.
Winter NAMM Anaheim, California Feb 5-7 1982
At the NAMM show in January 1982, a meeting with a number of synth manufacturers (Sequential, Roland, Oberheim, CBS/Rhodes, Yamaha, E-mu, Korg, Music Technology Inc., Kawai, Octave Plateau, Passport Designs, Syntauri and some others. but the companies could not agree on anything. The meeting did not go well. It was the American and European manufacturers who couldn’t agree. Some wanted expensive high data rate connectivity, others didn’t even see the point of an interface and so no consensus was reached and the meeting ended.
But after the meeting, Kakehashi-san from Roland sent Sakai-san to talk to Dave Smith encouraging him not to give up.
Dave explained it all in this 1997 video.
After incorporating changes in response to comments from AES, Smith sent a questionnaire to all manufacturers and industry consultants he could find, asking for their suggestions and any special requirements. There was a strong response to this initiative; some saying, for example, that it would not be possible to do it serially, that a parallel interface was necessary. Others thought the proposed serial speed too fast for operation with home computers. Many other issues were raised.
All respondents were invited to a conference in coincidence with the January, 1982 Western National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention in Anaheim. This meeting was attended by representatives from SCI, Roland, Oberheim, CBS/Rhodes, Yamaha, E-mu, Unicord (Korg), Music Technology Inc., Kawai, Octave Plateau, Passport Designs and Syntauri.
Other manufacturers seemed to be maintaining a “wait-and-see” policy.
by Stanley JungLeib, Prophet 600 Preliminary Manual
Fax Communications between Sequential and Japanese companies July 23, 1982
Sequential was planning on polyphonic synths with more polyphony. The original USI spec had 8 channels and at the time a channel equaled a monophonic voice. So originally the MIDI spec would have only allowed for 8 notes of polyphony.
Dave didn’t really want to tell the Japanese exactly what he was working on, but made some suggestions for improve the spec.
On July 23, 1982, a FAX was sent from Roland (serving as liaison for the Japanese companies) to Sequential Circuits agreed to:
Distinguish between polyphonic and monophonic content
increase the number of channels to 16 channels
Japanese companies agree to every channel being either monophonic or polyphonic and the number of channels is increased to 16. MIDI is finally ready for prime time
Jeff Rona starts working for Roland on MIDI Summer of 1982
I was at a local music store in Hollywood and struck up a casual conversation with a couple of guys from Roland who happened to be there at the time. When I told them what I was doing with synths and desktop computers, they got very excited. Within a couple days I found myself in the office of Tom Beckman, the president of Roland US explaining my work and background. When he asked me if I wanted a job and could I write code for music software. I lied, basically, and said yes. I became a programmer and instrument designer for Roland that day.
by Jeff Rona, MIDI from the Inside
Brian Vincik connects with Sequential Summer of 1982
Brian Vincik, an engineer from Hewlett Packard starts discussions with John Bowen and Sequential about MIDI and starts to form ideas about the International MIDI Association, an organization to promote the idea of MIDI to companies and the public
Bob Moog publicly announced MIDI in Keyboard Magazine November, 1982
In a November 1982 cover interview with Keyboard magazine, Robert Moog announced publicly that Smith and Wood had been working on an invention: MIDI.
What is MIDI? Where did it come from? We offer an overview of MIDI’s early history and its evolution, including discussions of ZIPI, MPDL, OSC, MPE, and MIDI 2.0.
Brian Vincik provided with the MIDI Association with many files and one of the most interesting is the Prophet 600 Preliminary Manual written in December of 1982. It included a MIDI History that was deleted from the actual manual that was shipped with the product.
It is included here both as a PDF and as text which is easier to read.
MIDI HISTORY
Stanley JungJeib, SCI
Introduction
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is a specification which enables manufacturers to design equipment that is basically compatible. This is most beneficial for the owner, whose equipment is thereby protected from obsolesence. As MIDI-compatible equipment is introduced, one will be able to freely choose keyboards, sequencers, and rhythm units from a variety of manufacturers with confidence that they will work together as one programmable system through which complete pieces can be composed and realized.
The problem of instrument compatibility is not new. It can be probably said of any two keyboards, that someone has desired if not actually tried to interconnect them. Keyboard couplers were developed for both pipe organs and harpsichords. In the heyday of electric organ technology this interest occasionally led to the installation of thick cables for wiring keyboards in parallel. The first synthesizers were easier to interface, because of the nature of modular equipment. However modules from different manufacturers might have incompatible control voltage, trigger, gate, and output levels or polarities. These differences have been promulgated in scores of synthesizer, keyboard, and effect devices, ultimately giving rise to an entire industry devoted to modifications and interfacing. And though they provide the best opportunity for interface so far, even microcomputer-based synthesizer equipment has been developed along independent, incompatible lines.
Like many other defacto “standards,” the MIDI has arisen primarily from the activities of those concerned that the incompatibility of current equipment discourages wider availability of the kinds of complex systems which can be envisioned utilizing even current technology. (The S-100 microcomputer buss evolved for similar reasons.) It is more than anything else the advent of the home computer which has forced music manufacturers to finally address the issue of compatibility. For the musician, the keyboard interface to the computer terminal offers the possibility of multi-track sequencing and editing, score display and printing. In this light the usefulness and need for a standard computer keyboard interface is obvious. Only with some such standard can these musical tools be developed.
The following explains how the MIDI specification resulted from this industry-wide consensus. The MIDI specification neither possesses nor claims any authority over equipment design. Rather, it is merely an informal agreement on some simple interface circuitry and the “grammar” of a non-proprietary language which can carry meaningful information between instruments. The incorporation or support of the MIDI facility in a product remains entirely a decision for each manufacturer.
GENERAL
The SCI Digital Interface
SCI first became interested in microcomputer interfacing in conjunction with the design of the Prophet-10 polyphonic synthesizer and its internal polyphonic sequencer. The Prophet and its sequencer each were based on Z-80 microcomputers. To record, as notes were played, every few milliseconds (at a rate set by the sequencer clock), the Prophet would send its complete keyboard “status” to the sequencer. The sequencer had to figure out which notes were going on and off, and record these events in reference to the clock count. On playback, the sequencer computer also sent the complete keyboard status every clock pulse, with events as counted out by the clock. The Prophet would play these notes just as if they came from its own keyboard. later, this sequencer was made available as an accessory for the Prophet-5. The Prophet-5 Remote Keyboard was also developed which used this interface. SCI published the data protocol upon which this interface was based, in the hopes that the programming public would be encouraged to develop their own interfaces for the Prophet-5.
This did not occur, apparently because in being conceived for a specific application, the interface was very fast but too clumsy for general-purpose use. It was criticized as requiring too much programming “overhead,” in the constant transmission of meaningless keyboard information. As a result of this experience, SCI resolved to pursue a more streamlined interface that would be easier for programmers to work with.
The Universal Synthesizer Interface
In the meantime, occasional discussions between the presidents of Sequential Circuits (SCI), Oberheim Electronics, and Roland (Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim and Ikutaroo Kakehashi) also revealed a shared interest in the interface problem and development of an interface widely acceptable to the industry.
Smith then outlined a specification for a “Universal Synthesizer Interface” (USI). It was developed with the assistance of SCI’s Chet Wood and presented at the Fall, 1981 convention of the Audio Engineering Society (AES).
The USI differed markedly from the earlier SCI Digital interface in that rather than being polled at the sequencer clock rate, information was only sent when an event actually occured–for example, a note going on or off. The USI was proposed to be serial, operating at 19.2 kBaud, with TTL levels, and connected through phone jacks.
After incorporating changes in response to comments from AES, Smith sent a questionnaire to all manufacturers and industry consultants he could find, asking for their suggestions and any special requirements. There was a strong response to this initiative; some saying, for example, that it would not be possible to do it serially, that a parallel interface was necessary. Others thought the proposed serial speed too fast for operation with home computers. Many other issues were raised.
All respondents were invited to a conference in coincidence with the January, 1982 Western National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention in Anaheim. This meeting was attended by representatives from SCI, Roland, Oberheim, CBS/Rhodes, Yamaha, E-mu, Unicord (Korg), Music Technology Inc., Kawai, Octave Plateau, Passport Designs and Syntauri.
Other manufacturers seemed to be maintaining a “wait-and-see” policy.
At this meeting the chief changes which occured to the USI were to add optoisolation to prevent audio ground loops, and to increase the speed to 31.25 kBaud.
The Japanese Interface Proposal
Following the USI discussion at Anaheim, an alternative specification was presented by some of the Japanese companies which had grown out of their own research. Whereas the USI was basically content to specify note on/off codes, this new proposal went on to define many more complex operations. It also offered a different data structure, with status and data bytes being flagged by bit 7 O=status, O=data). This greatly simplified the protocol by eliminating all the checks which were otherwise needed to distinguish the data category. With the most significant bit now defined as a “flag,” data is thereby limited to 7 bits, but this is sufficient for most synth data, and when not, can simply be sent as multiple 4–bit nibbles.
The MIDI
After the Anaheim meeting, Smith and Wood integrated the USI and Japanese proposals, forming the first MIDI specification. This was sent to all of the meeting participants but, curiously, provoked no further comment from this continent.
The final document was therefore arrived at after several exchanges between SCI and Roland, which is serving as liason with Yamaha, Korg, and Kawai.
The development of MIDI was first made public by Robert Moog, in his October, 1982 column in KEYBOARD magazine.
In December of 1983, SCI began shipping the Prophet-600, the first commercially available instrument to include the MIDI.
Winter NAMM Anaheim, California Jan 21-23 1983
Here is the iconic picture of the first demonstration of MIDI between a Sequential Circuits 600 and a Roland Jupiter 6.
John Bowen is the person with his back to the camera wearing the red Sequential Circuits jacket.
Dave Smith said that they were not sure if the MIDI demo would work at all, but it did.
He also said he was late to the Roland booth. Security guards didn’t want to let him in because he didn’t have a NAMM property pass.
MIDI is not yet a standard and there is no official specification to share and no standards organization in either Japan or the rest of the world.
But MIDI was about to shake up the world for the next 40 years.
In our next chapter, we will look at the first tumultuous years of MIDI between the winter of 1983 and the Summer NAMM in 1985 when the MIDI Manufacturers Association was established.
Interview with John Bowen Head of Sound Design for Sequential Circuits
In the last chapter of the history of MIDI, we covered the early history of electronic musical instruments, the period from 1900 to 1963.
By the mid 1960’s thanks to the work of Bob Moog, Alan Pearlman and Don Buchla, the concept of electronic Synthesizers, Drum Machines and Music Sequencers was well established.
A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals.
A music sequencer is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling note and performance information.
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns.
To really understand MIDI, we need to explain the way electronic musical instruments were connected together before MIDI.
Analog connections with CV/GATE
Before MIDI, the most common way to interface analog synthesizers was analog connections using CV (Control Voltage) and Gate.
With analog synthesizers, the pitch of the sound is determined by the height of the voltage. This voltage is called CV for control voltage. Whether or not to any sound is emitted is controlled by a voltage called Gate.
By Ashley Pomeroy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83875018
In early modular synthesizers, each synthesizer component (e.g., low frequency oscillation (LFO), voltage controlled filter (VCF), etc.) can be connected to another component by means of a patch cable that transmits voltage.
Changes in that voltage cause changes to one or more parameters of the component.
This frequently involved a keyboard transmitting two types of data (CV and gate), or control modules such as LFOs and envelope generators transmitting CV data:
Control voltage (CV) indicates which note (event) to play: a different voltage for each key pressed; those voltages are typically connected to one or more oscillators, thus producing the different pitches required. Such a method implies that the synthesizer is monophonic. CV can also control parameters such as rate, depth and duration of a control module.
Trigger indicates when a note should start, a pulse that is used to trigger an event, typically an ADSR envelope. In the case of triggering a drum machine, a clock signal or LFO square wave could be employed to signal the next beat. The trigger can be a specific part of an electronic pulse, such as the rising slope of an electronic signal.
Gate is related to a Trigger, but sustains the signal throughout the event. It turns on when the signal goes high, and turns off when the signal goes low.
by Wikipedia
Analog Sequencers
Moog, Buchla and ARP had always included Analog Sequencer Modules in their modular designs.
Within a few years other companies including Roland and Korg were making similar products.
ARP Clocked Sequential Control credit: Alex Ball and jondent
Korg SQ10 Analog Sequencer
Roland System 100 Sequencer
The Challenge with Control Voltages
The problem with Control Voltage was that from the very start there were two different standards.
Volts per octave was popularized by Bob Moog in the 1960s.
One volt represents one octave, so the pitch produced by a voltage of 3 V is one octave lower than that produced by a voltage of 4 V.
Each 1 V octave is divided linearly into 12 semi-tones.
Companies using this CV method included Roland, Moog, Sequential Circuits, Oberheim, ARP and later the Eurorack standard from Doepfer, including more than 7000 modules from at least 316 manufacturers.
This convention typically had control modules carry the source voltage (B+, 5 V) on the ring of a TRS jack, with the processed voltage returning on the tip.
However, other manufacturers have used different implementations with voltages including –5 V to 5 V, 0 V to 5 V, 0 V to 10 V with the B+ possibly on the tip.
Hertz per volt was used by most but not all Korg and Yamaha synthesizers, represents an octave of pitch by doubling voltage, so the pitch represented by 2 V is one octave lower than that represented by 4 V, and one higher than that represented by 1 V.
The two implementations are not completely incompatible.
Connecting a Hz/volt keyboard to a volts/octave synthesizer will produce sound, but it will be completely out of tune.
Of course with voltages it was easy to modify things with a few parts and a soldering iron.
At least one commercial interface has been created to solve the problem, the Korg MS-02 CV/trigger interface.
But these interfaces weren’t really intuitive for musicians and there were a lot of cables involved.
The Roland Micro Composer MC 8
The Roland MC-8 released in 1977 was a seminal product. It was a microprocessor based sequencer that connected to an MC-8 Interface to send out analog voltages. So it it was a hybrid digital and analog system.
It was initially conceived by Ralph Dyck, a Canadian composer and Roland System 100 user.
Ralph went his his local Roland dealer in Canada who introduced him to Ikutaro Kakehachi, the President of Roland.
Kakehachi got Roland engineer Yukio Tamada involved who made the Micro Composer capable of multi-tracking (allowing multiple parts to be played simultaneously). The MC-8 could play eight notes at the same time so it was capable of complex chords.
Tamada-san also integrated the so-called ST/GT method -Step Time for sound length and Gate Time for note length.
This ST/GT concept was later adopted by other Japanese manufacturers.
The Microcomposer is also significant in the development of music production concepts because it was also the first time that a Time Base with resolution of a quarter note was introduced into the world of modular synths.
Many of the ideas that were developed for the Micro Composer would find their way into an industry standard musical digital interface that was on the horizon.
Ralph Dyck’s studio in 1977 with MC8 and Studio 100
Ralph Dyck and his son, Jeff in Japan with Ikutaro Kakehachi, President of Roland
Roland Synth Offices in Japan in 1976
Interview from the Vintage Roland MC-8 Sequencer Archive
In the late 1970s, musicians certainly had virtually no background in computers. What sort of reaction did they have to the “music by numbers” method of programming the MC-8?
Ralph Dyck: They didn’t like it much except Tomita and Steve Porcaro and Suzanne Ciani. Steve Porcaro did a lot of musically interesting parts with it.
When was the last time you worked with an MC-8, and what sort of production was it?
I think that the last time I used an MC-8 was with Toto, maybe for their album ‘Turn Back’.
The Oberheim System- OB-8, DMX and DSX
Marcus Ryle (who would later design the Alesis ADAT and then go on to found Line 6) was just 19 years old when he got a job at Oberheim in 1980.
He had been studying at UC Santa Dominguez Hills because they had just installed a recording studio with a synthesizer. Tom Oberheim came as a guest lecturer to the college and after a long conversation with Marcus hired him to work at Oberheim alongside Tom and JL Cooper.
Oberheim had just come out with the OBXa which had a 37 pin D-Sub connector with a parallel bus. Soon Marcus was working on the design for the DSX Sequencer.
By connecting an Oberheim polyphonic synth to a DSX and the DMX Drum Machine, you had a complete music system.
The heart of this system is the DSX sequencer which can control the whole family of Oberheim polyphonics – the OB-X, the OB-Xa and the latest model, the OB-8 via a computer interface. It also has 8 separate CV and gate outputs to control up to 8 analogue synths of the 1 volt per octave variety. It has a capacity of 6,000 notes and is capable of 16-voice polyphony. It can store up to 10 sequences at any one time and there is cassette storage for building up a repertoire of sequences. Each individual sequence can be independently recorded over 10 tracks and there are two recording modes: Real Time (with a 1/192 note resolution) or Quantize which will auto-correct your playing to ½ note (minimum) maximum or 1/32 note (demi-semiquaver) minimum. There is also a programmable metronome with an internal speaker.
by Paul Wiffen for Electronics & Music Maker, Future Publishing
You can even see by the back panel of a DSX Sequencer how intimidating musical instrument interfacing could be in the early 1980s.
Here is a recording from 1983 of what was possible with the Oberheim System.
DCB- Roland’s Digital Communications Bus
Roland’s DCB (Digital Communication Bus was a proprietary data interchange interface by Roland Corporation, developed in 1981 and introduced in 1982 in their Roland Juno-60 and Roland Jupiter-8 products. DCB only provide note on/off, program change and VCF/VCA controls. The DCB interface was made in 2 variants, the earlier one used 20-pin sockets and cables, later switching to the 14-pin Amphenol DDK connector vaguely resembling a parallel port.
The DCB was a Serial Interface that ran at 31.25Kbps the same rate as MIDI over 5 Pin Din.
Roland Juno 60 with DCB
Jupiter 8 with DCB
Roland Din Sync
To synchronize their sequencers and rhythm machines Roland developed a proprietary for syncing using a 5 PIN DIN Connector
In 1981, the stage is set for the MIDI revolution
By 1981, multiple companies were working on proprietary digital interface standards including Oberheim, Sequential Circuits, Roland and Yamaha.
But several companies were already starting to worry about the problems these proprietary standards would create.
Customers would be forced to choose one company’s system and be locked into only one way of making music or they would have to spend lots of money on interface convertors to connect gear from different manufacturers together.
A couple of companies started to dream about a universal standard for synthesizers and music production.
In the next chapter of MIDI history, we will finally to tell the full story of how MIDI got started, who helped to make it happen and the challenges that MIDI faced in its early days between 1981 and 1985.
Dave Rossum is another one of the founders of the modern music production ecosystem and had a unique relationship with several other key synth figures including Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim.
In fact, it was core technologies that Dave developed that allowed Oberheim and Sequential Circuits polyphonic synthesizers to be developed in the 1970s.
Dave was born in 1948 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. He “dropped out of high school” to attend California Institute of Technology and graduated in 1970 with a degree in biology.
After he graduated from college, he moved to Santa Cruz, Ca to study at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) with the intention of getting a PhD.
His molecular biology professor, Dr Harry Knoller, was also an accomplished musician and had heard that UCSC had just received a new musical instrument, a Moog Model 12 synthesizer.
In his 2022 Synthplex presentation presented below, Dave described what happened next.
This was the moment when God took me by the nose and said “Over here, Dave”
by Dave Rossum on unpacking a Moog Model 12 synth at USSC in 1970.
Dave Rossum’s talk about the history of EMU at Synthplex 2022
If there is one definitive source about the history of EMU, this is it.
Special thanks to Michael Lehman Boddiker and Synthplex for arranging and recording Dave’s amazing presentation about his impact on the history of modern synthesizers.
In 1971, Dave and two of his friends from Cal Tech, Steve Gabriel and Jim Ketcham, formed E-mu Systems with the mission to build their own modular synths.
They were soon joined by Scott Wedge, who would eventually become president of EMU.
Legend has it that Dave and Scott flipped a coin and Scott lost so Dave became CTO and Scott became President.
EMU started building their own modular synths like the one pictured below.
EMU Modular Synthesizer
EMU also developed several core technologies that were instrumental (pun intended) in getting some other notable synth companies off the ground.
EMU designed and patented a digitally scanned polyphonic keyboard that was licensed by both Oberheim for the Oberheim 4-Voice and 8-Voice synthesizers and by Sequential Circuits for the Prophet 5.
EMU also worked with Solid State Micro Technology for Music (SSM) in designing chips that were used by many synth companies at that time.
1978 Data Sheets for EMU/SSM chips
The Emulator Sampling Keyboard is born
In 1979, Dave and Scott saw the Fairlight CMI and LM-1 from Roger Linn at the NAMM show. They both realized the potential for sample based instruments and the advantages that EMU had in being able to design their own chips.
According to some sources, there was discussion about licencing the Emulator technology to Sequential Circuits. However at around the same time, Sequential decided to stop paying royalties for the EMU keyboard scanning chip. This lead to a dispute between the two companies and also forced EMU to come out with the Emulator on their own.
This proved to be a wise decision on EMU’s part because the Emulator line of sampling keyboards-
Emulator (1981)
Emulator II (1984)
Emulator III (1987)
Emulator IV (1994)
set the direction for the company for the next ten years.
The list of artists that used the Emulator samplers is too large, but here is a summary from Wikipedia.
The Emulator II was popular with many musicians in the 1980s, such as early adopter Stevie Wonder, and was used extensively by Front 242, Depeche Mode, 808 State (on their 1989 album Ninety) New Order, ABC, Genesis, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Herbie Hancock, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, Yes, OMD, Stevie Nicks, Mr. Mister, and many more. The list is far from complete however as it became the staple sampler of just about every recording studio that could afford one in the 1980s, and thus was used on a multitude of albums at the time.
It even featured in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, where Ferris uses the Emulator II to play sounds of coughing and sneezing in order to feign illness on the phone.
by Wikipedia
The overall impact of the Emulator sampler on the history of synthesizers can’t be underestimated as it soon led to sample based instruments with samples stored in ROM memory that included Ensoniq products, the Roland D-50, the Korg M1 and many, many more products including sample based software and hardware products that are still sold today.
EMU Drum Machines
EMU released the first affordable ($999) drum machine with ROM based samples in 1983 (right on the cusp of the MIDI revolution).
They followed up with the SP-12 in 1985 which allowed users to create their own samples. The SP-12 was based on the Emulator ( and even had some parts that were interchangeable). The SP12 was also help start the trend of integrating sampling and sequencing together. This combination being able to create your own sounds and then sequence them helped fuel the hip hop revolution that was starting to happen right around the same time.
In fact, the SP-1200 (the 1987 follow up to the SP-12 with more sampling and sequencing memory (and MIDI) is considered one of the most influential products in the history of Hip Hop.
EMU and Creative Labs
In 1993, E-mu was acquired by Creative Technology, the Singaporean company that was focused on computer sound cards (with MIDI interfaces, of course). Products like the Creative Wave Blaster II and Sound Blaster AWE32 used the EMU8000 effect processor.
Also in 1990s, E-mu made many different sound modules based on the Proteus series which were rackmount MIDI tone generators. In 1998, Creative Technologies merged Ensoniq, another American synthesizer company they had acquired together with EMU.
From the late 1990s to 2011, Creative Labs continued to build sound cards using EMU technology. However Creative was in the brutally competitive, low margin business of PC peripherals. There were lawsuits with other companies (notably Aureal and Apple) which drained resources. As well the market for hardware peripherals shrank as computers became more powerful and software synthesis became more dominant.
In 2011, Creative Technologies shut down EMU.
Creative Technologies still sells products under the Soundblaster name.
The Sound Blaster product range has an audio upgrade solution – internal and external—for every setup. Don’t stop at stunning visuals. Redefine your audio experience with Sound Blaster.
Fortunately Dave Rossum’s contributions to the world of synthesizers didn’t end with Creative Technologies.
In 2015, Dave formed Rossum Electro Music and started creating new synthesizer products.
Some of these products go back to his early roots and take advantage of the renewed interest in modular synths created by the EuroRack format.
Other products are reissues of some of the most famous EMU products like the SP1200.
Like Alan Pearlman, Bob Moog, Don Buchla, Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Roger Linn, Tom Oberheim, and Tsutomu Katoh, Dave Rossum’s impact on the modern music production environment is not relegated to the past, but continues to evolve and shape the future of the way people make music.
From more information about Dave Rossum, EMU, and Rossum Electro, check out these excellent resources
Rossum Electro-Music creates uniquely powerful tools for electronic music production. Driven by the creative and technological vision of electronic music pioneer Dave Rossum, Rossum Electro-Music is the culmination of Dave’s 50 years of designing industry-defining instruments and transformative technologies.
A number of hi-tech music manufacturers are celebrating important anniversaries this year and next year. In the first of several articles on these companies, we look at the milestone products made by Emu, who drove the sampling revolution in the ’80s.
E-Mu Mastermind Dave Rossum belongs with Bob Moog, Alan Pearlman, Don Buchla and Tom Oberheim to the most important pioneers of American synthesizer-developers.
Dave Rossum and Scott Wedge attended college together and soon developed a few clever ways of combining their engineering training with their passion for music. They began creating sound controllers for the boom of synthesizers hitting the market in the 1970s. While supplying a growing number of electronic instrument companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, they decided to form their own company, E-mu. E-mu has been described as one of the cornerstone organizations that pioneered a number of products critical to the growth of electronic musical instruments – a list much too long for this bio.
Alan Robert Pearlman was born in 1925 (9 years before Bob Moog and 12 years before Don Buchla although he would outlive them both) and grew up in New York City.
Like many electronics buffs in the mid 20th century, he grew up making radios out of kits and schematics from Popular Mechanics.
He attended Worcester PolyTechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Ma. It’s perhaps an odd coincidence, but Tom White (former MIDI Association President) and Pete Brown (current MIDI Association Executive Board Chair representing Microsoft) both attended WPI and current MIDI Association president Athan Billias grew up in Worcester.
Like Don Buchla, Pearlman did engineering work for NASA where he designed amplifiers for the Gemini and Apollo space programs.
Then in 1969, he founded ARP (based on his initials and the nickname he had as a kid growing up) and soon started producing the ARP 2500 modular synthesizer.
The Arp 2500
ARP 2500 photo From Alan Pearlman Foundation website
The ARP 2500 had two important differences from Moog and Buchla modular synths.
Instead of patch chords, the 2500 used a set of matrix switches to make connections between modules.
Perhaps even more importantly, Pearlman had found a way to solve a fundamental problem with the other modular synths. Because of their design, Moog and Buchla synths were sensitive to temperature (and changes in line voltage). Pearlman had a lot of experience in designing Op Amps from his time at NASA and he explained his solution to the problem which was to use dual transistors on a single integrated circuit.
“Bob Moog came up with a generator for logarithmic function and exponential function in different locations. They were not at the same temperature and would drift apart and get out of tune with each other. I saw papers by other engineers which showed means of stabilizing these functions by building constant temperature devices. It was much easier to simply put them at the same chip.”
by Alan Pearlman
Synthesizers take center stage in the 1970s
By the early 70s, there were a lot of famous bands that were using synthesizers. Rock bands like the Who were using the ARP 2500 on albums like Quadrophrenia and Tommy. Keyboard players from a variety of genres were expanding their sonic palette.
A great example of what was possible with a monophonic modular synthesizers is Elton John’s 1973 release “Funeral For A Friend”. The extended intro that song was created by the sound engineer on the album David Hentschel.
The way I used to work was to write charts out and then play monophonic parts on the ARP so I could play with one hand and adjust the gain and so on at the same time, to give it more dynamics. Playing polyphonically on analogue synths can give rather flat results. You don’t get any sense of movement. But if you write the parts out and then play them monophonically, then you get a lot more control.
by David Hentschel
The ARP 2600
In 1971, ARP released the ARP 2600 which had some significant improvements to the 2500’s design. The 2600 could use both patch chords and had matrix switches. The patch chords gave more possibilities, but the 2600 could be used without patch chords which made it easier to use on stage.
Another advance which would prove prophetic was to separate the keyboard and allow the keyboard to connected remotely to the modular synth by cable (just as MIDI would allow for remote keyboard and sound modules a few years later.
Edgar Winter figured out that he could put a guitar strap on the remote keyboard for the 2600 and wear like a guitar inventing the “Keytar”.
Edgar Winter and his ARP2600 used on “Frankenstein”
Arp Synths have a Close Encounter with Hollywood
The ARP 2500 in the 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”
In 1977, not only were the sounds of the ARP 2500 featured in Steven Spielberg’s film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, but the 2500 itself and even ARP Instruments’ VP of engineering Phil Dodds (pictured here as the operator) were in the film.
ARP and Artists
ARP was one of the first companies to successfully use artists in magazine advertisements to promote synthesizers.
Artists including The Who, Stevie Wonder, Joe Zawinul, George Duke, Herbie Hancock and many others were featured in ARP ads.
It’s also important to point out that the Arp Soloist pictured above was one of the first synths to feature Presets.
ARP Corporate History
ARP was founded in 1969, by Alan Pearlman with $100,000 of his own money and support from a small group of investors.
ARP went public in 1973 and the company’s annual sales reached $7 million in 1977.
However the company invested heavily in the development of the the Avatar guitar synthesizer. Increased competition and falling sales figures led to a financial crisis and the company was liquidated in 1981.
Alan Pearlman passed away in Pearlman died on January 5, 2019, at the age of 93.
There have been many softsynth recreations of ARP synthesizers, but the TimewARP 2600 software re-creation of the ARP 2600 is the only software re-creation that Pearlman himself endorsed.
Recently Korg released reissues of several ARP products so ARP products live on.
His daughter, Dina R. Alcalay Pearlman established the Alan R Pearlman Foundation with the mission to celebrate the legacy of inventor, musician, entrepreneur and engineer Alan R. Pearlman, by making his innovative inventions publicly accessible, and inspiring future generations to imagine and create.
For more information about ARP, please check out the following links.
The fascinating story of an analog synths company and the instruments that made music history. Music by The Who, Elton John, Genesis, Weather Report, Frank Zappa.
Alan R. Pearlman was nicknamed “ARP” as a kid growing up in New York City, so it seemed the perfect name for a company when he was later designing electronic musical instruments. The first instrument created by Alan was the modular synthesizer known as the ARP 2500. The monophonic product was released years after the first Moog and Buchla instruments, but gained attention for several new features including the ever-popular function of not drifting out of tune, which was a common problem in the earlier products. Next came the now classic ARP 2600, and soon the company became a great leader in the growth and development of the electronic musical market.
At almost the exact same time that Bob Moog was starting to make modular synths on the East Coast, Don Buchla was starting to make modular synths on the West Coast at the San Francisco Tape Music Center.
Buchla was born in Southern California in 1937 and studied physics and music at UC Berkeley graduating with as a physic major in 1959.
He after graduation in the early 1960s, he worked on engineering projects for the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (“Rad Lab”), NASA, and the California School for the Blind. As mentioned in other articles, Dave Smith and Brian Vincik first jobs were in the aerospace industry.
His first modular synth was commissioned by Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick in 1963 with a $500 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Although the Moog and the Buchla 100 series Modular Electronic Music System were both modular synths, they were very different.
In fact, if you going to use one word to describe Don, different would probably be the right one.
His approach to oscillators was vastly different than Moog’s. He focused on more complex waveforms and methods for generating then then simple sawtooths, sines and triangles.
In fact, Don did not like to call his products “synthesizers’ because to him that implied that they were trying to synthetically recreate existing instruments. Instead true to the experimental background of composers like Subotnick and Rame, Buchla focused on creating new as yet unheard of sounds sounds and new a unique ways of controlling them.
buchla100 photo from 120years
Even the nomenclature used for Buchla’s modular components is unique, yet appropriately descriptive. Rather than an oscillator, filter, amplifier, and sequencer, Buchla’s instruments have a Complex Waveform Generator, a Multiple Arbitrary Function Generator, a Source of Uncertainty, a Quad Dynamics Manager, and so on.
by Buchla US Website
Buchla favored Touchplates over traditional keys
From the very beginning, Don Buchla had a design philosophy that made his products unique. He used capacitive Touchplates instead of standard keys. The advantage of Touchplates is that they provide a second dimension of expression. You can slide your finger up and down on the keys and generate control signals.
Don Buchla was a master at designing control interfaces. Every control based module was designed in a way that would challenge the musician to think outside the box. While he was not against standard keyboards, as most people theorize, he felt that the keyboard commanded the performer to think within a certain set of preconceived motions. The touchplate that we all know and love was originally based on an invention of Don’s from his days as a freelance engineer working for NASA; they were installed as fuel sensors in rocket fuel tanks.
by https://www.memsproject.info/
TouchPlate Image from https://www.memsproject.info/
If you had any doubt????
If you had any doubt that Don Buchla had a different approach to sound, synthesis and life in general, please read a bit of this advertisement (?) , manual (?), prayer (?) or perhaps just refreshingly crisp word salad copied from the Buchla US website.
In fact, it’s well documented that Don Buchla was well connected with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Below is a picture of the Buchla Box that was used a PA and effects system at Trips Festivals.
It’s no mystery that Don was a known participant at the Trips Festivals in San Francisco, often helping with the sound and music aspects of the festival. The San Francisco Tape Music Center system was hauled to the festivals and used as a central nervous system/public address station where the MC could manipulate sound and address the audience with modulated voice and psychedelic effects to enhance the audio-visual experience.
by https://www.memsproject.info/
The Buchla 700 -Don’s first MIDI synth
Buchla 700 with Touchplates from VintageSynth.com
The Buchla 700 was a digital synth made by Don Buchla in 1987 and it had tons of MIDI control, a display with graphics and the classic Touchplates that Don is well known for.
Don was always looking to innovate to provide original tools for live artistic expression and by the late 1980s Don recognized the lack of original interfaces in the market and focused on designing unique and different MIDI controllers.
Don’s controllers fully exploited the possibilities of MIDI: Thunder read location and pressure of the fingers mapped to an ergonomic and artistic layout, the Lightning interprets gestures by 2 independent wireless wands, and the Marimba Lumina sees the strikes and location of 4 independent mallets.
All three could be programmed turn its recognized gestures into almost any combination of MIDI notes and controllers. And those three are only include a partial list of the controller ideas that were being worked on.
Don was always inventive and never stopped exploring.
Buchla Lightning Wand MIDI Controller
Buchla Thunder
Buchla Marimba Lunima- Copyright Joel Davel
For more information on Don Buchla, please check out the following websites
Alongside Bob Moog, Don Buchla is one of the founding fathers of synthesis, and yet much less is known of him and his instruments. With this two-part review of Buchla’s latest synth, and a history of some of his pioneering work, we hope to redress the balance…
Don Buchla grew up with a passion for music and a passion for engineering. When he combined the two loves, he created electronic musical instruments the world had never dreamed of before. His early
If you were forced to pick one single person who is responsible for the creation of the modern music production environment, Bob Moog would be a good choice.
He spans the era from the early days of synths to the post MIDI world and is arguably the most influential figure in synth history.
In researching the early beginnings of MIDI, we kept being surprised at how many times Bob’s name came up. But that is for a future chapter in the History of MIDI.
For now let’s focus on what Bob Moog was designing in the 1950s,1960s and 1970s.
Bob was born in 1934 in Queens, New York. His father was an engineer at Consolidated Edison. As young boy, he was fascinated by the Theremin.
At the age 14 in 1949, he built his first Theremin from plans published in the electronics magazine Wireless World (now Electronics World).
By the age of 19, he had started his first company RA Moog and was selling Theremins and Theremin kits based on his own design which used transistors. One of his customers was Raymond Scott. You can learn more about Raymond Scott and other early synths before 1963 including the Theremin by following the link below.
The first electronic musical instruments As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, the Theremin and the Hammond
In 1963, Robert Moog published what is one of the most influential AES papers every released- Voltage-Controlled Music Modules.
In this incredibly short and concise 9 page paper, Bob lays out the foundation for millions of synthesizers that came after and many that are still popular today.
He describes seminal ideas and schematic diagrams for a Voltage Controlled Oscillator, Voltage Controlled Low Pass, Band Pass and Hi Pass Filters and the simple control mechanisms for playing notes on a keyboard.
The motivation of the present work is the premise that the electronic music composer will benefit having at his disposal a sound apparatus which he can easily understand, quickly set up, and “play” spontaneously, more in the manner of a conventional musical instrument than of a code-controlled apparatus. (This premise has yet to be tested at length).
The system to be described consists of (a) voltage-controlled signal generating and processing modules and (b) a variety of transducers designed to produce voltages proportional to the position, velocity, and force of the musician’s hands. Particular stress has been placed on attaining a linear variation of the properties of the modules with respect to the control voltage’s magnitude, a feature which enables the modules to be programmed according to simple rules.
CONCLUSION
A group of basic audio signal generating, amplifying, and filtering modules has been described, The salient variable of each module is proportional to a control voltage over a range wide enough to insure utility in the production of electronic music. Specialized modules, such as noise generators and ring modulators, can obviously be used with the basic modules.
Several control transducers, patterned after the control mechanisms of conventional musical instruments, have been used for the sake of expediency.
The simple and predictable relation between the applied control voltage and the salient variable of each of these modules suggests their application in fields other than electronic music production. In particular, the setting up of prototype experimental electronic musical instruments, and the remote-control processing of conventional audio signals are ideal applications for the voltage-controlled modules.
by Bob Moog, AES Paper 1964
Bob Moog, AES Paper 1964
Soon with the help of composer Herb Deutsch, Bob was selling soon Moog Modular synths to rock stars and studios.
Perhaps the one album that brought the synthesizer to mainstream worldwide attention was Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach released in 1968. Suddenly everybody new two new words -Moog and Synthesizer.
By the late 1960s, it was adopted by rock and pop acts including the Beatles, the Doors, the Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones. Progressive Rock acts like Yes, Tangerine Dream, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer made it even more popular.
Courtesy of Moog Music Website
Moog soon added a new module to his Moog Modular synths. The Moog 960 Sequential Controller, a Sequential Sequencer which provided a bank of 8 control voltages that could be used for any purposes including playing back a set of notes with pre-determined pitches. This was one of the first portable music sequencers.
The Moog 960 Sequential Controller
The Mini Moog- the first portable and affordable synth
Photo by Andrew Russeth
The Minimoog is an amazing story, partly because it highlights something well known about Robert Moog.
He was a brilliant inventor, but not a great businessman. He pursued the development of his synthesizer as a hobby and admitted when he started the business he no idea what a balance sheet was.
The Minimoog was developed as a side project by Moog engineer Bill Hemsath and Moog staff in 1970 who were afraid they were going to lose their jobs. At first, Bob Moog even opposed its development.
But he relented and the Minimoog became a huge success and it was the very first synthesizer sold in retail music stores.
It became an instant hit because it allowed keyboard players to finally compete with guitarists in taking solos.
Corporate History of Moog Music
Here is a brief summary of the history of Moog products
1953-1971 RA Moog Company
Bob Moog founded RA Moog company at the age of 19 and started by selling Theremins and Theremin Kits.
The company expanded and started creating modular synths in 1964. However these large modular synths were mainly used in recording studios and universities so had a limited market. Between 1953 and 1971, the company was only profitable in the year after the release of “Switched On Bach” in 1968 and ran deeply into debt.
1971-1973 muSonics, then Moog Music Inc.
As a result of the debt, in 1971 Bill Waytena, owner of a company called muSonics bought Moog Music from Bob Moog in 1970.
Waytena had created Musonics with the dream that he could market synthesizers as a home entertainment products. It is a cautionary tale repeated over and over again in the musical instrument industry when companies try to move from the professional musicians market to a broader consumer market and overreach their resources.
1973- Moog Music Inc is purchased by Norlin Music
Norlin Music started in 1920 as Chicago Music Instruments company, the musical instruments distributors that owned the majority of shares of Gibson guitars and Lowrey organs. In 1969, Chicago Music Instruments was acquired by ECL, a South American beer and cement company and the two companies were merged under the name, Norlin.
1977- Bob Moog leaves Moog Music to found Big Briar
1978–1987 Mismanagement by Norlin and competition lead to Moog Music’s bankruptcy
Between 1978 and 1987, Moog Music came out with many products, but none achieved the success of the Minimoog.
The company (Norlin) started to do contract engineering work including subway repair systems, air conditioning systems and even an air hockey table.
Leave to it to two Harvard Business School graduates to take an iconic musical instrument brand and turn it into an air hockey table.
The new company was renamed Norlin Corp (a portmanteau of the names Norton Stevens of ECL and Arnold Berlin of CMI; Arnold Berlin, Maurice’ son, and Norton Stevens were friends and classmates at the Harvard Business School).
by Wikipedia
Big Briar 1977-2022
After leaving Norlin Music in 1977, Bob moved his family to just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. He then started experimenting and designing new products under the Big Briar name.
Pictured here are the 100 Series keyboard controller featuring XY Touch Sensitive keys, the 300 Series XY Touch Pad and a Big Briar Theremin like controller.
Bob Moog and Big Briar continued to develop products including a the Ethervox MIDI Theremin in 1998 and a series of pedals including the MoogerFooger low pass filter.
2002 – Bob wins a Technical Grammy and gets back the Moog Music name
2022 was a very special year for Bob because he won a Technical Grammy and because he was able back the rights to Moog Music name and logo.
Robert Moog Technical Grammy 2002
Moog Music Logo
2005 Dr. Robert Moog passes away at age 71
2006 Bob Moog Foundation is founded
Bob Moog’s impact on the development of MIDI
In upcoming chapters of the history of MIDI, we’ll document how Robert Moog was involved with the development of MIDI in some unique and important ways.
But first, we are planning a series of articles on the founders of the modern music production environment with articles about Alan Pearlman, Don Buchla, Dave Smith, Dave Rossum, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Roger Linn, Tom Oberheim, and Tsutomu Katoh.
However, it seemed fitting to start our series of articles with Dr. Robert Moog for all he did for anyone who has every enjoyed playing synths and creating sounds.
For more information on Bob Moog, please visit the following websites
The Bob Moog Foundation, a small 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, carries Bob’s legacy forward to future generations. INNOVATE, INSPIRE, IGNITE CREATIVITY
Bob Moog’s name is forever associated with the synthesizer — but why? We take a trip back in time to explain the story of the man and the modular systems that provided the basis for nearly all modern synths.
Dr. Robert Moog was the father of the synthesizer and perhaps the best-known promoter of the Theremin and electronic music. When he passed away in 2005 after a short illness, he was eulogized as an inventor and lover of music. When his Modular Moog was introduced in 1965, followed by the Minimoog in 1969, he forever changed the range of tone in modern music, and many would say its attitude as well. The synthesizer celebrated the two things Bob loved most, electronics and music. Before Bob, the idea of electronic music was toy like; today, it is a way of life.
The Register posted an article today about Firefox supporting Web MIDI.
MIDI was created by a small group of American and Japanese synthesiser makers. Before it, you could hook synths, drum machines and sequences together, but only through analogue voltages and pulses. Making, recording and especially touring electronic music was messy, drifty and time-consuming. MIDI made all that plug-and-play, and in particular let $500 personal computers take on many of the roles of $500/day recording studios; you could play each line of a score into a sequencer program, edit it, copy it, loop it, and send it back out with other lines.
Home taping never killed music, but home MIDI democratised it. Big beat, rave, house, IDM, jungle, if you’ve shaken your booty to a big shiny beat any time in the last forty years, MIDI brought the funk.
It’s had a similar impact in every musical genre, including film and gaming music, and contemporary classical. Composers of all of the above depend on digital audio workstations, which marshall multiple tracks of synthesised and sampled music, virtual orchestras all defined by MIDI sequences. If you want humans to sing it or play it on instruments made of wood, brass, string and skins, send the MIDI file to a scoring program and print it out for the wetware API. Or send it out to e-ink displays, MIDI doesn’t care.
By now, it doesn’t much matter what genre you consider, MIDI is the ethernet of musical culture, its bridge into the digital.
The Register Post was inspired by this Tweet from the BBC Archives.
#OnThisDay 1984: Tomorrow’s World had instruments that sounded exactly like different instruments, thanks to the magic of microprocessors. pic.twitter.com/wbhm14WakD
Some of you may be aware that Don Lewis passed away the week of Nov 7, 2022. Don was a synthesis pioneer who created a hardware platform for controlling banks of Synthesizers (Oberheim, Arp 2600s) prior to MIDI, which he called LEO (Live Electronic Orchestra). Mr. Kakehashi of Roland worked with Don starting in 1969 and credits him as an inspiration for what became MIDI 1.0. I asked his wife Julie Lews if she had some thoughts about what Don would want MIDI Association Members to know about him. Here are her thoughts.
Don was often thinking about things that others couldn’t or didn’t want to think about because he was always pushing the envelope especially when he was beta testing new products. It seemed like he always was asking “what if” and reaching for more. Mr. Kakehashi loved his free thinking but was always trying to rein him in when it came to market products understanding the average musician didn’t need so much.
Regarding MIDI, Mr. Kakehashi came to the dedication when LEO first went to the NAMM Museum of Making Music in 2001. In an interview with the museum he said that “Don Lewis was the inspiration for MIDI.” He and Don had been collaborating since 1969. Don conceived of LEO and drew plans in 1974 and in 1977 the components of LEO were physically interfaced by Richard Bates over the course of 3 months in Denver. Mr. K met LEO probably in early 1979 and afterwards made frequent trips to San Francisco with his engineers to take in the magnitude of what Don had accomplished with creating “central controller” keyboards for the ARP 2600’s, the Oberheim SEMs, the Hammond Concorde, effects and even more powerful the ability to mix everything on the controller panel. The Promars on the bass pedals and the huge role of the JP-4 were the toppers to the setup. When David Smith and Ikutaro Kakehashi received the Grammy for MIDI, Mr. K called Don and invited him to be at his side for the events as he credited Don with having given him the vision. At the last minute, due to health concerns, Mr. K couldn’t make the trip and sent his son Ikuo to receive the Grammy on his behalf. Ikuo told Don that in Japanese part of their family name “hashi” meant “bridge” and that their family considered Don to be a “hashi.” Mr. Kakehashi talks about this in the documentary, “Don Lewis and the Live Electronic Orchestra.” donlewisleo.com
When FM hit the scene and Don was brought into Yamaha for sound design and presentations, one of his big accomplishments was to create an excerpt from the Saint-Saens Symphony #3 final movement (minus the organ which he played live during the performance) for the 1985 presentation to the dealer network. He did it on the QX-1 and the TX-816 and it took several months to enter the score using both real and step time. Although Don seldom performed live with sequencing, this was a huge accomplishment that showcased a new power of MIDI for sequencing and recording. Gary Leuenberger also created sequences for the show and they played live on top. The Yamaha engineers were blown away with tears in their eyes and said they had never dreamed their products could do all this. It was an incredibly exciting time when the power of MIDI was coming to light. Don did a lot of recording and exploration with Jim Miller’s program, Personal Composer, being used by Yamaha in the early days.
Hans Zimmer is one of the most famous and prolific film composer in the world.
He has composed music for over 150 films including blockbusters like The Lion King, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, the Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk.
In a recent interview with Ben Rogerson from MusicRadar, this is what he said about MIDI.
MIDI is one of the most stable computer protocols ever written.
MIDI saved my life, I come from the days of the Roland MicroComposer, typing numbers, and dealing with Control Voltages. I was really happy when I managed to have eight tracks of sequencer going. From the word go, I thought MIDI was fabulous.
by Hans Zimmer for MusicRadar
To read the whole article, click on the link below
In April 2020, the United States Library of Congress selected MIDI.org for inclusion in the historic collection of Internet materials related to the Professional Organizations for Performing Arts Web Archive.
But in 2022, MIDI went mainstream as a question on Jeopardy and one of three contestants got the answer right.
It’s with great sadness that we announce that Dave Smith has passed away
The MIDI Association wouldn’t exist without Dave’s contributions to MIDI, but having known Dave for over 30 years and worked closely with him at Korg (and also in getting the Sequential name back when I was a Yamaha), he was also not actually a big fan of being called the “Father of MIDI”. He knew how many different people had contributed to MIDI and felt almost embarrassed by the role that history had been cast him in.
He was also not a big fan of organizations, committees and meetings and even from the early days of MIDI was not an active participant in the MIDI Association or in further developing new MIDI specs. He had made his contribution and moved on to the next thing which was always building his next great synth. But in a recent interview in the fall of 2021, he had come around to appreciating many of the ideas in MIDI 2.0.
In fact, he almost begrudgingly accepted interviews about his contributions to MIDI and was much more comfortable talking about his newest synth design, then things he had done in the past.
Like so many brilliant and creative people, he always focused on the future.
One thing is clear.
Though no one lives forever, the contributions that some people make to the arts will last for a very, very long time.
The contributions Dave made not just to MIDI, but to making synthesizers popular as full-fledged members of the musical instrument family will resonant for centuries to come.
He will always be missed, but he also always be in our hearts and in our music.
For those wishing to send condolences to the Smith family and share thoughts and memories of Dave and his creations, Sequential invites the public to send comments to RememberingDave@sequential.com.
There’s a lot of excitement in the air – MIDI 2.0, VR/AR, spatial audio, flying taxis and Facebook’s own flight of fancy, Metaspace (it took me three goes to stop this being called Meatspace; perhaps aptly?).
Back in 1985 there was a similar air of expectation. MIDI had just been ratified by a quorum of MI and Pro Audio companies and I’d had a personal walk-through its immediate goals and capabilities from Dave Smith himself, riding high with Sequential Circuits in Silicon Valley. The initial goals might have been modest: connect two keyboards, play one and trigger the sound engine in both but even then ‘multi-timbralism’ was floated and the beginnings of how MIDI instruments could be connected to and controlled by a personal computer – a state of affairs that is not materially different almost 40 years later. It was entirely appropriate for Dave to call his first venture into softsynths, ‘Seer Systems’.
I’d just written my first Keyfax book and was also working as a keyboardist for John Miles, a supremely talented British pop star who’d had a string of hits in the UK, including the iconic Music, produced by Alan Parsons.
The first edition of Keyfax- the definitive guide to electronic keyboards
New Polydor signing Vitamin Z (‘zee’ for US readers but ‘zed’ for us Brits) wanted Alan to produce their debut album and Alan approached John to supplement the duo – singer Geoff Barradale and bass player Nick Lockwood – that Vitamin Z comprised. Duly, myself and our drummer, Barriemore Barlow of Jethro Tull fame, trouped down to Alan’s luxurious country house studio, The Grange, in the posh village of Benenden in Kent where Princess Anne had gone to school.
Julian Colbeck and Barriemore Barlow relax during the Vitamin Z sessions
The Grange was equally posh. Alan had a state of the start digital recording system based around the Sony PCM 3324, if memory serves. This was a freestanding system, not computer controlled, and nor did it have MIDI. At this time the worlds of ‘audio’ (i.e. regular recording) and the upstart MIDI, had nothing whatsoever to do with each other. It would be another four years before the world’s first Digital Audio Workstation would be introduced.
Steinberg Pro 24 – One of the first MIDI sequencers
MIDI (far from being as ubiquitous as it is now),was a keyboard player’s thing for those who had even noticed it at all, . I’d just picked up an Atari computer, which had MIDI built in, and had been testing out the Pro 24 ‘sequencer’ from a brand new German outfit called Steinberg. Alan, a geek – then and still now – was fascinated. There still wasn’t a huge amount of MIDI-connectable synths of the market.I’d had my trusty Roland Juno-60 converted to MIDI from Roland’s pre-MIDI DCB (Digital Communication Bus) and brought along a DX7 and, although my memory is a little hazy here, an early Ensoniq Mirage. But the cool thing was that we could record – and correct, change, quantize parts directly on the Atari. This was just revolutionary and mind-expanding. However, it wasn’t exactly what you’d call stable. Charlie Steinberg had given us his home number and it was quite possible that he and Manfred Rürup still worked out of their homes back then. But for many an evening we’d on the phone to Charlie, mainly trying to figure out synchronization issues. I remember on one call Charlie pronouncing what we’d certainly been experiencing and fearing for a while: “We do time differently,” he said, in his finest Hamburg accent. Ah, well that would certainly explain things
Julian Colbeck and Alan Parsons chat in 1988’s Getting The Most Of Of Home Recording – the precursor to their Art & Science Of Sound Recording video series and online course.
Things have changed a lot since those days in the 1980s of big hair and inexplicable even bigger shoulders. Alan continued with his amazing career as a producer and performing artist. Alan and I both moved to California.
I founded the company Keyfax NewMedia Inc. and in 1998 released the Phat Boy (yes, it was the 90’s) one of the first hardware MIDI controllers that could be used with a wide variety of synths and sofware.
Keyfax Phat-Boy MIDI Controller
But Alan and I continued our friendship and partnership and launched Alan Parsons’ Art and Science of Sound Recording. Because although the gear had changed and there were many more tools available to musicians and engineers, the core things that you needed to know to produce music hadn’t really changed at all.
Multi-platinum producer, engineer and artist Alan Parsons recently released his new single “All Our Yesterdays” and announces the launch of his new DVD and HD web video educational series entitled The Art and Science of Sound Recording, or “ASSR,” produced by Keyfax NewMedia Inc. The track was written and recorded during the making of ASSR, an in-depth educational series that highlights techniques in music production while giving a detailed overview of the complete audio recording process. The series is narrated by Billy Bob Thornton and will be available as a complete DVD set in July.
by LOS ANGELES, CA (PRWEB) JUNE 23, 2010
Special 50% Off Promo for the MIDI Association on the new ASSR On Line course
The knowledge that Alan has developed over his long and incredible career is available in a number of different mediums. There is videos, sessions files, books & DVDs, Live Training Events and now the newest incarnation On Line Courses on Teachable.
Legendary engineer and producer Alan Parsons began his career at Abbey Road, working with The Beatles on Let It Be and Abbey Road. Alan became one of the first ‘name’ engineers thanks to his seminal engineering work on Dark Side Of The Moon – still an audiophile’s delight almost 50 years later.
Alan is an early adopter of technology by nature: Looping, Quadrophonic, Ambisonics, MIDI, digital tape, sampling, DAWs, and Surround 5.1 with which he won the Best Immersive album GRAMMY in 2019. ASSR-Online is Alan’s Bible of Recording that looks at all aspects of music production from soundproofing a room to the equipment including monitors and microphones, all the processes including EQ, compression, reverbs, delays and more, and multiple recording situations such as recording vocals, drums, guitars. keyboards, a choir, beatmaking, and of course MIDI. Based on more than 11 hours of custom video, ASSR-Online is a complete course in recording, featuring more than 50 projects, tasks, and assignments with four raw multitracks to help you develop your recording skills to a fully professional level.
Thru November 15 get 50% off Alan Parsons’ ASSR-Online Recording and Music Production course through MIDI.org!
Go to the link below and add the code MIDI50 during checkout.
MIDI 1.0 Specification From August, 1983 Uncovered at Yamaha US offices in April, 2018.
In November of 2018 we uncovered some unique historical MIDI documents. These were discovered in a file cabinet at Yamaha Corporation of America’s headquarters in Buena Park, California. These documents pre-date the formation of the MIDI Manufacturers Association and give us a truly remarkable look into the the early development of MIDI. There were three key documents. The first is a very early version of the MIDI 1.0 specification from August 1983. We also uncovered two issues of the IMA bulletin- one from June 1985 and another from June 1987.
The early MIDI 1.0 specification is a very short 14 page document. Compare this to the 58 page MIDI 1.0 specification document published in 1995 which also included 7 pages of Appendixes pages and 13 pages of Tables.
The copyright of this early MIDI 1.0 specification is assigned to the International MIDI Association based in Sun Valley.
The MIDI specification first saw the light of day at the 1981 AES, when Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits presented a paper on the “Universal Synthesizer Interface.” It was co-developed with other companies (an effort driven principally by Roland’s Ikutaro Kakehashi, a true visionary of this industry), and made its prime time debut at the 1983 Los Angeles NAMM show, where a Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 talked to a Roland keyboard over a small, 5-pin cable. I saw Dave Smith walking around the show and asked him about it. “It worked!” he said, clearly elated—but I think I detected some surprise in there as well.
by Craig Anderton for Harmony Central
This document clearly shows that even in August of 1983 the MIDI specification was still in flux and had not been fully flushed out. For example, Continuous Controllers 64-95 are defined simply as Switches (On/Off).
This also shows that at this stage, there was clearly a desire for 14 bit resolution of continuous controllers in MIDI 1.0.
Here is a list of the orginal 14 companies that were involved with MIDI at the time. Notice that both Big Briar (Bob Moog’s company after he left Moog) and Moog Music (owned at the time by Norlin) are listed. Many people underestimate Bob Moog’s role in MIDI gaining acceptance.
This version of the MIDI spec also featured a MIDI logo that was never used in later official specifications from the MIDI Manufacturers Association.
The second IMA News Bulletin published in June of 1985 and announced a variety of new MIDI products including the Simmons SDS-9 electronic drum kit.
The same issue announced the first publicized meeting of the MIDI Manufacturers Association at the upcoming New Orleans Summer NAMM show on June 24, 1985. What’s most interesting about this announcement is that announces a “new MIDI 1.0 specification” that was authored by the Japan MIDI Standards Committee and translated from the Japanese by the MMA, and the creation of the standardized MIDI implementation chart. This is a full two years AFTER the initial public demo in January of 1983 and the first version of the MIDI spec was distrubuted by the IMA.
The new “detailed” MIDI specification was created to solve problems that companies had understanding the initial specification. The original MIDI 1.0 Specification was written by companies collaborating outside of any organization, and though JMSC, MMA, and IMA all formed to help manage the development of MIDI, they all formed independently, and it took a few years before they all figured out how to move forward in “unison”.
The International MIDI Association (“IMA”) (a.k.a. “MUG or MIDI Users Group” and “IMUG” International MIDI User Group), was the first to form. It was a self-appointed organization to manage the development and promotion of MIDI. The IMA MIDI Spec document dated August 5 1983 is the one that was registered with the United States Copyright Office by the IMA as the official MIDI 1.0 Specification. IMA got the initial spec from Sequential, who had also been distributing prior versions of the spec.
The Japanese companies who were building MIDI products at that time realized when they started implementing the MIDI initial 1.0 Spec that more detail was needed, and took on the task of producing an addendum document.. They formed the JMSC, which officially launched in Nov. 1983. Originally JMSC included end-users, but they abandoned that idea within the 1st year. By June of 1984 they informed the IMA that they were working on a “detailed explanation” which they would share when it was completed. They also recommended “US and European” manufacturers have their own association, separate from end-users.
The decision to form the MMA was made at the June 1984 NAMM show in Chicago by Roland US, Yamaha US, Sequential, and Oberheim, and a meeting “of all interested companies” that was held. The MMA’s legal documents (articles of incorporation and bylaws) did not get completed and filed until 1987, but the association’s organizers used the name “MMA” starting from June 1984. At the February 1985 Winter NAMM Show the organizers of MMA (now about 14 companies in total) met and declared one of MMA’s goals to be to “prepare and release an official and complete documentation to the MIDI 1.0 Specification, including the specification, detailed explanations, and a guide to creating implementation charts”. They also decided the policies and procedures for membership, and began subscribing new members. The IMA Bulletin refers to June 1985 as the “first MMA meeting” because that is how the meeting was announced by MMA to prospective MMA members.
The “detailed explanation” they refer to is the work that JMSC had created. At that same meeting Chris Meyer was appointed Chairman of the MMA “Technical Standards Board”, and one of the TSB’s tasks was to work with JMSC to finish the “1.0 Explanations”. The document received input from both JMSC and MMA members, although it was written in Japanese by JMSC, which is why it needed to be translated. After that experience, it was agreed that all future specifications (including updates) would be authored in English, so they could be more easily shared during development.
It is pretty hard to follow all the three letter acronyms and the time line so here is a simpifed version.
Summer NAMM June
1981- Tom Oberheim
mentions to Dave Smith that Kakehashi is thinking about a Universal
Synthesizer Interface
AES
October 1981 –
Dave
Smith and Chet Woods present a Universal Synthesizer Interface running at 19.2 kBaud and using regular 1/4″ jacks
Winter NAMM
February 1982-
A big
meeting with all synth manufacturers (Synclavier, Arp, Moog, Oberheim, Crumar, Voeytra)
that didn’t end well. After the meeting the Japanese approach Dave and
Sequential, Roland, Yamaha, Korg, and Kawai agree work together on MIDI
Winter NAMM January 1983- First Public demonstration of MIDI- Prophet 600 is connected to Roland Jupiter 6
June 1983- Japan MIDI Standard Committee (JMSC) is formed
June 1983- JMSC starts creating the detailed addendum to the MIDI 1.0 specification and consulting with American manufacturers
August
1983- International MIDI Association incorporated and initial MIDI 1.0 specification is available from IMA (and Sequential Circuits)
November
1983- Katsuhiko (Karl) Hirano is appointed head of MIDI Standard Investigating Committee
Winter NAMM January 1984- MIDI Evolutionary Committee
formed with Robert Moog (Big Briar), John Bowen (Sequential) , Curt Simmons, Jim Smerdel (Yamaha US), Anne
Graham (Oberheim) Brian Vincik (Hewlett Packard) Roger Clay (IMA)
June 1984- JMSC informs the IMA that there are problems with the spec and recommends that there should be a manufacturer organization to standardize MIDI
June 1984 Summer NAMM show in Chicago- The decision to form the MMA was made at the by Roland US, Yamaha US, Sequential, and Oberheim, and a meeting “of all interested companies” was held.
September 1984- JMSC Addendum in Japanese sent to the MMA for translation
Winter NAMM show February 1985 – First meeting of the MMA with Roland US, Yamaha US, Sequential, and Oberheim, and a meeting “of all interested companies”
February 1985 -MMA incorparated in California as an organization
Summer NAMM show in New Orleans June 1985 – Second meeting of the MMA and the The MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification” (Addendum) is published
1987- The MMA is incorporated as a tax exempt non-profit organization in the US
The International MIDI Association eventually closed its doors and there was no place of MIDI end users to congregate and discuss MIDI until The MIDI Association was born in 2016.
It seems that there has always been a need for the people who work, play and create with MIDI to have a way stay in touch with the MIDI companies who push the specifications forward. We encourage our MIDI Association members to express their opinions about where MIDI should go in the future.
With the boom in open-source electronics platform like Arduino and the growth of 3-D printers, it’s become easier and easier to create your own MIDI controller. We wanted to introduce you to some of the people and companies who helped create the DIY MIDI revolution.
Moldover- The Godfather of Controllerism
Moldover is the acknowledged godfather of controllerism. He has been a long time supporter of The MIDI Association and we featured him as a MIDI artist in 2016. He was one of the first people to develop his own DIY MIDI controller.
Shawn Wasabi has 574,651 subscribers and 54,314,415 views on his Youtube channel. He started combining multiple 16 button MIDI Fighters together and combining them with game controllers. Eventually he convinced DJ TechTools to make him a 64 button version of the MIDI Fighter with Sanwa arcade buttons.
Livid Instruments has been at the forefront of MIDI controller experimentation since 2004. They have a number of manufactured products.
minim- mobile MIDI controller
Guitar Wing MIDI controller
Ds1 MIDI controller
But Livid also makes some great components for DIY projects like the Brain V2.
Easily create your own MIDI controller with Brain v2. Brain V2 contains the Brain with a connected Bus Board for simple connectivity. Connect up to 128 buttons, 192 LEDs, and 64 analog controls. Components are easily connected with ribbons cables and we’ve created the Omni Board to allow dozens of layouts with a single circuit board. Brain v2 supports faders, rotary potentiometers, arcade buttons, rubber buttons, LEDs, RGB LEDs, LED rings, encoders, velocity sensitive pads, accelerometers, and more.
by Livid
Links to MIDI.org resources for DIY MIDI projects so you can DO IT YOURSELF!
IntroductionThe Arduino UNO is a popular open-source microcontroller that, in many respects, is a perfect complement to the extensible nature of the Music Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) protocol. Microcontroller platforms such as Arduino, Teensy
Instructables is a site which hosts DIY projects and is a platform for people to share what they make through words, photos, video and files. We have gone through the many MIDI DIY projects  and picked our some of
Companies and products listed here do not imply any recommendation or endorsement by the MIDI Manufacturers Association. MIDI Processing, Programming, and Do It Yourself (DIY) Components These are just examples of such products — we make n
Ikutaro Kakehashi was certainly one of the most influential figures in electronic music in the 20th century. He influenced music and technology throughout his lifetime. He overcame many challenges in his early life to become the head of one of the most influential electronic musical instruments companies in the world, Roland Corporation.
Kakehashi-san was born in 1930 and both of his parents passed away when he was only two years old. He grew up with relatives in Osaka, Japan. During World War II (as was typical during the war), he started working at the Hitachi shipyards in Osaka when he was only 14 years old. There he started to learn about mechanical engineering.
At the end of the war, the Japanese economy was devastated and when Kakehashi-san tried to get into Osaka University, he was rejected because of his poor health.
So he moved to the southern Japanese island of Kyushu when he was 16 and he found a job there as a geographical survey assistant. While in Kyushu he noticed that there were very few resources in early post war Japan for clock and watch repair.
A young Ikutaro Kakehashi in front of his watch shop in Kyushu circa 1946
After being refused an apprenticeship at the watch shop he was working part time (or maybe not wanting to wait 7 years until the apprenticeship would be over!), Kakehashi bought a book on watch repair and taught himself the skills that he needed to set up his own business- the Kakehashi Watch Shop pictured above.
Soon he expanded his skills and business to repair broken radios as well as watches and clocks.
Kakehashi worked to grow his business for 4 years and his plan was to liquidate the business and go back to university as he was still only 20 years old. Just as he was planning to do this, he contracted tuberculosis in both lungs and was hospitalized.
He remained in the hospital for three years with his condition gradually getting worse. Imagine how hard it must have been for the this young man to be stuck in the hospital knowing both of his parents had died of the same disease.
In what was actually a huge stroke of luck Kakehashi was selected as a guinea-pig to test a new drug, Streptomycin. This was an expensive experimental drug and the three years in the hospital had drained away all of the money that Kakehashi-san had saved from his watch company. However the new “miracle” drug soon started working and within a year, Kakehashi was able to leave the hospital and start on his life’s work – changing the face of electronic music forever.
In 1955 he started experimenting with monophonic electronic musical instruments and founded Ace Electronic Industries.
Kakehashi originally attempted to build his own Theremin because he was fascinated by Dr. Bob Moog’s work. But he found the Theremin was difficult to play and decided it probably was not going to be a huge commercial success,
In 1960, Ace Electronic Industries changed their name to Ace Tone,
Ace Tone had several successful products distributed by other companies.
Kakehashi started a relationship with Matsushita and designed an organ that became the National SX-601. Matsushita is one of the largest companies in Japan. They have made products under the Matsushita brand name, the Nationalbrand name and they are known worldwide under the Panasonic brand name. They didn’t adopt the Technics brand name for their line of keyboards until the late 1970s.
Kakehashi-san’s main collaborator at National was Kenji Matsumoto. They remained lifelong friends until Kenji’s death.
In 1964, Kakehashi made his first trip to the NAMM show with the Ace Electronics R1 Rhythm Ace and although he didn’t get any orders he did make connections with some people at the Hammond Organ company and learn about the latest in electronic designs.
People seem to forget that many of the early electronic music pioneers were strongly influenced by home organs of the late 1950’s and early 60s.
Kakehashi-san with the Technics SX601
In 1971 Kakehashi helped Hammond develop the Piper Organ, which was the world’s first single-manual organ to incorporate a rhythm accompaniment unit .
Eventually, with Ace’s success doing almost $40 million dollars a year in business, more investors came into the company until finally Kakehashi was only a minority shareholder in his own company. The majority of shareholders sold Ace to a huge industrial company, Sumitomo Chemical, that had no real interest in electronic musical instruments.
So never afraid to face a challenge head-on, Ikutaro Kakehashi left Ace and in 1972 started a new company with only $100,000 in capital. That company was Roland and the rest is indeed history.
The story of Kakehashi-san and MIDI is covered on in our MIDI History Series, but we wanted to give you the very early history of one of the pioneers of electronic musical instruments and one of the founders of MIDI.
For more information about Kakehachi-san and Roland, check out these informative web pages
The Roland name is almost synonymous with music technology — there can’t be an SOS reader who has not made use of their instruments at some time. As founder Ikutaro Kakehashi approaches his 75th birthday, we begin a journey through the company’s extraordinary history…
This month, we see how Roland survived some tricky times at the start of the 1980s, and how founder Ikutaro Kakehashi ensured that they were well-placed to take advantage of technological developments over the following few years.
Roland made their name with analogue synths and effects, but by the mid-1980s, they needed to go digital to remain competitive. It was a leap into the unknown for the company, but it ushered in a golden era…
Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland Corporation, created more than a successful business with a host of important innovations in electronic musical instruments; he has also paid tribute throughout his career to those who first inspired him. Mr. Kakehashi was born in Japan and formed Ace Electronics in 1964 with the goal of improving the electronic organ, following up on the work of his heroes, Mr. Hammond and Mr. Leslie. With the expansion of electronics in the late 1960s, he formed the Roland Corporation, which soon became one of the leaders in the industry. Perhaps the only thing more impressive than Mr.
We found this excellent Youtube interview by Orchestral Tools and thought it would be a great addition to this article with the first President of the MIDI Manufacturers Association, Jeff Rona.
This post was contributed by the well known film composer, Jeff Rona. Jeff was the first president of the MIDI Manufacturers Association and ran the MMA from 1983 until 1992 . Jeff was instrumental (pun intended) in getting MIDI started and gives us an inside look at the beginnings of MIDI.
We recently did an exclusive interview with Jeff where he talks about how he uses MIDI today in his film composition and why “the studio is his instrument”.
In 1982 I was a young composer writing music for theater, dance, and programming synthesizers for a few recording artists to earn money. But an unexpected and odd opportunity came to me that seemed right to try at the time. I was really one of the first people in Los Angeles experimenting with linking desktop computers (a very new thing at the time) with synthesizers. I had a computer mentor of sorts, a scientist from Jet Propulsion Laboratories whose hobby was developing hardware and software to make music. All very experimental – but amazing things were possible with some effort. I learned just enough about writing computer code to be dangerous. It was all purely musical. I was by no means a software expert. But I had a good aptitude for it. I was eventually invited to speak about computers and music at the first TED conference.
There I am at the TED Conference (circled) with the group, courtesy of PANTONE.
I was at a local music store in Hollywood and struck up a casual conversation with a couple of guys from Roland who happened to be there at the time. When I told them what I was doing with synths and desktop computers, they got very excited. Within a couple days I found myself in the office of Tom Beckman, the president of Roland US, explaining my work and background. When he asked me if I wanted a job and could I write code for music software. I lied, basically, and said yes. I became a programmer and instrument designer for Roland that day.Within a few weeks of starting (I quickly got a programming coach to help me get up to speed fast) I had my first official meeting with some of Roland’s top engineers and designers, who were in LA from Roland headquarters in Japan. We hit it off very well right from the start. I had learned a few words of Japanese and did my best to express my deep admiration for their work (one of my guests had designed the TR-808 drum machine!). They brought me two prototype keyboards. They showed me a 5 pin jack on the back each and said “we think this is very useful…we want you to devote all your time to writing software for this.” These were likely the first 2 MIDI instruments in the country. The plan was to develop software to show what could be done with combining keyboards and sequencing. I was blown away. I had already written some software to sequence analog synthesizers with a pre-MIDI computer interface. This was a whole new world.
A few months later I was asked to represent Roland at a small private meeting at the NAMM show to discuss how American musical instrument companies might be able to coordinate their efforts in making MIDI a true standard that was useful, functional, and consistent. I can’t remember everyone at that meeting, but I do remember Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim, Dave Smith, Roger Linn, as well as engineers and designers from Yamaha, Roland, Akai, Casio, Korg, and a few other companies that had gotten a start on MIDI. (This was also the 1983 NAMM show where MIDI was shown to the public for the first time by my Roland US cohort Jim Mothersbaugh).
The agreement around the table was that a strong need existed to create a coalition of all interested parties to help get MIDI off the ground and into wider use by as many musical instrument manufacturers as possible. The issue then was to find someone willing to get this technical cooperative started. Silence. No one had any interest in taking on the rather monumental task of figuring out how to form an organization for musical instrument companies – competitors – to disseminate, share, develop and test this brand new technology on a grand scale. As the newest member of this group I had the least amount of work responsibility. And the idea of bringing all this together was absolutely compelling to me. I spoke up and said I would take on the responsibility to try and get an official MIDI governing body together. I remember Tom Oberheim, who I’d never met before, saying “Fantastic! And who are you?”
Over the next several weeks, the enormity of the task became clearer. While Dave Smith, head of Sequential Circuits, was the man who initially conceived of a universal protocol for all musical instruments, a lot of the nuts and bolts of MIDI happened in Japan – primarily with one engineer at Roland working with one engineer at Yamaha. I had already become close to both of them, and had started helping on the design of Roland’s first MIDI/computer interface, called the MPU-401. So I began an ongoing dialogue with them both to discuss the challenges of making MIDI a universally accepted technology by every interested instrument company in the world. Several companies had already vowed to never touch MIDI for a variety of reasons both technical and political. Some were bigger players in the industry. And a lot of companies simply hadn’t heard about our work yet.
I went to a lawyer in Los Angeles to set up an official not-for-profit corporation to be the official entity for MIDI’s development. It would collect dues (tax free), generate the official technical documents for engineers to follow, and oversee further development to the hardware and software layers of MIDI. I had to think of a name for the group for the incorporation papers, and came up with the MIDI Manufacturers Association – The MMA. By mid 1983 we were off to a good start with about 10 or 12 members. We made a pact to work in tandem with our Japanese counterpart, the Japanese MIDI Standards Committee (the JMSC or just “MIDI Committee” for short).
Most technical standards are overseen by sanctioned governmental committees and highly rigorous legal procedures. All the various digital audio specifications, broadcast standards, time code formats, video formats, the Compact Disc, were all technologies started with the cooperation of private companies working with government standards groups and protocols, and these all took years to complete before they made their way to the public. Many technologies are half obsolete before they even make it to into stores. We didn’t want that, and so we decided to do what we could to steer clear of any governmental oversight. It did cause problems. For example, if MIDI were to have an official logo (like compact discs did), who would decide that a company had implemented MIDI fully and correctly and could display the logo? And what if they didn’t? Could we stop them? Who would make the call, and would it stand up in court? How would future added MIDI protocols be ratified as ‘official’? Would we grant licenses to companies for a fee? Who owned MIDI? While this made some people a bit nervous, we set all those potential worries aside to focus on the best ways to just get MIDI out into the world. The companies there at the beginning had a sense that MIDI would help sell a lot more keyboards – a good incentive to move quickly. Little did anyone know at the time how explosive the success of this technology would be. It was seen then as little more than a technique to help higher end musicians work with multiple keyboards on stage or in the studio. Nothing radical – just easier.
The NAMM show takes place twice per year. Winter NAMM is in Anaheim California, across the street from Disneyland an hour south of Los Angeles. The summer NAMM was usually in Chicago. But this particular year the event had been moved to New Orleans. As the newly appointed head of the MMA (more a coin toss than an election) I gave myself the task of organizing a private meeting there and inviting instrument companies from around the country and throughout Europe to attend a meeting to show what MIDI was, and to try and get the MMA moving forward. Members of the JMSC offered to attend to officially recognize the MMA for all companies using MIDI outside of Japan. There was also at the time a new users group for interested musicians to learn about this cool new MIDI thing. It was run by an LA-based musician named Lachlan Westfall, and we had become good friends. He was also an adept print layout artist, and I was in the midst of translating and editing the 1st edition of the official “MIDI Specification 1.0″ from Japanese to English for MMA members to use as a reference. Lachlan helped me put that together and we agreed to continue helping each other out in different ways. We both spent days poured through music magazines looking for any company we thought might be interested in using MIDI and I sent invitations to come to NAMM to be a part of this new MIDI and MMA movement. Getting rivals and competitors to sit down together was unheard of. Before MIDI there was never a need to discuss anything of mutual benefit. I was hoping to double the size of the organization and maybe get up to 20 or so members that summer.
Uncertain anyone would even attend, I booked a small private meeting room at the New Orleans Hilton, got refreshments, printed up copies of the new MIDI Spec, and put together an itinerary for the meeting. I was incredibly nervous this being the first time I used MMA money for anything. Not only was a lot riding on this, but there were still a number of detractors who didn’t see the MMA getting off the ground. I walked into the room to begin the meeting, and instead of the 20 or 30 people I expected, there were over a hundred – engineers and executives from every instrument company, audio company, and music magazine I’d ever heard of. This was far beyond anything I could have hoped for.
I’d invited Karl Hirano, Yamaha’s chief engineer at the time (and developer of the DX7), who was also the president of the JMSC, to say a few words. He graciously spoke to acknowledge the MMA as the only technical group with the power to develop and ratify new MIDI protocols outside of Japan. By the end of the meeting, all the major instrument companies, as well as young startups were on board. MMA, and MIDI’s development, was in full swing. Some of those little startups there went on to be some of the most successful music and audio companies in the business.
Karl Hirano was a synthesizer engineer for Yamaha in Japan during the great MIDI boom of the early 1980s. In fact, Karl was a member of the team that gathered at the 1983 NAMM Show to discuss the MIDI
There were plenty of kinks along the way, but we developed a working method for rapidly proposing, amending, and approving new elements to MIDI. And while many new and improved implementations for MIDI came from Japan, the one person in my opinion who pushed MIDI forward more than anyone was a young engineer (also from Sequential Circuits) named Chris Meyer. Chris is a full-tilt genius with an incredibly low tolerance for egos, errors, wasted energy, or bullshit of any kind. Serious on the outside, delightful on the inside, he was absolutely incredible to work with, and he kept the rest of the MMA, myself especially, on its toes at all times.
Obviously, MIDI has been a runaway hit far beyond anyone’s wildest expectations at the start. It is ubiquitous. Eventually we did get called up by one of the US governmental technical bodies to tell us that if we didn’t slow down and do things by the book, MIDI was heading for nothing but lawsuits and eventual destruction. We agreed to meet and discuss the option of changing to a different method. It would involve dissolving the MMA and allowing an organization such as AES or SMPTE to take over and run things “properly”. It was an odd meeting – again in a back room at another NAMM show. It was a rather stodgy, unnamed member of that governmental body (wearing two pairs of coke bottle thick glasses – legally blind I imagine, and utterly geekish), Bob Moog, Chris Meyer, one other engineer, and myself. And it was actually a rather brutal meeting. We were lectured like we were children about to crash our bicycles over a cliff, with all the potentially dire consequences listed out for us.
But afterward it was clear to all of us at MMA that we simply had to stay “rogue” or we would have to stop all the amazing change going on right then for the entire music industry. MIDI instrument development had still only been in full swing a few years, but already we were introducing protocols for synchronizing video machines, multi-track systems, lighting boards, automation of all kinds, samplers, patch editors and librarians, and especially computer interfacing and sequencing – and it was really going well. In all of that early rapid development and deployment only a tiny handful of products ever made it to market with real flaws in their MIDI support, which was a major coup for the MMA.
Regardless of how things “should” have been done, we were doing things right, and the music industry was going crazy for it. MIDI brought synthesizers so much further into the mainstream of music production and live performance. In my estimation, no other digital technology, maybe no other technology of any kind, has ever succeeded at the pace and with the success of MIDI on a global scale.
I ran the MMA for 7 years. In the middle of my time there I took a break for a couple years to focus more on my music, but returned to keep things moving as smoothly as possible. But as my work as a musician in recording studios and eventually my composing for film and TV took off, I had to give up my role in the MMA. It was incredibly sad for me to leave, but I was no longer an active developer, having left my job at Roland a few years earlier. Those wonderful geeky people that started the whole thing, virtually all superb musicians in one way or another, had become some of my close friends and favorite people.
These days I attend NAMM shows to find the best new hardware and software for my studio, and I am fortunate enough to still run into a lot of the people that were there from the start. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And we share a smile for something that we can all be very, very proud of.
Jeff Rona played a critical role in the coming together of the minds and companies that would agree on the MIDI specs back in the 1980s. The meetings took place at NAMM shows over several years and
To really understand the origins of MIDI, you need to go all the way back to before there were digitally controlled synthesizers and computers, In fact you need to go back before there was even electricity to the very first mechanical music machines.
The golden age of mechanical music machines really came in the late 19th century and early 20th century with player pianos and orchestrions. A player piano is defined as any actual acoustic piano that is played by a pneumatic or
In 2013, MIDI turned 30 and the whole world turned out to celebrate. In 2023, MIDI will turn 40 and MIDI 2.0 will be three years old. It’s a fascinating time for MIDI and the people who create music and art with MIDI.
In the early 1980s five synthesizer manufacturers agree on a common standard for sharing musical information digitally. That standard, known as Musical Instrument Digital Interface, changes music forever.
It’s 30 years since the development of technology that allowed synthesisers and drum machines to be connected to computers – and since then MIDI has revolutionised the world of music recording.
The language used to translate sound into digital information celebrates its 30th anniversary. Today, MIDI is everywhere, including nearly every pop song on the radio and the fountain at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Whether you’re the next Trent Reznor on a MIDI controller or simply get a warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy when hearing classic video game themes, there’s no de…
Dave Smith should be a billionaire. He invented the world’s most widely used music technology. Instead, he’s relatively unknown – and it doesn’t bother him.
What is it about MIDI that it has not only endured 30 years of studio and live usage… but continues to thrive in all environments? Peter Schwartz delves deep
A protocol that lets musical instruments talk to and trigger one another turns 30 years old today. MIDI is still used by the likes of dance-punk band !!!. It’s inventor Dave Smith explains its use.
Ableton is making history. In the world of sound recording tools, the German music software company’s name, as well as the name of their flagship product, “Live,” may not be as ubiquitous as names like “Fender Stratocaster,” “Marshall amplifier,” or even “Pro Tools.” But in the world of computer-based music production, Ableton is a giant. Their fresh take on composition has earned their software a place in the arsenals of acts you perhap
Featuring: Dave Smith, George Duke, Tom Oberheim, Alan Parsons, Jordan Rudess, Craig Anderton. For 30 years, MIDI has been at the forefront of music technology even as musical trends change. Watch a star-studded panel of MIDI instrument designers and musicians talk about the past, present, and future of MIDI with MMA CEO/President Tom White.
MIDI 30th Anniversary Exhibit
Here’s how we celebrated the incredible history of MIDI at 2013 NAMM:
We recreated the 1983 MIDI launch with the first two MIDI keyboards, the Roland Jupiter-6 and Sequential Prophet 600, connected via MIDI.
We displayed historical documents about the development of MIDI and the MMA, and some well-known MIDI products from the past.
We displayed some of the latest products using MIDI technology, and gave attendees the opportunity to jam with each other.
We used a 30 year-old Commodore 64 as a MIDI sequencer for an iPad (running AniMoog)
C64 meets iPad
2013 Booth Photo (“Present”)
2013 Booth Photo (“Past”)
1983 NAMM Photo
We handed out nearly 5000 “MIDI 30 Years” commemorative pins, and five lucky people people seen wearing the pins received prizes, including one Gibson Les Paul Standard Grand Prize.
MMA Annual General Meeting 2013
The Annual General Meeting of MMA Members began with a General Session at 9:00 am for members and invited guests, followed by a closed (members-only) Technical Session at 10:00 am.
MMA Status Report
MMA President Tom White explained how MMA’s mission is providing for interoperability of MIDI products, and explained the various technical proposals and business development projects being managed by MMA on behalf of the industry.
HD Protocol
MMA AVBTP Payload Types – The new IEEE AVB Transport Protocol specification (IEEE-1722) includes a reference to MMA for specifications now under development that define the transport of MIDI and HD Protocol.
Updated MIDI Electrical spec – A proposal for MMA to publish a new circuit diagram using current components and practices and allowing for 3.3V power supplies.
IEC MIDI Specification – A proposal is under consideration to submit some portion of the MIDI Specification to IEC for standardization, to improve recognition as a standard by emerging countries.
Universal SysEX ID for iOS OMAC – A proposal to improve communication among iOS music apps.
MIDI Home Control Specification – A proposal to provide interoperability among home A/V devices.
Web MIDI API – The web standards organization (W3C) has developed technology to enable browser-based audio apps, including support for MIDI input/output. Florian Bomers (Bome Software) presented an overview of the Web MIDI API, and encouraged MMA members to advocate for browser support.
Bluetooth LE – Tom mentioned a few companies interested in using this technology for MIDI.
Logo and Trademark Protection – MMA is working with AMEI in Japan and CMIA in China to prevent dilution of the meaning of “MIDI” in China caused by registered marks being used on non-MIDI products.
Tom also reported on MMA’s “MIDI Makes Music” promotional campaign for 2013, and the Technical Grammy to be awarded February 9th to Dave Smith and Ikutaro Kakehashi for the invention of MIDI.
Following the General Session the MMA members discussed each active technical proposal in more detail.
MIDI 30th Anniversary Exhibit Display highlights historical significance of the communication interface in music making
Carlsbad, CA (December 3, 2013) — Commemorating 30 years of facilitating the creation of music, MIDI technology debuts a display at the Museum of Making Music that will be on exhibit now through 2014 at NAMM headquarters in Carlsbad, CA. The display invites Museum patrons to experience Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) technology personally, using a touch screen interface and a fun-to-play YouRock Guitar. YouRock donated the interactive instrument, which effectively demonstrates the versatility of MIDI technology when applied to an instrument. The display also incorporates early MIDI-compatible synthesizers, keyboards and MIDI-enabled instruments to illustrate the early manifestations of the technology over the years.
“The NAMM Museum of Making Music’s mission is to celebrate the accomplishments and impact of the music products industry,” said the Museum’s executive director Carolyn Grant. “Few innovations in recent years have as far-reaching an effect as MIDI has had on our world. We are excited to share its history with our visitors and to encourage them to learn about MIDI not only through words and pictures, but through hands-on experience.”
This innovative and groundbreaking communication interface protocol that makes music more accessible and gives musicians a vast array of expressive tools, was first demonstrated at the NAMM Show in 1983. Originally developed for composing and creating music, MIDI technology has evolved in the last 30 years to include applications for computers, cell phones, interactive games, and other electronic products. MIDI was awarded a coveted Technical GRAMMY Award in 2013.
“MIDI dramatically changed music-making 30 years ago when two competing manufacturers enabled their electronic keyboards to ‘talk’ to each other,” said Tom White, President/CEO of the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA). “MIDI makes it possible for musicians to do more by giving them control over multiple instruments (and sounds) at one time, and by enabling computers (including some tablets and smart phones) to record, edit, and notate musical performances,” he said. “This exhibit shows the evolution of MIDI products, and demonstrates why MIDI will continue to have a significant impact on the musical instrument business in the future.”
MIDI applications have become increasingly ubiquitous in the writing and performance of popular recorded music. MIDI-equipped electronic keyboards (aka “synthesizers”), computers using sequencers and digital audio workstations, digital drums, strings, guitars and other MIDI-enabled instruments continue to make creating a broad spectrum of music accessible to more musicians and composers.
About The Museum of Making Music
The Museum of Making Music shares the dynamic history of the music products industry from its beginnings at the turn of the 20th century to today. Through unique exhibitions and interactive experiences, it inspires visitors of any age to explore the underlying connections between people, instruments and music, and fosters active music making as a path to enrichment and understanding. Visit the museum’s website at www.museumofmakingmusic.org or call 760-438-5996.
Media Contact: B.J Morgan bjm@museumofmakingmusic.org 760 438 8007 x170
Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith receive Technical GRAMMY Award from the Recording Academy®
In 1983, Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland Corporation, and Dave Smith, president of Sequential Circuits, unveiled MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). The launch of MIDI motivated the cooperation of an entire industry and helped move music technology into a new era. In a nearly unprecedented collaboration between competing manufacturers, what would soon prove an inescapable new technology was born when two competing manufacturers’ electronic keyboards were connected, enabling them to “talk” to one another using a new communication standard. The announcement ultimately revolutionized the music world. Today, MIDI is ubiquitous in the musical equipment industry, and is the de facto standard feature on virtually every electronic music product made by every manufacturer.
A special invitation-only ceremony was held during GRAMMY Week on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013.
About the Technical GRAMMY Award Recipients: In 1983, Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland Corporation, and Dave Smith, president of Sequential Circuits, unveiled MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of MIDI, a standard that motivated the cooperation of an entire industry and helped move music technology into a new era. In a nearly unprecedented collaboration between competing manufacturers, what would soon prove an inescapable new technology was born when two competing manufacturers’ electronic keyboards were connected, enabling them to “talk” to one another using a new communication standard. The announcement ultimately revolutionized the music world. Today, MIDI is ubiquitous in the musical equipment industry, and is the de facto standard feature on virtually every electronic music product made by every manufacturer.
(In addition to the GRAMMY Awards, The Recording Academy presents Special Merit Awards recognizing contributions of significance to the recording field, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, Trustees Award and
One day I was going past a music store in Camden Town and there was a crowd inside so I went in and there was a kind of hush whilst someone was explaining that this Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 had MIDI! Once I grasped what they were talking about I felt quite faint, my head spinning with the possibilities. I’ve never been the same since and neither has the rest of the world.
by Dave Stewart- As a member of Eurythmics with Annie Lennox,he won a GRAMMY in 1986 for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal for “Missionary Man.” Artists he has collaborated with include Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Mick Jagger, Alison Krauss, and Stevie Nicks. In 2012 Stewart released his latest solo album, The Ringmaster General.
Congratulations to the Award Recipients and to the More than 700 Companies that Helped Make MIDI Popular.
We celebrated the Award by taking out an advertisement in the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards Souvenir Book (see left, click to enlarge). If you look closely at the ad you will see the names of hundreds of current and former MMA member companies in the background of the ad. Companies that donated funding for the ad are featured via logos.
This 30 minute TV show from 1986 is a window into the state of the art in MIDI music technology back then.
Guests: Chris French, Music Software; Bob Moore, Hybrid Arts; David Schwartz, Compusonics; Chris Potter, Mimetics; Curtis Sasaki, Apple; Gary Kildall, Digital Research; Gary Leuenberger, Midi Revolution
Products/Demos: Casio SK-1 Synthesizer, Atari ST, Activision’s Music Studio, ADAP Sampler, DSP-1000, Apple II GS, Ensoniq Sound Chip, Soundscape, Commodore AmigaEZ Track, Kidnotes
Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Tony Williams, Carlos Santana, Chester Thompson, Bryan Bell, Laurie Anderson, David Mash, David Rosenthal, Tom coster and more talk about Macintosh, MIDI and music in 1988.
The MIDI specification first saw the light of day at the 1981 AES, when Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits presented a paper on the “Universal Synthesizer Interface.” It was co-developed with other companies (an effort driven principally by Roland’s Ikutaro Kakehashi, a true visionary of this industry), and made its prime time debut at the 1983 Los Angeles NAMM show, where a Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 talked to a Roland keyboard over a small, 5-pin cable. I saw Dave Smith walking around the show and asked him about it. “It worked!” he said, clearly elated—but I think I detected some surprise in there as well.
The Prophet 600 and the Jupiter 6 at the 1983 Winter NAMM show
“It” was the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, known as MIDI. Back in those days, polyphonic synthesizers cost thousands of dollars (and “polyphonic” meant 8 voices, if you were lucky and of course, wealthy). The hot computer was a Commodore-64, with a whopping 64 kilobytes of memory—unheard of in a consumer machine (although a few years before, an upstart recording engineer named Roger Nichols was stuffing 1MB memory boards in a CompuPro S-100 computer to sample drum sounds). The cute little Macintosh hadn’t made its debut, and as impossible as it may seem today, the PC was a second-class citizen, licking its wounds after the disastrous introduction of IBM’s PCjr.
Tom Oberheim had introduced his brilliant System, which allowed a drum machine, sequencer, and synthesizer to talk together over a fast parallel bus. Tom feared that MIDI would be too slow. And I remember talking about MIDI at a Chinese restaurant with Dave Rossum of E-mu systems, who said “Why not just use Ethernet? It’s fast, it exists, and it’s only about $10 to implement.”
But Dave Smith had something else in mind: An interface so simple, inexpensive, and foolproof to implement that no manufacturer could refuse. Its virtues would be low cost, adequate performance, and ubiquity in not just the pro market, but the consumer one as well.
Bingo.
But it didn’t look like success was assured at the time; MIDI was derided by many pros who felt it was too slow, too limited, and just a passing fancy. 30 years later, though, MIDI has gone far beyond what anyone had envisioned, particularly with respect to the studio. No one foresaw MIDI being part of just about every computer (e.g., the General MIDI instrument sets). This trend actually originated on the Atari ST—the first computer with built-in MIDI ports as a standard item (see “Background: When Amy Met MIDI” toward the end of this article).
Evolution of a spec
Oddly, the MIDI spec officially remains at version 1.0, despite significant enhancements over the years: the Standard MIDI File format, MIDI Show Control (which runs the lights and other effects at Broadway shows like Miss Saigon and Tommy), MIDI Time Code to allow MIDI data to be time-stamped with SMPTE timing information, MIDI Machine Control for integration with studio gear, microtonal tuning standards, and a lot more. And the activity continues, as issues arise such as how best to transfer MIDI over USB, with smart phones, and over wireless.
The MIDI Manufacturers Association
The guardian of the spec, the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA), has stayed a steady course over the past several decades, holding together a coalition of mostly competing manufacturers with a degree of success that most organizations would find impossible to pull off. The early days of MIDI were a miracle: in an industry where trade secrets are jealously guarded, manufacturers who were intense rivals came together because they realized that if MIDI was successful, it would drive the industry to greater success. And they were right. The MMA has also helped educate users about MIDI, through books and online materials such as “An Introduction to MIDI.”
I had an assignment at the time from a computer magazine to write a story about MIDI. After turning it in, I received a call from the editor. He said the article was okay, but it seemed awfully partial to MIDI, and was unfair because it didn’t give equal time to competing protocols. I tried to explain that there were no competing protocols; even companies that had other systems, like Oberheim and Roland, dropped them in favor of MIDI. The poor editor had a really hard time wrapping his head around the concept of an entire industry willingly adopting a single specification. “But surely there must be alternatives.” All I could do was keep replying, “No, MIDI is it.” Even when we got off the phone, I’m convinced he was sure I was holding back information on MIDI’s competition.
MIDI HERE, MIDI THERE, MIDI EVERYWHERE
Now MIDI is everywhere. It’s on the least expensive home keyboards, and the most sophisticated studio gear. It’s a part of signal processors, guitars, keyboards, lighting rigs, smoke machines, audio interfaces…you name it. It has gone way beyond its original idea of allowing a separation of controller and sound generator, so people didn’t have to buy a keyboard every time they wanted a different sound.
SO WHERE’S IT GOING?
“Always in motion, the future…” Well, Yoda does have a point. But the key point about MIDI is that it’s a hardware/software protocol, not just one or the other. Already, the two occasionally take separate vacations. The MIDI data in your DAW that drives a soft synth doesn’t go through an opto-isolators or cables, but flies around inside your computer.
One reason why MIDI has lasted so long is because it’s a language that expresses musical parameters, and these haven’t changed much in several centuries. Notes are still notes, tempo is still tempo, and music continues to have dynamics. Songs start and end, and instruments use vibrato. As long as music is made the way it’s being made, the MIDI “language” will remain relevant, regardless of the “container” used to carry that data. However, MIDI is not resting on its laurels, and neither is the MMA—you can find out what they’re working on for the future here.
Background: When Amy Met MIDI
After MIDI took off, many people credited Atari with amazing foresight for making MIDI ports standard on their ST series of computers. But the inclusion of MIDI was actually a matter of practicality. Commodore was riding high with the C-64, in large part because of the SID (Sound Interface Device) custom IC, a very advanced audio chip for its time. (Incidentally, Bob Yannes, one of Ensoniq’s founders and also the driving force behind the Mirage sampler, played the dominant role in SID’s development.)
Atari knew that if it wanted to encroach on Commodore’s turf, they needed something better than SID. They designed an extremely ambitious sound chip, code-named Amy, that was supposed to be a “Commodore killer.” But Amy was a temperamental girl, and Atari was never able to get good enough yields to manufacturer the chips economically.
An engineer suggested putting a MIDI port on the machine, so it could drive an external sound generator; then they wouldn’t have to worry about an onboard sound chip. Although this solved the immediate Amy problem, it also turned out to be a fortuitous decision: Atari dominated the European music-making market for years, and a significant chunk of the US market as well. To this day, a hardy band of musicians still use their aging ST and TT series Atari computers because of the exceptionally tight MIDI timing – a result of integrating MIDI into the core of the operating system.
As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, the Theremin and the Hammond organ.
What is interesting in looking at these early devices is how much they foreshadow the future of modern music production.
The Teleharmonium foreshadows both the Hammond organ and music streaming services.
The Theremin foreshadows many BLE MIDI controllers of today by allowing gestural control of music without wires.
The design goals that RCA had with their room sized modular synthesiser foreshadows current advances in AI technology, orchestral Software Synthesizers, and the recent resurgence in the popularity of modular synthesis.
But the main thing that these early electronic musical instruments create is a path that would lead to the development of a digital standard for musical instruments- MIDI.
For information on other early electronic musical instruments like the Trautonium and Ondes Martenot and for more details on the Telharmonium, Theremin and Hammond organ, please visit the website below.
Special thanks to 120 years
120years is an amazing website run as a labor of love by Simon Crab and is a fantastic resource for information on early electronic instruments. We encourage you to visit the site and donate to support it. Many of the images and information below are from Simon’s website and we wanted make sure he got proper credit.
The switchboard and tone circuits of the Teleharmoniun MkII- Courtesy of 120Years
The Teleharmonium was huge. You can get an idea of how big it is by this picture of a small boy next to one of the Teleharmonium’s tone wheels. It had to be that big and use incredible amounts of electrical power because the amplifier had not been invented yet.
Courtesy of 120Years
The world’s first music streaming services
The Teleharmonium was not only one of the first electronic musical instruments, it was also the first music streaming service. It actually streamed the synthesized music via wires. This would eventually lead to it’s downfall.
Courtesy of Scientific American and 120Years
THE TELHARMONIUM – AN APPARATUS FOR THE ELECTRICAL GENERATION AND TRANSMISSION OF MUSIC.
Dr. Thaddeus Cahill’s system of generating music at a central station in the form of electrical oscillations, and of transmitting these oscillations by means of wires to any desired point, where they are rendered audible by means of an ordinary telephone receiver or a speaking arc, is now embodied in a working plant situated in the heart of New York.
Briefly summed up, Dr. Cahill’s wonderful invention consists in generating electrical oscillations corresponding in period with the acoustic vibrations of the various elemental tones desired, in synthesizing from these electrical vibrations the different notes and chords required, and in rendering the synthesized electrical vibrations audible by a translating device.
by Scientific American’ vol 96 #10 9th March 1907
The reason for the failure of Cahill’s project were numerous. The machine itself was impossibly expensive; about $1 million was spent from 1897 to 1914 on the project ( approximately $30 million in today’s value) and it was unlikely that a subscriber business model would have ever covered the costs, let alone make a profit – and, even if Cahill had found enough subscribers, he’d have to have built a power plant to generate enough power.
The output power of the Telharmonium caused great disruption of the New York Telephone network, angering telephone subscribers and even interrupting the Stock Exchange, which resulted eventually in AT&T refusing to co-operate in supporting Cahill’s instrument.
The Telharmonium was also a victim of an age of rapid technical advances; Lee De Forest began experimenting with radio transmissions as early as 1906 (which included transmissions of the Telharmonium) and by around 1914 wireless radio broadcasts had spelled the end for wire broadcasting.
by Simon Crab, 120 years
The Theremin- 1920
Leon Termen plays the ‘Theremin’ or ‘Thereminvox’ . Paris, 1927- Courtesy of 120years
The original Theremin used a foot pedal to control the volume and a switch mechanism to alter the pitch.
This prototype evolved into a production model Theremin in 1920, this was a unique design, resembling a gramophone cabinet on 4 legs with a protruding metal antennae and a metal loop. The instrument was played by moving the hands around the metal loop for volume and around the antennae for pitch. The output was a monophonic continuous tone modulated by the performer. The timbre of the instrument was fixed and resembled a violin string sound.
The sound was produced directly by the heterodyning combination of two radio-frequency oscillators: one operating at a fixed frequency of 170,000 Hz, the other with a variable frequency between 168,000 and 170,000 Hz. The frequency of the second oscillator being determined by the proximity of the musician’s hand to the pitch antenna. The difference of the fixed and variable radio frequencies results in an audible beat frequency between 0 and 2,000 Hz. The audible sound came from the oscillators, later models adding an amplifier and large triangular loudspeaker.
This Theremin model was first shown to the public at the Moscow Industrial Fair in 1920 and was witnessed by Lenin who requested lessons on the instrument. Lenin later commissioned 600 models of the Theremin to be built and toured around the Soviet Union.
by Simon Crab, 120years
The Theremin in pop music and culture
The Theremin was marketed and distributed in the USA by RCA during the 1930’s as a DIY kit form or as a finished instrument ( later aficionados of the instrument included Robert Moog who made and sold transistorised Theremins in the 1950s). The heterodyning vacuum tube oscillator became the standard method of producing electronic sound until the advent of the transistor in the 1960’s and was widely used by electronic musical instrument designs of the period.
The Theremin became known in the USA as a home ‘novelty instrument’ and featured in many film soundtracks of the 1940-50’s, it also appeared in several pop records of the 1960’s but never overcame it’s novelty appeal; used for effect rather than as a ‘serious instrument’, most recordings employ the Theremin as a substitute string instrument rather than exploiting the microtonal and pitch characteristics of the instrument.
by Simon Crab, 120years
Rhythmicon – 1932
In 1932, Leon Theremin developed another innovative electronic musical instrument – The Rhythmicon for composer Henry Cowell. The device could produce sixteen different rhythms and which were also transposable. This was the world’s first drum machine.
It used cylindrical disks that in some ways are the same mechanism as music boxes or piano rolls.
The Hammond Organ-1935
In 1935, Laurent Hammond, who had been a clock maker came up with a design and patented an “electrical musical instrument”. It was based on the same technology in the Teleharmonium, but could be much smaller because of the invention of the amplifier.
Thaddeus Cahill, developer of the Telharmonium, was . . . endowed with the ability to think big. Although not strictly electronic (it predated the invention of the vacuum tube by about a decade), the Telharmonium embodied many basic principles that have been used in the electronic music medium: the generation of pitched tones from alternating electricity, the addition of harmonics to determine tone color (additive synthe- sis), and a touch sensitive keyboard to shape the sounds and control their strengths. This first polyphonic, touch sensitive music synthesizer remained in service in New York for only a few years . . . The basic idea was resurrected again in the 1930s in an instrument that was somewhat more of a commercial success: the Hammond Organ
by Robert A. Moog,”ElectronicMusic,”Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, October/November 1977
The Hammond organ was a commercial success- first in churches and then in jazz clubs where musicians like Jimmy Smith made it popular.
B3 courtesy of Wikipedia
Hammond was inspired to create the tonewheel or “phonic wheel” by listening to the moving gears of his electric clocks and the tones produced by them.
by Wikipedia
The RCA Synthesiser I & II -1951
The RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center at Columbia’s Prentis Hall on West 125th Street in 1958.
In the 1950’s RCA was one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the United States; business interests included manufacturing record players, radio and electronic equipment (military and domestic – including the US version of the Theremin) as well as recording music and manufacturing records.
In the early 50’s RCA initiated a unusual research project whose aim was to auto-generate pop ‘hits’ by analysing thousands of music recordings; the plan being that if they could work out what made a hit a hit, they could re-use the formula and generate their own hit pop music.
The project’s side benefit also explored the possibility of cutting the costs of recording sessions by automating arrangements and using electronically generated sounds rather than expensive (and unionised) orchestras; basically, creating music straight from score to disc without error or re-takes.
by Simon Crab 120years
It’s interesting to view the quote from 120years in the context of recent advances in AI technology, DAWs and soft synth technologies . The MIDI Association has covered many of the efforts to auto generate music by analysing recordings mainly because many companies use MIDI data as the input to train their AI models. On top of that, with the advent of VSTs and orchestral libraries, more and more recording are created using virtual instruments.
So MIDI has in many ways made RCA’s vision of the future come true.
The RCA synthesizer is recognized as the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer. It was programmed with coded punch paper rolls that look strangely similar to the paper rolls from player pianos and the piano roll editors found in almost every modern digital audio workstation Below is a schematic of the modular elements of the RCA synthesizer that took up an an entire room in Columbia’s Prentis Hall.
Schematic of the RCA electronic music synthesizer nicknamed “Victor” from 120years.
The Clavivox -1952
Raymond Scott with his invention the Clavivox
No discussion of electronic music would be complete without mentioning Raymond Scott.
He was born in 1908 and in 1934 was hired as the staff pianist for the CBS Radio Orchestra. Soon after he has his first hit as a composer “Christmas Night in Harlem”.
In 1942, he broke the color barrier by forming the first racially-mixed network radio orchestra (including Ben Webster, Emmett Berry, Charlie Shavers, Cozy Cole, and others).
He is important in the history of electronics music for many, many reasons.
He is credited with being the first in the world to develop:
The world’s first multi-track tape recorders (one with 7 tracks and 1one with 14 tracks) in 1952
The world’s first electro-mechanical musical “sequencer” in 1953.
He was granted a patent in 1956 for the Clavivox, a “Keyboard Operated Electrical Musical Instrument” which allowed you to slide between notes. Pretty amazing that this is 60 years before MPE!
Raymond Scott was hired by Berry Gordy of Motown in 1970 as Director of Electronic Music Research and Development, and his jazz compositions are quoted or used outright in many of Warner Brother’s cartoon themes. Close to the end of his life (he passed away in
He also inspired a young Bob Moog. Check out this article from the Raymond Scott Website.
After his retirement, Scott used MIDI technology to continue composing until 1987, when he suffered the first of several debilitating strokes. Raymond Scott died in 1994.
by Simon Crab, 120years
Wurltizer Sideman Drum Machine 1959
The Wurlitzer Side Man generated sounds the same way the music boxes and the Rhythmicon did by using rotating disc. There was also a slider to control the tempo (between 34 and 150 beats per minute). One other innovation of the Sideman which became a standard feature of drum machines is that the sounds can also be triggered individually by buttons on the front panel.
1963 marks the start of the next part of music production and MIDI history
In 1963, Robert Moog was going to change the face of synthesis for ever by taking the synthesizer out of the university laboratory and putting it in the hands of musicians.
In the next chapter of the history of MIDI, we will look at the sonic pioneers who explored how to build modular programmable synthesizers, drum machines, and sequencers and started the modern music production revolution that is still very much alive today.
The 60ft long, 200 ton, $200,000 “Telharmonium III” from 120year.net
Hugo Gernsbacks’ Pianorad from 120year.net
Electronic musical instruments had been around in some form since the late nineteenth century. The Telharmonium and the Singing Telegraph date back to the beginnings of electricity itself while throughout the first half of the twentieth century electronic musical contraptions were quite the rage in Europe, from the French Ondes-Martenot to the German Pianorad, to the Russian Theremin .
The ‘Ondes-Martenot’ Maurice Martenot, France, 1928
120years.net
Leon Termen plays the ‘Theremin’ or ‘Thereminvox’ . Paris, 1927- from 120year.net
Moog Music, a MIDI Manufacturers Association member has actually revived the Theremin. And why shouldn’t they as Robert Moog was involved with the theremin early in his career. Here is a quote from the incredibly rich website at http://120years.net/.
The Theremin was marketed and distributed in the USA by RCA during the 1930’s as a DIY kit form or as a finished instrument ( later aficionados of the instrument included Robert Moog who made and sold transistorised Theremins in the 1950s). The heterodyning vacuum tube oscillator became the standard method of producing electronic sound until the advent of the transistor in the 1960’s and was widely used by electronic musical instrument designs of the period.
The relationship between mechanical musical machines and MIDI gets even more intriguing with orchestrions and “fairground organs”.
Orchestrions have multiple mechanical instruments in them and are designed to sound like a complete orchestra (hence the name). Orchestrions are incredibly complex mechanical machines driven by pneumatic engines. They were used to attract visitors and fairs, theaters and bars between 1850 and 1930.
The same companies that retrofit Player Pianos with MIDI adapters replace the paper roils of Orchestrions with MIDI interfaces that drive the pneumatic pumps. Look at this article from Collectors Weekly about the 4000-pound grandfather to the iPOD!
All through history, people have wanted to be able to have music when they didn’t necessarily have musicians around. An iPod’s the same thing as a giant two-ton orchestrion 100 years ago, except you can put it in your pocket and enjoy whatever you want to hear.”
In 2010, Pat Metheny, a 20 time Grammy award winner and member of the Downbeat Hall fame, decided to put two of his life-long passions together. Pat had always loved playing MIDI guitar and had always had a fascination with Orchestrions. So he enlisted Eric Singer (a member of The MIDI Association’s educational advisory board) to help him develop a modern Orchestrion.
But it doesn’t stop there. Animusic is a company that develops virtual animated Orchestrions.
A few years later in a perfect example of life imitating art, Intel decided that they wanted to take the virtual Orchestrion and recreate it in in real life using their processors and sensors.
Has this man lost his marbles?
“It’s all about the grid,” Molin tells Michael Rundle writes for Wired UK. “I grew up making music on Midi [a computer language for writing music], and everyone makes music on a grid nowadays, on computers. Even before digital they made fantastic, programmable music instruments. In bell towers and church towers that play a melody they always have a programming wheel exactly like the one that is on the marble machine.”
by SmithsonianMag
And of course what drives all these fantastic artistic creations is MIDI!
The golden age of mechanical music machines really came in the late 19th century and early 20th century with player pianos and orchestrions. A player piano is defined as any actual acoustic piano that is played by a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music.
By Daderot (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Between 1910 and 1930 player pianos were the largest segment of the music industry in the United States. These instruments were mostly used for playing back preprogrammed music via piano rolls. Remember back then there was no radio, TV or movies. If you wanted to hear music you either had to play it yourself or have it played for you by an automated music machine.
A piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with perforations (holes) punched into it that represent note control data. As the holes move over a ‘tracker bar’ each musical note is triggered when a perforation crosses the bar and is read.
Notice the words on right side of the role (read from bottom to top. Player pianos were actually the very first Karaoke machines, another function they have in common with MIDI !
This layout should look familiar to anyone who has a DAW. The piano roll view of MIDI notes is a direct descendant of these 100 year old piano rolls because MIDI does digitally exactly what a player piano does mechanically.
A new full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in Buffalo in 1908, the so-called Buffalo Convention. Any player made anywhere in the world could now play any make of roll. Understanding the need for compatibility was the defining moment of the player industry. The consensus was key to avoiding a costly format war, which plagued almost every other form of entertainment media that followed roll music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano
That is except for MIDI! The whole point of MIDI is to allow different manufacturers to work together and it’s the only media technology that is still widely used from 1983.
Reproducing Pianos
In Germany the first reproducing player piano called the “Mignon” was developed by Weltien in 1904. A reproducing player piano can play back a recorded performance with all the subtleties of dynamics and timing exactly as the original pianist played the piece. When World War I came in 1914, German patents were seized in the US, and Ampico (the American Piano Company) and the Duo-Art systems became the big players. Because these rolls could capture the subtle nuances of the performers (just like MIDI) in the rolls themselves, famous performers and composers including Gustav Mahler, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Scott Joplin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jelly Roll Morton and George Gershwin, all recorded piano roll performances.
Most player pianos are now more than 100 years old the paper piano rolls are difficult to maintain and are deteriorating quickly.So there are companies that retro fit these classic 100-year-old pianos with MIDI interfaces.
Conlon Nancarrow and impossible music In an earlier MIDI history blog, we talked about the strange symbiotic relationship between player pianos and MIDI. But one of the things we didn’t talk about was Conlon Nancarrow, the 20th century American 
From mechanical to digital to virtual….and back! The relationship between mechanical musical machines and MIDI gets even more intriguing with orchestrions and fairground organs.
To really understand the origins of MIDI, you need to go all the way back to before there were digitally controlled synthesizers and computers, In fact you need to go back before there was even electricity to the very first mechanical music machines.
The very first mechanical musical instruments were documented in the Book of Ingenious Devices published in 850 AD by three Iranian brothers known collectively as Banu Musa. They describe 100 mechanical devices including two automated musical instruments- a hydro powered organ that played music based on interchangeable cylinders that had music patterns on them.
This cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained the basic device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the nineteenth century.”
The Banu Musa also invented an automatic flute player that actually may have been the first programmable machine or computer. The flute sounds were produced by steam and you could modify settings to create different sounds and patterns. It almost sounds like what MIDI does today! These automated music machines were used for entertainment at parties just as today we stream music from our smartphones.
Spotify circa 850 AD
www.muslimheritage.com
A hydro powered organ that played music based on interchangeable cylinders that had music patterns on them.
The first computer?
www.muslimheritage.com
The Banu Musa also invented an automatic flute player that actually may have been the first programmable machine or computer.
Mechanical Music Box
The same basic system of cylinders with music patterns was used for centuries and is still used today in carillons and music boxes.