Before we get into Anthony’s presentation at NAMM 2024, I wanted to give a bit of insight about why what he did had such a personal impact on me. I learned synthesis on an Arp 2600!
I started college at Wesleyan University in 1970, the same year that Alvin Lucier , the well respected electronic music composer started teaching there. John Cage had been at Wesleyan only a few years before.
Wesleyan was (and still is) a great, small liberal arts school.
I was studying Jazz with Clifford Thorton, who was in Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Sam Rivers, who had played with Miles.
Wesleyan has an amazing world music program and I was also studying African Drumming with Abraham Konbena Adzenyah, who was both an Associate Professor and simultaneously studying for his GED High School diploma. I would occasionally jam with L. Shankar, the Indian violinist.
John McLaughlin was studying Vina at Wesleyan in the fall of 1970 and used the Wesleyan cafeteria to rehearse his new band , The Mahavishnu Orchestra. For several weeks in a row, I would hang out after lunch and listen for free as Billy Cobham, Jerry Goodman, Jan Hammer, Rick Laird, and McLaughlin rehearsed. McLaughlin and L Shankar would team up later in Shakti.
To say the music scene at Wesleyan at the time was eclectic is an incredible understatement.
Anyway, back to Alvin Lucier. I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up in early September, 1970 for that first class in Electronic Music 101, but it was more surprising then anything I could have imagined. Alvin Lucier introduced himself and it sounded like this. Ma, ma, ma ,ma My,… na, na na, na, name… is Alvin …La, la, lucier and I will ……ba,ba, ba Be your …..Tea, tea, teacher. At that time, Lucier had a horrific stutter and he had just the year before written his signature work ” I Am Sitting In A Room”.
The text spoken by Lucier describes the process of the work, concluding with a reference to his own stuttering:
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.
Alvin Lucier
in October of 1970, I went to a performance of I Am Sitting In A Room at the Wesleyan coffee house. Musicologists often fail to mention Lucier’s stutter, but to me it was the essence of the piece. Lucier sat in middle of the coffee house with a microphone, two tape recorders and speakers positioned around the small room in quad. He started repeating the text of the piece over and over again, with each consonant causing him to stutter.
It was uncomfortable to listen to and watch. But the repetitive stutter was being fed back into the room and doubled by two tape recorders which were slightly out of sync. This created an amazing cascade of stuttered rhythms.
Then after about 10 minutes, Lucier hit a switch and the sound from the speakers stopped. What happened next was magical. He then said perfectly clearly and without any stutter “I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now.” He then repeated that single phrase and with each repetition, his stutter started to come back.
Then he kicked in the speakers and the whole process started over again. He repeated that process three times over the course of about 40 minutes. You watched in real time as someone with a serious speech impediment used electronic art to fix it, but it couldn’t last, he would always fall back into the halting , uncomfortable pattern of stuttering.
It was both powerful and heartbreaking and one of the most courageous pieces of art I have ever witnessed.
At the Wesleyan Electronic Music Studio, I learned synthesis on two Arp 2600 and an Arp 2500 Sequencer set up in Quad. Students in Electronic Music classes could get the keys to the studio and I spent many nights in my 4 years at Wesleyan creating sounds until the wee hours of morning and then tearing them apart and starting over from scratch to make a new patch. It was there working with the Arp 2600 that I learned the sheer joy of making sounds with synthesizers.
Anthony’s passion for teaching synthesis brought all of that joy back.
The Lifetime Achievement Awards at April NAMM 2023
At the April NAMM show we gave out MIDI Association LifeTime Achievement Awards to the founding fathers of modern synthesise and music production including Alan Pearlman from ARP.
So when Dina Pearlman who runs the Arp Foundation and received the award in 2023 on her father’s behalf came to us at NAMM 2024 and asked for a favor, we couldn’t say no.
She had scheduled a performance by Anthony for the Arp Foundation booth which was only a 5 by 10 booth against the wall at the front of Hall A. We had a much larger booth and headphones for 50 guests.
So even though we had 23 sessions arranged already, we had to say yes and boy are we glad we did!
If you don’t know who Anthony is, he was one of the main people who brought synthesizers to Hollywood.
He was heavily involved with the Synclavier and its development and he and his partner, Brian Banks had notable credits on some of the first films to almost exclusively use synths including: WarGames (1984), Starman (1984), The Color Purple (1985), Stand by Me (1985), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Young Guns (1988) and Internal Affairs (1990).
Here is a 1979 poster promoting the Synner’s (that’s Anthony and his partner at the time Brian Banks) performances of classical pieces at LA County Museum of Natural History.
Anthony has also been the synthesist on many amazing records including Micheal Jackson’s Thriller (produced by Quincy Jones). There isa link at the bottom of the article to his Youtube page which has a bunch of great videos including his presentation at NAMM 2024 where he invited young people on stage and taught them how to get cool sounds out of the Arp 2600 in a matter of minutes.
His passion for synthesis brought back college memories of discovering the joys of analog modular synths for the first time guided by Alvin Lucier.
Anthony Maranelli’s Presentation of the ARP 2600 at The MIDI Association Booth NAMM 2024
As you may know, we are working on a Music Accessibility Standard to make making music accessible to all.
Thanks to MIDI Association member Audio Modeling, we got in touch with Lamar Mitchell and Cristian Perez from Stevie Wonder’s team a few weeks ago and explain to them our ideas about a Music Accessibility standard.
Then a few days Tony Baras, an industry friend from Ultimate Ears called us and let us know that Stevie had some specific ideas about the needs of people with accessibility challenges.
Thanks to Tony, Lamar and Cristian, Stevie visited our CES booth and we were able to explain the goal of the Music Accessibility Standard directly to him and gain his insight on specific needs of people who are visually impaired.
Having worked for Yamaha for many years, I had the pleasure of meeting Stevie before and was actually running the Yamaha booth the year that Ellis Hall (another amazing blind musicia) was playing at the booth and Stevie showed. Ellis moved to electronic drums and they did several songs together. Yamaha also put on a clinic a few years ago at West LA that featured Ellis and Alan Parsons. Stevie showed up to see Ellis at that event too.
It was an honor to be able to share our ideas and goals with Stevie and of course he agreed that making music should be accessible to all.
Come see us at NAMM Booth 10302 on Friday, January 26 at 3 pm for the Music Accessibility Standard panel discussion and then stick around to enjoy Ellis Hall, the ambassador of soul perform.
Ellis is performing at both our booth on Friday right after the Music Accessibility Standard panel discussion and then again at Ultimate Ears booth with Matthew Whittaker, Nate Barnes and Jeremy Jeffers at the Ultimate Ears booth 10720 on Saturday afternoon.
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
At the 2022 June NAMM show, MIDI Association Executive Board member Lawrence Levine and President Athan Billias were invited to sit at the Broadjam table by MIDI Association supporter Roy Elkins. Roy’s Broadjam team is experts in running different kinds of voting for events. They handle the voting for the TEC Awards, The Academy of Country Music Awards and the MIDI Innovation Awards. Lawrence and Athan happened to be seated next to Brian Hardgroove, producer, drummer and bass player and member of the band Public Enemy.
After the TEC Awards, Brian, Lawrence and Athan ended up in a discussion that went late into the night about music, technology and culture. They immediately developed a bond and continued to meet regularly to share ideas on how music can be a positive force for change.
Soon their discussions turned to how 2023 would celebrate two unique anniversaries- MIDI@40 and HipHop@50.
That’s when their plans really kicked into overdrive.
HipHop@50 Sponsors
JOANNE CALITRI from the Montecito Journal recently did a great article about the HipHop@50 NAMM events and we wanted to quote some her article here.
Hardgroove, a musician, record producer, and member of Public Enemy, is a highly respected NAMM presenter who brings A-List industry experts to his TEC Tracks. This year he also brought in Chuck D, the co-founder of Public Enemy, social activist, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Having Chuck D there ignited many new people to attend NAMM for certain.
In a phone interview with me, Hardgroove clarified,
“I have had a great relationship with NAMM for many years, and I am on the Les Paul Foundation Advisory Council.
When I heard that NAMM wanted to give a ‘nod to Hip Hop’ which is celebrating its 50th year, I decided to have Chuck D at my Black to the Future TEC Track to talk on the first 50 years of Hip Hop.
I went about raising the funds for that with Athan Billias and Lawrence Levine, who are members of The Midi Association, to cover the expense of bringing Chuck D to the show and provide a suitable honorarium.
We raised money under the banner of HIP HOP@50 from Roland, Shure, Pioneer DJ, Analog Devices, BASSBOSS, The Midi Association, and Spectrasonic Virtual Instruments.
While this is going on, my PR agent Caroline suggested to Pete Johnston, producer of the NAMM TEC Experience, to connect with me, which he did. Johnston said, since you’re bringing Chuck D here, we’d like to give him an award; however, there are no current NAMM awards that speak to his contributions.
I asked Pete to give me some time to come up with a proper award and its mission statement, which I did. The award is called the ‘Impact Music and Culture Award,’ to acknowledge the impact he has had on culture. I sent it to Johnston. NAMM made no changes to the awards name or mission statement, and then they sent an official notice to Chuck D to accept the award and he agreed. I presented it to him at the awards show Thursday.”
The TEC Experience at April NAMM was very different than previous TEC Award events. It was open to anyone with a NAMM badge and the NAMM Ballroom was packed with over 1800 people.
Host Larry Batiste reminded everyone of how HipHop was embraced by other genres of music-RUN-DMC’s use of Aerosmith’s “Walk this Way” is an obvious example as is Method Man and R&B artist Mary J. Blige, but there is also Chuck D’s 2015 collaborations with Archie Shepp (bet you didn’t see that coming!)
GrandMixer DXT was presented the “Hip Hop Innovator Award” for his innovation on the turntable by DJ Jazzy Jeff.
DXT’s work with jazz legend Herbie Hancock on “Rock It” is another example of how HipHop shaped both global culture and other musical genres.
Mike Relm created a fantastic mashup tribute to Hip Hop and HipHop gear including the Roland Rhythm Composer TR-808, Technics SL 2000 turntables, Gemini PreAmps, E-Mu Systems, Inc. SP-1200, MPC 3000 Pads, Ensoniq ASR10, Korg Triton pro music workstation, and Akai’s S950 sampler, the MPC60 and MPC60II.
This tribute fit perfectly with the MIDI@40 tribute to the founders of modern music production including Ikutaro Kakehashi from Roland, Tsutomu Katoh from Korg, Roger Linn from Linn Designs and Dave Rossum from EMU and Rossum Systems.
Chuck D and Hardgroove at the TEC Experience
DJs pay homage to the musicians, the artists, the name of the record, the songwriters, the musicianship. That is where we come from as DJ culture, to be able to explain to the world the beauty and gift of music.
The important factor is we had to know where these sounds came from. We knew that a DJ could be a band like Run DMC said, but you have to have the knowledge of the records. In this day I think it is disrespectful to make light of scholarship, because people just think they can be what they want to be by looking at a screen and think they’re a scholar too.
Scholars read everything, the good, bad and ugly – and then have a conversation about it. That is the same thing about technologists, DJs, and musicians – they can play anything but they process it to a point where you can dig it, pick it up and it’s palatable to your taste, and they spend time at it. They do the good, bad and ugly so they possibly can come up with something that can be a universal language. That’s the gift of music.
Where we’re going right now, Artificial Intelligence is not getting dumber. You look around and it looks like society is falling off into stupidity, and AI is coming on like a locomotive on nuclear steroids in outer space. I know, I’ve heard all the talk how music is this and musicians are that and we are being invaded. You’ve all seen the speed of data GPT, and it ain’t wack. Prince Rogers Nelson said, ‘Try your best to be on top of the technology or it will be on top of you.’
And one thing we know, you might not like, but everybody’s got the gadget in their pocket attached to their hip. How do we dance with it as musicians, artists, creators, technologists, DJs, bass players, guitarists, and people who say I don’t have to write this speech all I have to do is pour it in a GPT blender, how we deal with that? What’s the next two and three generations look like? That’s the challenge. It’s hard to challenge that when you’re drunk or high, AI is not on cocaine.
This is the turning point, we’re two years past the pandemic, what is 2024 looking like?
Let the music stay free. Peace.”
by Chuck D during his acceptance speech of the Impact Music and Culture Award
DJ Johnny Juice and Resonant Alien performing with Chuck D at the NAMM TEC Experience
Brian Hardgroove, DXT, Muz Skillings and Horace Alexander Young at NAMM
On Friday, over 500 people showed up for Chuck’s discussion on HipHop at a NAMM Tec Tracks session.
Here are some highlights.
Brian Hardgroove (BH): Why did Hip Hop last 50 years?
Chuck D (CD): We were more aware, and we knew Hip Hop was going to last over 50 years. It is a sight, sound, story style which has creativity, musicianship, dance culture and graffiti art culture. Most people don’t have a clear definition of Rap and Hip Hop; Rap is a vocal on top of music, it is a vocal platform.
BH: How does Hip Hop push the dial to move culture forward?
CD: We need more people like you! We need to stop the corporate spectacle that has become music. Be spectacular not a spectacle. Hip Hop has always been embracing, intelligent, genius, and had scientists who know the technology to engineer and produce it. In the U.S., music was the number one influencer of people and culture, now it is sports, which has used music in its platform to push its place forward. The airwaves used to be public, but corporations took that over. The last century we all had music in the crib, and musicians respected the music that came before us, we knew who wrote it, produced it, wrote the liner notes, and the engineers. Get out of your bubbles. Look at what other countries and cultures are doing with music, Hip Hop and Rap have been worldwide for a long time, and it started right here. Use your devices as tools, not as toys which is soc-med [social media]. Don’t let the tech make you stupid and lazy, manage your devices before they manage you. Things are moving fast in 2024 and 2026, and you need to stay awake, it’s the cheapest price you’ll have to pay.
BH: Tell us about being inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame.
CD: Rock Hall said for the TV show we have a younger person do the induction speech. I said we love what you do but we have our own plans how we are going to do this. We come from Black Music, we want to honor our heroes instead of somebody inducting us, we don’t think we’re the most important thing. We want Harry Belafonte to induct us or we’re not showing up. We’re honoring somebody who laid the groundwork for us to be here in the first place that America wants to forget quickly. We felt dignified and honored to honor our hero honoring us. You have to fight for what is right if you have the power to do so at that particular time. When it comes to the arts, there is a longer trail of what made it to be – instead of thinking it’s a bunch of bones we stand on. You’re recording music and making technology on the shoulders of unacknowledged giants. When I look at any screen, I think of Philo Farnsworth; he was one of the cats who realized people could look at a screen and you got TV, but he’s one of the names that got pushed to the back like thousands of unacknowledged heroes, which you can choose to honor. This is where the humanity of music, the arts, and culture unite us with similarities and knocks our differences to the side.
Resonant Alien performs on Saturday at the MIDI@40 concert
Resonant Alien performed on Saturday April 15th at MIDI@40 concert bringing the MIDI@40 and HipHop@50 celebrations together.
If you have the NAMM + app, you can still watch the MIDI@40 live stream and we will be rebroadcasting portions of the event soon.
In the meantime, here are images from the Resonant Alien graphic novel currently in development.
The 2023 NAMM Show will celebrate two of history’s most impactful musical innovations: the 40th anniversary of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) with MIDI@40 and the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, with Hip-Hop@50.
Each day of the show, which takes place April 13–15, in Anaheim, California, will offer the intertwined story of hip-hop and MIDI, and the relationship between technology and music creation. Together, hip-hop and MIDI — as an underlying, enabling technology — have had a global impact in breaking down barriers and making music more accessible.
In fact, MIDI drum machines, sequencers, synths, and turntables are at the heart of many of the iconic records that made hip-hop the cultural phenomenon that it is today.
As part of the MIDI@40 celebration, the MIDI Zone in the front of Hall A of the Anaheim Convention Center will celebrate a wide range of products and innovations using MIDI. In total, 30 companies will be displaying the latest in MIDI innovation, and The MIDI Association will be demonstrating MIDI 2.0, the most important upgrade to MIDI since its debut at The NAMM Show in 1983.
“MIDI@40 not only showcases all of the amazing MIDI products that have impacted music over the past 40 years but also looks forward to the future with MIDI 2.0 products that will continue to shape the way music is made for decades to come,
Athan Billias, President of the MIDI Association
HipHop@50 Events At April NAMM
TEC Experience on Thursday night
Chuck D, the legendary leader and founder of rap group Public Enemy, social activist, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and GRAMMY® Lifetime Achievement Award winner, will be honored with NAMM’s Impact Music & Culture Award at The 2023 NAMM Show, being held April 13-15, in Anaheim, California.
The Impact Music & Culture Award was conceived by musician, producer and songwriter Brian Hardgroove as an opportunity to recognize individuals who move culture through the power of music. The award will be presented at NAMM for the very first time. Chuck D will be on hand to accept the award, presented at the TEC Experience on Thursday, April 13 from 6-7:30 p.m.
The recognition comes as part of The NAMM Show’s Hip-Hop 50celebration,a curated slate of sessions and events throughout the conference that pay tribute to a genre of music that has greatly influenced culture, music, and music-making products.
“As an outgrowth of hip-hop culture, rap music has revolutionized popular music with an impact not seen since the emergence of rock and roll. One of hip-hop’s most influential artists is Public Enemy’s Chuck D,” shared Hardgroove, Public Enemy’s bassist and bandleader and founder of Resonant Alien. “I had the opportunity to watch Chuck up close and witness first-hand the impact he’s had on music fans worldwide. It will be an honor for me to present Chuck with the first Impact Music & Culture Award as part of this year’s TEC Experience at NAMM.”
As an outgrowth of hip-hop culture, rap music has revolutionized popular music with an impact not seen since the emergence of rock and roll. One of hip-hop’s most influential artists is Public Enemy’s Chuck.
I had the opportunity to watch Chuck up close and witness first-hand the impact he’s had on music fans worldwide. It will be an honor for me to present Chuck with the first Impact Music & Culture Award as part of this year’s TEC Experience at NAMM.
by Hardgroove, Public Enemy’s bassist and bandleader and founder of Resonant Alien.
Only You Can Set You Free: Living Colour’s Muzz Skillings on the Making and Impact of ‘Vivid’ and ‘Time’s Up’
Muzz Skillings
Friday, April 14, 2023 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM · 1 hr. (America/Los_Angeles)
Streaming will start Friday, April 14, 2023 12:00 PM
204AB
In-Person & Livestream on NAMM +
Muzz Skillings is a multi Grammy Award-winning artist most widely known as the original bass player from Living Colour. He has also recorded and performed with Michael Jackson, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello among others. Born and raised in Southeast Queens, New York, he enjoyed the environment which enabled him to record and perform in the styles and genres of music such as Rock, Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Salsa, Merengue, Contemporary Gospel, and R&B.
He has also partnered with the United Nations, conceiving and developing their first Global Media Event to eradicate AIDS, and has written, narrated directed the NFL Films presentation of his not-for-profit organization, Audible For Autism, partnering with the NFL.
On Friday, Hip-Hop@50 will present “Chuck D on Hip-Hop@50.”
Hosted by Brian Hardgroove, the session will feature an in-depth conversation with legendary rapper and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame leader of Public Enemy, Chuck D. Come hear the history of this American cultural phenomenon through the lens of a legend that influenced the genre like no other.
MIDI@40 Educational Sessions
Wearable technology has had the promise and ability to usher music into a new era, letting us go beyond sound and enter into new multi-sensory experiences for both creators and audience members. But despite this potential, the question remains: Why are the music and entertainment industries not realizing and better showcasing these next-generation innovations?
Join A3E for a fascinating discussion on the intersection of creative imagination and technological innovation. A panel of experts will explore the ways in which wearable technology is transforming the entertainment industry, how it will expand artistic expression and create more inclusion for audience members, and how we can bridge the gap between artists and developers creating transformative collaboration opportunities.
On Friday, April 14, from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m., A3E: Advanced Audio Applications Exchange will present “MIDI 2.0: What Developers Need to Know About Free Tools for Developing MIDI 2.0 Products and Apps.”
The panel discussion will feature members of the MIDI 2.0 working group, including Pete Brown, Florian Bomers, Mike Kent, and Andrew Mee as they discuss recent changes to the core MIDI 2.0 specifications and the MIDI 2.0 API on Apple, Google, Linux, and Microsoft operating systems.
They’ll also explain the tools that The MIDI Association is providing to all developers to help make MIDI 2.0 devices easier.
Immediately following the session, attendees can delve into “MIDI 2.0: What Musicians Need to Know About MIDI 2.0.” The panel session, featuring Craig Anderton, Brett Porter of Art and Logic, Michael Cain of Ekwe and artist Moldover, will introduce the new MIDI 2.0 products at The NAMM Show and provide an overview of what new MIDI specifications will mean to musicians, including MPE,
The MIDI@40 and Hip-Hop@50 celebrations will come together on Saturday, April 15 from 3–5 p.m. with an All Star concert
The MIDI@40 and Hip-Hop@50 celebrations will come together on Saturday, April 15 from 3–5 p.m. on the Yamaha Grand Plaza Stage with a performance by Resonant Alien, the new band featuring Brian Hardgroove and DJ Johnny Juice of Public Enemy and then an hour showcase of MIDI artists from around the world.
At Saturday’s anniversary celebration, lifetime achievement awards will be presented to (or posthumously honor) legendary music industry innovators 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.
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 Saturday’s anniversary celebration, lifetime achievement awards will be presented to (or posthumously honor) legendary music industry innovators 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.
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.
The afternoon event will be hosted by world champion juggler and MIDI power user Mark Nizer and will feature musicians, composers, and performance artists who represent the beautiful diversity of cultures and people from all over the world, along with music from different genres and generations brought together by music and MIDI.
The show will start with a movie scored by the first president of the MIDI Association and film and game composer, Jeff Rona.
Mike Garson (David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins) will perform an improvised piano solo.
Rick Feds and Cécile Delaurentis will be showing off the Embodme Erae Touch next generation MIDI Controller, Mimu gloves and the Ableton Push.
Mark Isham who has over 4 billion dollars in box office movie scores will perform music from some of his most popular soundtracks.
Jordan Rudess (keyboard player for Dream Theatre and developer of Geoshred) is working with a group of musicians from India and showing off the possibilities of MPE for expressive performance.
Myron McKinley is a pianist, producer, songwriter, programmer, and film score composer for large box office films and television shows.
Working extensively with the best in the industry, McKinley has toured with Grammy award winner Whitney Houston, Kenny Lattimore, Stanley Clarke, En Vogue, and has toured as the Musical Director for Philip Bailey, Cherokee, Doc Powell and Shai.Currently, for the last twelve years, McKinley serves as the Musical Director for Grammy award winners and pop music giants Earth, Wind and Fire while touring with his own incomparable band, The Myron McKinley Trio.
MIDI Innovation Awards judge Moldover (godfather of Controllerism) and Lula Mebrahtu are collaborating on a performance showing off DIY controllers.
The show will climax with a performance from The Ambassador of Soul, Ellis Hall.
Blind since the age of 18, Hall has written nearly 4,000 blues, gospel, and soul songs and performed with the likes of Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Herbie Hancock, Tower of Power, Bobby Womack, and Stevie Wonder.
A NAMM JAMM to close the April Show
The MIDI@40 and HipHop@50 celebrations are truly joined together musically in a finale written by Brockett Parsons, keyboard player for Lady Gaga where many of the performers from HipHop@50 and MIDI@40 will join the stage for a final JAMM at NAMM.
“The MIDI@40 and Hip-Hop@50 celebrations have come together in a perfect creative storm.
Hip-hop and MIDI have both made music more accessible to more people and changed our global music culture.
Share what MIDI means to you on the 40th anniversary of MIDI
We have lots of great events planned at the April NAMM show, but we wanted to give everyone here a chance to join in the celebration.
We have created a Google form where you can upload a short video about what MIDI means to you.
We will collect and review these videos and then share the best of them (after NAMM as we are really busy preparing for the MIDI Showcase and the HipHop@50 and MIDI@40 events at NAMM.
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
GLASYS (Gil Assayas) was a winner of the MIDI Association’s 2022 Innovation Awards for artistic installations. He’s a keyboard player, composer, sound designer, and video content creator who currently performs live with Todd Rundgren’s solo band. The internet largely knows GLASYS for his viral MIDI art and chiptune music.
We spoke with Gil to learn more about how he makes music. I’ll share that interview with him below. First, let’s have a quick review of his newly released chiptune album.
MIDI Art that Tugs on my Heartchips
The latest record from GLASYS, Tugging On My Heartchips, debuted January 2023 and captures the nostalgia of early 8-bit game music perfectly, with classic sound patches that transport the listener back in time. The arrangements are true to the genre and some of the songs even have easter eggs to find.
Gil created MIDI art to inspire multiple songs on the album, elevating the album’s conceptual value into uncharted meta-musical territory. He even created music video animations of the MIDI notes in post production. On track two, The MIDI Skull Song, you can almost hear the swashbuckling pirates in search of buried treasure. Take a listen here:
The MIDI Gargoyle Song features an even more complex drawing, with chromatic lines to put any pianist’s hands in a pretzel. Once the picture is finished, Gil’s gargoyle comes to life in a funny animation and dances to the finished song. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone create animations from MIDI notes in the piano roll!
Heartchips delivers all the bubbly synths and 8-bit percussion you could want from a chiptune album. But with Gil, there’s more to the music than aesthetic bravado. Where other artists lean on retro sounds to make mid-grade music sound more interesting, GLASYS has mastered the composing and arrangement skills needed to evoke the spirit of early 90s games.
It can take several listens to focus on each of the album’s sonic elements. The mix and panning are impeccable. Gil rolls off some of the harsh overtones in the instrument’s waveform, to make it easier on our ears. But there’s something special happening in the arrangement, that we discussed in more detail during our interview.
Drawing from a classic 8-Bit technique
The playful acoustics of Heartchips mask Gil’s complex harmonic and rhythmic ideas like a coating of sugar.
Gil gives each instrument a clear sense of purpose and identity, bringing them together in a song that tells a story without words. To accomplish this, he uses techniques from early game music, back when composers had only 5 instruments channels to use.
In the 1980s and 90s, as portable gaming consoles became popular, there was a limit to the number of notes a microchip could store and play at once. Chords had to be hocketed, or broken up into separate notes, so that the other instrument channels could be used for lead melody, accompaniment and percussion.
As a result, the classic 8-bit composers avoided sustained chords unless the entire song was focused on that one instrument. Every instrument took on an almost melodic quality.
While Heartchips doesn’t limit itself to five instrument channels per song, it does align with the idea that harmony and chord progressions should be outlined rather than merely sustained as a chord.
When GLASYS outlines a chord as an arpeggio in the bass, you’ll often hear two or three countermelodies in the middle and upper registers. Each expresses a unique idea, completely different from the others, yet somehow working perfectly with them. That’s the magic of his art.
There are a few moments on the album when chords are sustained for a measure at a time, like on the tracks No School Today or Back to Reality. These instances where chords are used acquire an almost dramatic effect because it disrupts your expectations as a listener.
Overall, I found Tugging on my Heartchips to be a fun listening experience with lots of replay value.
What’s up with GLASYS in 2023?
In February 2023, GLASYS branched out from MIDI piano roll drawings to audio spectrograms. This new medium grants him the ability to draw images with more than MIDI blocks.
A spectrogram is a kind of 2D image. It’s a visual map of the sound waves in an audio file. It reads left to right, just like a piano roll. The X axis represents time and the Y axis represents frequency.
Some other artists (Aphex Twin, Dizasterpeace) have hidden images in spectrograms before, but those previous efforts only generated white noise. GLASYS has defied everyone’s expectations with spectrogram art created from his own voice and keyboards.
Here’s one of his latest videos, humming and whistling accompaniment to a piano arrangement in order to create a dragon. It may be the first time in history that something like this has been performed and recorded:
An Interview with GLASYS (Gil Assayas)
I’ve really enjoyed the boundary-defying MIDI art that comes from GLASYS, so I reached out on behalf of the MIDI Association to ask a few questions and learn more. Here’s that conversation.
E: You’ve released an album in January called Tugging On My Heartchips. Can you talk about what inspired you to write these songs and share any challenges that came up while creating it?
G: Sure. Game boy was a big part of my childhood. It was the only console we had, because in Israel it was more expensive and harder to get a hold of other systems.
The first games I had were Links Awakening, Donkey Kong, Battletoads, and Castlevania. I loved the music and what these composers could achieve with 4 tracks, using pulse wave and noise. Somehow they could still create these gorgeous melodies.
My experience growing up with those games was the main inspiration for this album. I never really explored these sounds in previous albums. I always went more for analog synths.
E: Your first GLASYS EP, The Pressure, came out in 2016 but your Youtube channel goes back almost a decade. Can you tell me a bit about the history of GLASYS?
G: When I first got started, I was playing in a band in Israel and every so often I would write a solo work that didn’t fit the band’s sound. So I created the GLASYS channel to record those ideas occasionally. After moving to the United States, I had a lot more time to focus on my own music and that’s when things started picking up.
E: Can you tell me more about your mixing process? Do you write, record, and mix everything yourself?
G: Yes, I write everything myself and record most of it in my home studio. Nowadays I mix everything myself, though in the past I’ve worked with some great mixing engineers such as Tony Lash (Dandy Warhols, Elliot Smith).
E: I think the playful tone of Heartchips will carry most listeners away. It’s easy to overlook the difficulty of creating a chiptune album like this, not to mention all the video work you do on social media to promote it. You’ve nailed the timbre of your instruments and compositional style.
G: Yeah, mixing chiptune can be trickier than it seems because of all the high end harmonic content. None of the waveforms are filtered and everything has overtones coming through. I found that a little bit of saturation on the square waves, pulse waves, and a little bitcrushing can smooth out the edges a bit. EQ can take out some of the harsh highs, and you can do some sidechaining. These are things you can’t do on a gameboy or NES.
E: How much of your time is spent composing versus mixing and designing your instruments?
G: Mixing takes a lot longer. Composition is the easy part. The heard part is making something cool enough to want to share. I can be a bit of a perfectionist. So I’ll do a mix, try to improve it, rinse and repeat ten revisions until I’m happy with it. That’s one of the reasons it can be better to do the mix myself, haha.
E: Before this interview, we were talking about aphantasia where people can’t visualize images but they can still dream in images. Do you ever dream in music?
G: Dreams are such an emotional experience. When you get a musical idea in your dreams, more often than not you forget it when you wake up. But when you do remember it, it’s very surreal. Actually, my first song ever was based on a purple hippo I saw in my dream. I was 5 years old, heard the melody, figured it out and wrote it down with my dad.
E: What inspired you to get into MIDI art?
G: Well, there were a couple of things. Back in 2017, an artist by the name of Savant created some amazing MIDI art – I believe he was the first to do it in a way that sounds musical. He inspired other artists to create MIDI art, such as Andrew Huang who created his famous MIDI Unicorn (which I performed live in one of my videos).
There was another piece in particular that blew me away, this Harry Potter logo MIDI art that uses themes from Harry Potter, masterfully created by composer Hana Shin. I don’t particularly care for Harry Potter, but I just found the concept and execution really inspiring and I thought it would be awesome to perform something like that live. In 2021, Jacob Collier did a few videos where he spelled out words in real time, which proved that it’s possible and motivated me to finally give it a shot.
My idea was to build on the MIDI art concept and draw things that were meaningful to me, such as video game logos and characters – and do it live, so I needed to write them in a way that would be possible to play with two hands. I actually just wanted to do it once or twice but it was the audience who motivated me to keep going. It got such a huge response, I’ve ended up doing nearly fifty of them. I’m now focusing on other things, but I might get back to MIDI art in the future
E: Do you have any advice for MIDI composers who struggle coming up with new ideas?
G: Sure, I do get writers block sometimes. As far as advice goes… I know how it goes where you keep rewriting something you’ve already created before. Everyone has their subconscious biases, things that they tend to go to without thinking. So even though they’re trying to do something new, they end up repeating themselves. It can be a struggle for sure.
If you find yourself sitting in front of your daw not knowing what to do, then don’t sit in front of your daw. Go outside and take a guitar with you and start jamming. Sometimes a change of environment, breaking the habit and getting out of the rut doing the same thing over and over can really help you.
Listen to something entirely different, then new ideas will come. A lot of the problem comes from listening to the same stuff or only listening to one genre of music. So everything you write starts to sounds like them.
Listen to music outside of the genres you like. For example, if you never listen to Cuban music, listen to it for a week. Some of it will creep into your subconscious, you might end up writing some indie rock song with cuban elements that’s awesome and would sound entirely new.
E: Are there any organizational tricks that you use to manage the sheer volume of musical ideas you come up with?
G: Yeah I used to have a lot of little ideas and save them in different folders, but it was too difficult to get back to things that I had written a year ago. Time goes by, you forget about how you felt when you wrote that thing, you feel detached from it.
If I decide to do something, I work on just one or two tracks until I’m done with them. I don’t record every idea I have either. I have to feel motivated enough to do something with it.
E: Do you have perfect pitch? Can you hear music in your head before playing it?
G: Definitely, yeah I can hear music in my head. I do have perfect pitch but it has declined a little bit as I get older.
E: What can we expect from GLASYS in 2023?
G: Lots of new music and videos – I’ve got many exciting ideas that I’m looking forward to sharing!
To learn more about Gil’s musical background, check out interviews with him here, here, and here. You can also visit the GLASYS website or check out his Youtube channel.
If you enjoyed this artist spotlight and want to read more about innovative musicians, software, and culture in 2023, check out the AudioCipher blog. We’ve recently covered Holly Herndon’s AI music podcast Interdependence, shared a new Japanese AI music plugin called Neutone, and promoted an 80-musician Songcamp project that created over 20,000 music NFTs in just six weeks. AudioCipher is a MIDI plugin that turns words into music within your DAW.
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
MIDI Association contributor Walter Werzowa was featured on CNN today (Dec 26, 2021)
One of the best things about the MIDI Association is the great people we get to meet and associate with. After all they don’t call it an association for nothing. This year during May Is MIDI Month, we were putting together a panel on MIDI and music therapy and Executive Board member Kate Stone introduced us to Walter Werzowa.
So we were pleasantly surprised today when one of Walter’s latest projects was featured on Fareed Zakaria GPS show.
As I’ll detail on GPS in this week’s Next Big Idea, musicologists, composers & computer scientists have used AI to complete Beethoven’s unfinished 10th symphony.
We first got interested in Walter because of Healthtunes.org. HealthTunes® is an audio streaming service designed to improve one’s physical and mental health was founded by Walter in 2016. It uses Binural Beats.
Binaural beats and isochronic tones are embedded within our music (the low humming sound some may hear), which are two different methods used for brain wave entrainment. Binaural beats work by using two slightly different frequency tones sent to each ear. Isochronic tones use a single tone with a consistent beat being turned off and on regularly. Your body automatically reacts to both binaural beats and isochronic tones with a physiological response allowing one’s brain to reach a more desired mental state by influencing brain wave activity.
We soon learned that Walter had done many things in his career including memorable sonic branding themes from his company- musikvergnuegen. Vergnuegen could be translated as joy or fun and is used in the German word for amusement/theme park -vergnugungspark.
Almost everyone on the planet has heard his audio branding signatures. The Intel Boing and T mobile 5 note theme are all brilliant examples of simple mnemonics that could easily be described as ear worms.
By the way, the term ear worm comes from the German öhrwurm invented over 100 years ago to describe the experience of a song stuck in the brain.
T Mobile.mp3
Beethoven’s “finally finalized” 10th Symphony
But Walter’s latest project is perhaps his most impressive yet. He was part of a team of AI researchers and musicians that used AI to “finish” Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony #10. How was MIDI involved? Like most AI music projects, the AI algorithm was trained using MIDI data of not only all of Beethoven’s completed symphonies, but all of his other works as well as works from Beethoven’s contemporaries that he would have listened to and been influenced by. You can watch the NBC’s Molly Hunter’s interview with Walter or just listen to the results of Walter’s work below.
Below is a link to the full Beethoven X symphony performance
Beethovens 10. Sinfonie am 9. Oktober ab 19 Uhr im kostenlosen Stream auf MagentaMusik 360. Das bisher unvollendete Stück von Ludwig van Beethoven wurde mithilfe einer AI (dt.: künstliche Intelligenz) nun zu Ende komponiert.
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.
Massive Technologies releases major update to AR Pianist with new MIDI and Audio features
Massive Technologies (MT) newest AR Pianist update shows the unique power of combining MIDI Data with AI and VR technologies and is an incredibly engaging combination of new technologies.
They gave The MIDI Association the inside scoop on their new update to AR Pianist.
One of the major new features is the ability to import MIDI files to create virtual performances.
We’re excited to announce that a major update of AR Pianist is to be released on May 25th. We’ve been working on this update tirelessly for the past two years.
The update brings our AI technology to users’ hands, and gives them the ability to learn any song by letting the app listen to it once through the device microphone.
Using AI, the app will listen to the audio, extract notes being played, and then show you a virtual pianist playing that song for you with step by step instructions.
The app also uses machine learning and augmented reality to project the virtual avatar onto your real piano, letting you experience the performance interactively and from every angle.
Users can also record their piano performance using the microphone (or MIDI), and then watch their performance turn into a 3D / AR virtual concert. Users can share it as a video now, and to VR / AR headsets later this year.
The update also features songs and content by “The Piano Guys”, along with a licensed Yamaha “Neo” designer piano.
by Massive Technologies
A.I. Generates 3D Virtual Concerts from Sound:
“To train the AI, we brought professionally trained pianists to our labs in Helsinki, where they were asked to simply play the piano for hours. The AI observed their playing through special hardware and sensors, and throughout the process the pianist and we would check the AI’s results and give it feedback or corrections. We would then take that feedback and use it as the curriculum for the AI for our next session with the pianist. We repeated that process until the AI results closely matched the human playing technique and style.”
by Massive Technologies
Massive Technologies used MIDI Association Member Google’s Tensor Flow to train their AI model.
The technology’s main potential is music education, for piano teachers to create interactive virtual lessons for remote teaching—or for virtual piano concerts, and film or games creators who want to incorporate a super-realistic pianist in their scenes.
The key to it all is MIDI
If you look at the work being done by Google, Yamaha, Massive Technologies, The Pianos Guys and others in the AI space, MIDI is central to all of those efforts.
Why? Because MIDI is the Musical Instrument Digital Interface so to connect with AI and Machine Learning algorithms you usually have to convert Music into MIDI.
How Does AR Pianist work and what can you do with it?
AR Pianist combines a number of proprietary Massive Technologies together.
Multi pitch recognition
Massive Technologies’ in house ML models can estimate pitch and extract chords from audio streams, on the fly, in realtime.
This allows you to convert audio files of solo piano recordings into MIDI data that the AI engine can analyze. Of course you can also directly import MIDI data.
Object pose estimation
Their proprietary models can estimate the 3d position and orientation of real instruments from a single photograph.
This allows you to point your mobile device’s camera at your 88 note keyboard. The app can then map your keyboard into 3D space for use with Augmented Reality.
Motion synthesis and 3D Animation Pipeline
MT developed new machine learning algorithms that can synthesize novel and kinematically accurate 3d musical performance from raw audio files, for the use in education and AR / VR. Their tools can perform advanced full body and hand inverse kinematics to fit the same 3d musical performance to different avatars.
This is the part that almost seems like magic.
The app can take a MIDI or Audio performance (the Audio performance should be piano only), analyze it and generate musically correct avatar performances with the correct fingerings and hand positions including complex hand crossovers like those often used in classical or pop music (think the piano part from Bohemian Rhapsody).
Music notation rendering, in 3D
Massive Technologies has built a notation rendering engine, that can be used to display music scores in 3D and inside virtual environments, including AR / VR.
This allows you to see the notation for the performances. Because the data is essentially MIDI like data you can slow the tempo down, set the app to wait for you to play the right note before moving forward and other practice techniques that are widely used in MIDI applications.
A.I. Plays Rachmaninoff Playing Himself (First Person View):
An audio piano roll recording of Rachmaninoff himself playing his famous Prelude, from 1919, reconstructed into 3d animation by Massive Technologies AI.
A virtual camera was attached to the virtual avatar’s head, where its movement is being driven by the AI, simulating eye gaze and anticipation.
Massive Technologies is Fayez Salka, M.D Medical Doctor, Musician, Software Developer and 3D Artist and
Anas Wattar, BCom Graduate from McGill University, Software Developer and 3D Artist.
AR Pianist is available for on the Apple App Store and Google Play store
The app is free to download and offers in app purchases for libraries of songs. You can check out Jon Schimdt of the Piano Guys virtual demoing the AR Pianist at any Apple retail store.
2020 was a pretty tough year and everyone was affected by the events that shaped the world.
But 2020 had its positive moments too. So we’d like to focus on the good things that happened during 2020 in the MIDI Association.
At the January 2020 NAMM show, the MIDI Association and AMEI officially adopted MIDI 2.0.
On February 20, 2020 (02-20-2020) we published the first five Core MIDI 2.0 specifications to the world.
In April, the MIDI.org website was selected by the United States Library of Congress for inclusion in the historic collection of Internet materials related to the Professional Organizations for Performing Arts Web Archive.
During May Is MIDI Month, we raised $18,000 and committed to spend that money on people affected by the global pandemic.
In June, at WWDC, Apple announced Big Sur (MacOS 11.0) which includes MIDI-CI support. The OS was released in November. Also in June, the USB-IF published the USB MIDI 2.0 specification.
In September, we did a webinar at the International Game Developers Association on MIDI 2.0 for our Interactive Audio Special Interest Group.
In October, we published a new Specifications area of our website and we have now published 15 MIDI 2.0 specifications.
In December, we announced our NAMM Believe In Music Week participation and the first annual MIDI Innovation Awards.
So in the midst of one of the challenging years in history, we made huge progress in moving MIDI (and the MIDI Association) forward.
To help celebrate, we have arranged for a discount on a great book on MIDI and free attendance at NAMM’s Believe In Music week for all our MIDI Association members,
Welcome to 2021, it is going to be a very significant year in the history of MIDI.
Sometimes you just need to relax and do something cool.
So on Labor day weekend 2020 we shared this video from MEZERG enjoying some cool watermelon, some bright sun and a dip in the pool.
Oh yeah, and MIDI of course!
Want to try it yourself ? Playtronic makes it possible
Playtron is a new type of music device.
Connect Playtron to fruits and play electronic music using online synthesizers or use it as a MIDI controller with any music software and conductive objects.
Buy Playtron or Touchme, two gadgets that lets you play music on any object. We are an international studio dedicated to creating meaningful interactive audio experiences, in collaboration with brands, marketers, museums, galleries, and artists.
Ólafur Arnalds didn’t start out playing keyboards. He started out as a drummer in hard rock bands. He is not alone. Yoshiki from the legendary Japanese hard rock band X Japan comes to mind. Many people forget that the piano is classified as a percussion instrument along with marimbas and vibraphones.
He has unique approach to music that combines technology and a traditional almost classical approach to composition. He also is one of the few people still using the MOOG Piano bar, a product developed by Bob Moog and Don Buchla (now discontinued) to turn any piano into a MIDI device.
Photo: Richard Ecclestone
What’s behind bleep bloop pianos
In many interviews, Ólafur says that his acoustic pianos bleep and bloop.
In these two Youtube video, he explains how MIDI technology is a core part of his creative process. What is is interesting is how organic and emotional the resulting music is. The technology nevers get in the way of the art and only compliments it.
This video explains how the three acoustic pianos are connected by MIDI.
I am in constant search of new ways to approach art with technology, interaction and creativity.
by Halldór Eldjárn
Halldór Eldjárn is another Icelandic artist who worked on the All Strings Attached project and developed some robotic MIDI instruments for the project.
Ólafur Arnalds on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts
To see a complete performance of this unique use of MIDI processing, listen to this performance on NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts.
How to Bleep (and Bloop) yourself
Arnalds has released a library of sounds for Spitfire Audio recorded at his studio on his ‘felted’ grand piano along with added content in the Composers Toolkit.
Recently MIDI Manufacturer Association member Blokas released the Midihub, a MIDI router and processor. In our article on the MIDIhub, Loopop explains how to use the Midihub to create some Olafur Arnalds inspired MIDI effects of your own.
At SXSW 2019, Moritz Simon Geist performed and presented several workshops on using robots and MIDI. His new EP is created completely with MIDI controllers controlling robots he created himself.
A latency control concept for midi driven mechanic robotic instruments
Geist is deeply into MIDI. His blog details a proposal for how to overcome the latency caused by physical movements of robots using MIDI and Cycling 74′ Max.
In 1986 Frank Zappa released his final studio album in his lifetime; for the remaining seven years of his life, he would only release live concert albums. Jazz from Hell is an instrumental album whose selections were all composed and recorded by Frank Zappa. It was released in 1986 by Barking Pumpkin Records on vinyl and by Rykodisc on CD. Zappa won a 1988 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for this album. .
What is a “Synclavier” ?
The Synclavier was an early digital synthesizer, polyphonic digital sampling system, and music workstation manufactured by New England Digital Corporation of Norwich, Vermont, USA. It was produced in various forms from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. The instrument has been used by prominent musicians.
The original design and development of the Synclavier prototype occurred at Dartmouth College with the collaboration of Jon Appleton, Professor of Digital Electronics, Sydney A. Alonso, and Cameron Jones, a software programmer and student at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering.
The system evolved in its next generation of product, the Synclavier II, which was released in early 1980 with the strong influence of master synthesist and music producer Denny Jaeger of Oakland, California. It was originally Jaeger’s suggestion that the FM synthesis concept be extended to allow four simultaneous channels or voices of synthesis to be triggered with one key depression to allow the final synthesized sound to have much more harmonic series activity. This change greatly improved the overall sound design of the system and was very noticeable. 16-bit user sampling (originally in mono only) was added as an option in 1982. This model was succeeded by the ABLE Model C computer based PSMT in 1984 and then the Mac-based 3200, 6400 and 9600 models, all of which used the VPK keyboard.
Synclavier II (1980): 8-bit FM/additive synthesis, 32-track memory recorder, and ORK keyboard. Earlier models were entirely controlled via ORK keyboard with buttons and wheel; a VT100 terminal was subsequently introduced for editing performances. Later models had a VT640 graphic terminal for graphical audio analysis (described below)
Original Keyboard (ORK, c.1979): original musical keyboard controller in a wooden chassis, with buttons and silver control wheel on the panel.[10] Sample-to-Disk (STD, c.1982): a first commercial hard disk streaming sampler, with 16-bit sampling at up to 50 kHz. Sample-to-Memory (STM): later option to sample sounds and edit them in computer memory. Direct-to-Disk (DTD, c.1984): a first commercial hard disk recording system. Signal File Manager: a software program operated via VT640 graphic terminal, enabling ‘Additive Resynthesis’ and complex audio analysis. Digital Guitar Interface SMPTE timecode tracking MIDI interface
5
by Wikipedia..
What is interesting for us is the fact that the Synclavier was a very advanced and elaborate midi-instrument which revolutionized the music industry.
After two decades of depending on the skills, virtuosity, and temperament of other musicians, Zappa all but abandoned the human element in favor of the flexibility of what he could produce with his Synclavier Digital Music System.
The selections on “Jazz from Hell” were composed, created, and executed by Zappa with help from his concurrent computer assistant Bob Rice and recording engineer Bob Stone. Far from being simply a synthesizer, the Synclavier combined the ability to sample and manipulate sounds before assigning them to the various notes on a piano-type midi keyboard.
At the time of its release, many enthusiasts considered it a slick, emotionless effort. In retrospect, their conclusions seem to have been a gut reaction to the methodology, rather than the music itself.
by AllMusic
As I am since a few years an avid amateur of making midi based music, I took the challenge to revive some tracks of this groundbreaking album on put them on my youtube channal.
I will present one track here which is made with commercial available DAW’s and midi files which are available on the web.
“G-Spot Tornado” is a musical composition created by Frank Zappa for his album Jazz from Hell in 1986.He thought that the composition was so difficult to play that it could not possibly be performed by a human therefore he initially recorded the song using a Synclavier DMS. Zappa was later proven wrong when the song was performed live on The Yellow Shark. The piece, one of, “Zappa’s most successful Synclavier releases in the tonal idiom…,
Frank Zappa’s music keeps inspiring me since I bought my first Zappa record in 1968 and I was lucky to see him perform on several occasions live on stage.
It’s hard to find an actual Synclavier these days, but you can find information on the Synclavier at Vintagesynth.com and Arturia released a softhsynth reproduction of the Synclavier V in 2016.
The Synclavier V faithfully recreates the elite digital synthesizer/workstation that started it all, powering some of the biggest hits and film soundt…
The Glitch Mob has started touring with what may be one of the most complicated MIDI controllers every built.
The Blade 2 .0 was designed by Martin Phillips also who has done work for Deadmau5, Kanye and Daft Punk. Dell partnered with the Glitch Mob to provide Dell Alienware 15s computers that run Intel Core i7-7820HK quad-core processors. The Blade 2.0 has three Dell Canvas 27-inch touchscreens that are programmed as MIDI controllers for melodies and kick and snare drum patterns. An Alienware 17 plugged in via a MIDI HDMI cable connects the whole show together.
“We have all these crazy turbine-looking drum things and inside of those are Roland PD-125X V-Drum Mesh Snares. We hook all those up to a Roland Octapad, which all three of us have sitting about 10 feet behind us.”
by Edward Ma from an article on Music Radar
Nerdmaticsis the LA-based tech team that wrote the Max patches to drive the show. They also have done some other projects we’ve covered like the Intel CES keynote.
Here’s some more of the Glitch Mob and the Blade in action.
Here links to some other articles about the Blade 2.0
Tristan Shone A.K.A. Author and Punisher is a musician and mechanical engineer who makes heavy metal MIDI controllers, really heavy metal !
He has created a range of unique MIDI controllers he calls “dub machines” using his electronic and mechanical engineering expertise. Tristan studied for a Master of Fine Arts at the University of San Diego and originally had a career as a mechanical engineer. He programs his mechanical devices using Arduino.
Here is his Big Knob controller and it’s really, really big!
Big Knob expression port knob controller.
This simple device is a heavy-duty CNC machined black anodized knob for use with your expression port on any midi/usb keyboard controller. Simply plug into your expression port and immediately have a 0-128 mappable control knob. Currently there are 10 spring loaded detente positions and a hard stop for quantized physical snapping, however by removing the 1″ chromed steel ball bearing and spring, you can create a smooth position knob controller.
2
by Author and Punisher
Another unique MIDI device is the Rack and Pinion
This device is a 2 level, 6 key sound controller with continuous pitch control for each key. Each key is velocity sensitive and contains its own linear encoder for extremely high resolution control. The keys are made from ebony and the slide from delrin providing very smooth control against the teflon coated linear rails. The brain of the Rack & Pinion is the Arduino Duemilanove. Currently the device is programmed to output USB/MIDI to Ableton Live, but can easily be configured to output OSC commands to communicate with Pd, MAX, Reaktor, etc.
by Author and Punisher
But maybe our favorite is Rails. And yes , it’s a MIDI controller!
Overall, the Rails device is intended to be the “sequencer” or metronome of the performance but lacking a machine-like precision or click. Instead the user can continuously move between the limits in his/her own rhythmic or arrhythmic manner changing sounds at each point and fluctuating in a more human and emotional manner. Performances with the Dub/Drone Machines are intended to follow the players mood in a somewhat unintentional improvisation in a way that a midi timed sequence cannot. 2 ports on the back (3 total with the USB) provide sustain and channel switching but are completely reprogrammable to allow them to be any type of switch or expression control.The brain of the Rails is the Arduino Duemilanove. Currently the device is programmed to output USB/MIDI to Ableton Live, but can easily be configured to output OSC commands to communicate with Pd, MAX, Reaktor, etc.
by Author and Punisher
Check out this video by Noisey that details Tristan Shone’s journey to explore the heavier side of MIDI controllers,
Author and Punisher is performing at MoogFest in May.
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
LET’S is a team of Seattle multi media artists (Andy Arkley, Courtney Barnebey and Peter Lynch) who create interactive sculptures that combine art and sound using MIDI.
In their latest installation , We, now on at MadArt gallery in Seattle, the LET’s team uses DIY controllers and an in-depth knowledge of MIDI to allow up to 12 people to easily collaborate (even without any musical background) to create music and art.
A similar installation FINGER POWER! was created for the Seattle Bumbershoot 2014
Lynch sets up Ableton such that it sends MIDI notes to the VJ software Resolume, which controls the projected video elements. Ableton also sends MIDI notes to DMX, a piece of software that triggers the sculptures light bulbs.
SWEEP was another immersive interactive installation of sound and over 250 small scale light sculptures that were synchronized with MIDI developed by Lets for Gallery4Culture in 2015.
Another interesting project done by Lets is Library Science which recorded three albums between three albums:
High Life Honey (2004) The Chancellor (2007) Dolphin (2009)
They even included a video on the process of creating Library Science music. Add Echo!
For more information on Lets, check out their website below. .
Paul Prudence is an audio-visual performer who uses MIDI to create live-cinematic visual-music experiences.
His weblog Dataisnature explores the relationships between natural processes, computational systems and procedural-based art practices. He also writes for Neural and HOLO magazines.
The screen-shot below shows the complete Ableton Live arrangement view for Chromophore. The of top half of the tracks represent sound design material, while some of the bottom half are responsible for sending Midi data to VVVV for precise synchronisations. Midi Data also flows in the opposite direction, from VVVV to Ableton Live. Triggered by generative objects in a 3D visual system, Midi is sent to top track, in Live, which is a Sampler. In this way multiple instruments/sounds/samples and filters can be accessed by tweaking the visuals during a performance.
Controllerism definition from 2007 Remix Magazine Article
Moldover is one of those rare artists who not only creates music, but also creates the instruments to make that music. He has built his own MIDI controllers and interactive installations called Jam Boxes.
Moldover’s Controllers
Moldover has designed a lot of different MIDI controllers, but there are some that are core parts of his musical life, The MOJO pictured below is featured prominently in Moldover live performances.
Photo by Laura Lea Nalle
A guitar player and songwriter since childhood, Moldover’s early influences included Tool, Nirvana, and Pink Floyd – influences that would ultimately touch his work as a DJ. To pursue music professionally, Moldover decided to hone his chops at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
by Moldover Website
Moldover combined his love for guitar and unique MIDI Controllers in designing the Robocaster.
JamBoxes and Moldover’s Octamasher
Moldover has always pushed the limit on musical interactivity.
We like jamboxes and we think that Music is a universal language Music is a social experience Music technology provides exciting new ways to collaborate
by JamBoxes.net
Moldover explains the concept behind JamBoxes in this video.
Moldover’s Music
So what do you get when you put this all together into a musical performance? Here are some examples of Controllerism at its finest from the man who invented the word.
Always pushing the limits of technology, Moldover provided a 360 degree music video preview of “Not Your MIrror” and a physical version of his new song that was not just a USB drive that looks like a cassette tape, but is also a musical instrument called the Voice Crusher.
“A musician at heart, inventor born of curiosity, and innovator by necessity, I believe the world calls him the ‘Godfather of Controllerism’ for damned good reasons.” – .
Google Creative Lab recently released A.I. Duet, an interactive AI Music experiment that lets you use your laptop keyboard or a MIDI keyboard (using Chrome’s Web MIDI feature) to make music and experiment with artificial intelligence .
Duet was built by Yotam Mann and the Magenta and Creative Lab teams at Google using Tensorflow, Tone.js, and open-source tools from the Magenta project.
The cool thing about this project is that you can not only play music with it, it’s all open source code so that if you are into coding you can get the actual code to experiment with it. Tensorflow is an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs.
Tone.js is a Web Audio framework for creating interactive music in the browser. The architecture of Tone.js aims to be familiar to both musicians and audio programmers looking to create web-based audio applications. On the high-level, Tone offers common DAW (digital audio workstation) features like a global transport for scheduling events and prebuilt synths and effects. For signal-processing programmers (coming from languages like Max/MSP), Tone provides a wealth of high performance, low latency building blocks and DSP modules to build your own synthesizers, effects, and complex control signals.
by Yotam Mann
Yotam also worked on another really interesting AI musical experiment called the Infinite Drum Machine,
Last year at MoogFest, Google announced their plans for Magenta. Doug Eck explained that one of Magenta’s goals is to create an open-source tool to bring together artists and coders looking to make art and music in a collaborative space. As part of the initiative, Google will provide audio and video support, tools for MIDI users and platforms that will make it easier for artists to connect with machine learning models.
The Magenta project generated it’s first song (available below) after being fed only a few notes of input.
AI Experiments is a showcase for simple experiments that let anyone play with artificial intelligence and machine learning in hands-on ways, through pictures, drawings, language, music, and more.
Google is not the only company that has created musical artificial intelligence experiments. Sony’s Flow Machines goal is to “research and develop Artificial Intelligence systems able to generate music autonomously or in collaboration with human artists.”
Here is an example of Bach harmonization generated using deep learning.
By turning music style into a computational object, Sony’s research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) can create songs in different styles. Here is a song generated by Flow Machines in the style of the Beatles.
So what does all this musical artificial intelligence have to do with MIDI. Most of these learning machines are fed MIDI as their input because MIDI is the musical instrument digital interface. For example, the Magenta artificial intelligence engine was fed 8000 MIDI files that the neural network analyzed for patterns.
For even more information about musical artificial intelligence check out this excellent article from @hazelcills Hazel Cills on the MTV website
Brockett Parsons is a keyboard player from Summit, New Jersey. Brockett studied at Bucknell University and played both piano and trumpet. He went on to study further at Berkelee College of Music in Boston.
In 2009 Brockett then became a winner of the MTV reality show “Making His Band” featuring P Diddy. The show was an intense 12-week competition for musicians to become part of Diddy’s touring band. Out of thousands who auditioned, Brockett was one of seven winners personally chosen by Diddy. A few months later in January of 2010, Brockett then auditioned and accepted the position as keyboardist for Lady Gaga, a position he currently still holds.
by Reverb Nation
But Brockett is more than just an incredibly talented keyboard player, he also designed his own MIDI controller. He wanted contacted an old friend from college and they put together a team to build the Piano Arc, a completely circular keyboard. Here’s an overview of the Piano Arc from Cosmos Music in Canada. Chuck Johnson, Dave Starkey of MIDI 9 and Steinway technician Rich Fell have worked to put together the unique MIDI controller that features multiple zones and customer LED displays.
Brockett featured the Piano Arc in his solo release – Three Point One Four
Check out Brockett and the Piano Arc at the Super Bowl Lady Gaga halftime show on February 5, 2017.
Whizdom Music and Moforte announced the release of Geoshred 2 this week with tons of new MIDI features including Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression.
GeoShred, Winner of a 2017 Electronic Musician Editor’s Choice Award as “one of the most innovative, groundbreaking products to emerge in the past twelve months”, has been enhanced with unprecedented MIDI/MPE I/O control, new effects, and additional model control parameters.
by Whizdom Music
Whizdom Music was founded by Jordan Rudess, keyboardist for Dream Theater who we have covered in an exclusive interview for MIDI.org.
WHEN DID YOU FIRST GET INVOLVED WITH MIDI? That was so long ago. One of my first exposures to MIDI was an Atari compute;I have very fond memories of those days …..
There were several demonstrations at the Annual General Meeting of the MIDI Manufacturers Association. Here are a few of the highlights. Jordan Rudess of Dream Theatre showed how expressive MPE could be in the right hands at the MIDI Manufacturers Association afternoon sessions on Sunday.
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
Now Kogumi‘s Anatole Buttin and Yan Godat have developed new mechanical boxes that combine Arduinos, marbles, mechanical devices and MIDI together to appeal to kids in educational electronic music workshops
If you have never run across Claude Woodward, The Sonic Manipulator while searching the web then you really have to start with his own description of his origins.
Greetings Earthlings,
I have had many interesting adventures on my way to becoming a spaceman, such is the nature of the convolutions of life. After taking a spin out from Mars one day, many years ago, a blown ion drive forced me down to a little orchard outside Perth where, under the alias of Claude Woodward, I was raised by a pair of horticulturalists. I grew up in amongst a million different species of fruit, nuts and flowers; an idyllic little haven, but my brown thumb hastened me into a career as a keyboard player/sonic manipulator.
by Claude Woodward
So what exactly does this Martian stuck on earth do. Well, he has been busking and creating weird, eccentric dance music for years. Here is an older video of him busking on the street and warning people that the Martian’s are coming ( and may drink all your beer!)
But for all his quirkiness, he actually develops some really cool DYI MIDI devices. Check out his description of his home made keyboard set up.
This is Claude’s latest video on how to really play a synthesizers. He may not give Roli a run for their money in the marketplace, but you have to love his passion for using MIDI to the max.
So if you hear that the Martian’s are coming, don’t worry they are MIDI Martians and very friendly!
There have been fan-created Daft Punk helmets before the Love Props’ GM01. You could buy a Halloween mask/prop for around $200 like this one pictured below.
In 2010, Volpin Props did a YouTube video about “How to make a Daft Punk helmet in 17 months” that got over 4 million views.
But Love Props has taken the Guy Manuel helmet recreation to the next level and what really sets it apart are two things. The level of detail of the design and what else, but MIDI. In the past week (Sept 4-11, 2016) , this helmet has gotten a tremendous amount of attention on the Web, but we decided to focus on the MIDI implementation which usually just gets passing coverage in the wider press.
First, let’s take a look at a gallery of Love Prop’s photos of the helmet.
Here’s a video of the Love Props GM01 in action.
But this isn’t a prop, this is a fully function MIDI-driven device. Let’s take a look at some of the details of the design.
The helmet can receive MIDI from a number of different sources- MIDI files off an SD card reader, Wireless MIDI from the WiFi connection and wired MIDI.
Comunications The system has an IN/OUT USB MIDI that allows the user to execute real time MIDI sequences. This wire connection allows, at the same time of the MIDI, a based on IP Telnet communication, which makes possible the interaction between the code system and the applications executed on a PC or Tablet.There is a RF WiFi module included that allows wireless communication between the system and a Smartphone, Tablet or PC for wireless real time MIDI transmission, to access the system via user IDE or to communicate with PC/Tablet application. The Wifi module (ESP8266) has its own dedicated local code and processor for the Wifi TCP/IP communications, which sets the Teensy free for processing the main code of the unit.
The SigmaFW is a creative and artistic tool that makes easier to custom animate led setups without programming knowledge. Using our custom MIDI library, the user can plug the unit via USB to the computer and live compose new LED animations in any music/midi production software or workstation. This MIDI library gives the user absolute control of the color, brightness, saturation and timing without coding, making possible to create LED animations in a more expressive and artistic way. Also, is intended to auto-generate real time animations based on customizable parameters and responding to multiple hardware/user inputs.
The 1.0 version, features a built from scratch Beat Detection algorithm that determinates the tempo or BPM of incoming music from the mic/line input and modifies the BPM of the MIDI animation being played, to match the tempo and rhythm of the external music. Also the BPM of the MIDI animation can be set by motion, following the rhythm with the head just like a TAP Tempo.The user can control the status of the system with the Menu displayed on the inner 2″ LCD of the unit and navigate through the options with the control knob, or can remotely control the system menu with a smartphone via Wifi or RC.
by Love Props
We always have a hard time deciding which is the coolest MIDI maker project of the year, but the Love Props GM01 has to be in the running.
That was so long ago. One of my first exposures to MIDI was the Hybrid Arts sequencer with an Atari computer, I have very fond memories of those days and somehow that older software seemed more stable then some software these days, maybe because today every program is trying to do so much.
Hybrid Arts MIDI Track ST
My first keyboard was a MiniMoog synth, but of course that didn’t have MIDI.
The first time I used MIDI was when I bought a Seil keyboard and rack and took a 5 PIN Din cable and connected them together. It was like magic back then.
SEIL Opera 6
Where did you learn about MIDI ?
A Music Store in Maryland. I was there all the time playing on the latest gear.
My first experience doing sequencing with 4 Casio CZ101s MIDIed together. Iwas recreating Debussy and Bach on the Atari.
Casio CZ-1
Then I moved on to MOTU Performer and a Roland D50. I wrote this big 20 minute prog rock piece and my goal was to use every feature in the DAW. I remember doing a lot copying and pasting of MIDI tracks, assigning different sounds and delay and detuning tracks or changing octaves.
How Does MIDI allow you to do what you do
MIDI has been with a huge part of everything I do in the studio. When I do any work in the studio even today I do it the MIDI space.
I still find that recording in MIDI is better because of the control being able to change velocities and tweak sounds after the fact. It’s much more flexible than audio.
Not to mention my work writing and orchestrating , I’ll get inspired and do 4 measure off the cuff and can then go back and look at it in notation. This helps me do the orchestration based on the MIDI notes.
One interesting thing about my work with MIDI was years back like all of us I was sending MIDI all around the room I remember getting up and going over to every synth, checking global pages and loading data. Steve Horelick from Non Linear Educating and Ask.Audio walks into my studio and says “Why are you doing that?How can you babysit all these keyboards.I just work in the virtual world.”So Steve introduced me to the world of virtual synths and now a lot of physical keyboard are not getting as much attention in the studio. A lot what I do in the studio is virtual. But I’m still using MIDI. I use MIDI more than ever going to virtual destinations. MIDI seems to adapt to the new ways people work.
But going into my Dream Theatre world where a lot is audio. My live life is different than my studio life.I have always tried to basically use one main keyboard which is a pretty unique approach in prog rock .Mostly live I am using MIDI for when I play the Seaboard, Continuum or the Zen Riffer keytar connected wirelessly by MIDI to my rack.
Jordan with the Zen Riffer in Argentina
But that reminds me someone built a MIDI compass for changing the tilt of my mechanized keyboard stand. Let me see if I can find some documentation on that for you. (Later, Jordan sent us prototype designs of the MIDI compass product concept to share on the site)
Jordan has always been into experimenting with unique and different controllers like the NuMotion curved keyboard pictured below.
In this next clip, Jordan uses the AXIS 64 which has a uniqueHarmonic Table note arrangement. There are 192 keys, so it’s like having three 64-note keyboards all in one.
Jordan uses the Continuum with Dream Theatre to show off its expressive capabilities.
Jordan doesn’t stick to just keyboards either. It’s hard to say exactly what the Eigenharp is, but it definitely is not a keyboard!
All these controllers have something in common which is very important which is to have independent control on every note. Trying to bring it all together.I have been using it for years now even early on with prototypes of MorphWiz MIDI. MIDI carries on to my work with my app-Geoshred.
by Jordan Rudess
MPE (Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression) which allows for per note control is something I am really excited about and glad the MIDI Association is working on standardizing because I have been using that a lot.
Dave Smith P6 and Pro2, Elektron Rytm and Analog 4, Kurzweil PC3x, Maschine, Push, Logic, Live…
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
•Tell us about yourself briefly.
My name is Hugo and I run Goldbaby, a studio in Auckland, New Zealand that focuses mainly on sound design. I sell my sample packs from my website: www.goldbaby.co.nz.
I have been using music technology since the mid 80s. It’s gone from a childhood hobby to a full time dream job!
•What was your first encounter with MIDI?
That would probably be in the late 80’s when I bought a Roland MC300 to sequence an X7000 and then a Kawai K4. I loved that set-up!
•How do you use MIDI today?
It has multiple uses. I have an extensive hardware synth and drum machine collection, so it’s essential. Not only for sequencing but for saving banks of patches. It also helps with programming synths like my Kawai K3m. Instead of using buttons to program it I have it hooked up via midi to a hardware patch editor with sliders and knobs… much more enjoyable!
•How has MIDI allowed you to do what you do?
I like to layer synths and drum machines when I’m doing sound design and I do that using Midi. A three synth stack sounds huge! I know it would probably be easier to do layering in a DAW with samples of the individual units… however my sound design techniques require lots of gain staging experiments with real hardware pre-amps and a valve mixer.
•Anything else you’d like to add?
I’m still amazed at how long we have had MIDI and it’s still totally relevant today after over 30 years of service.
Here is a video of my studio as it was 3 years ago. The music in the video was made with a combination of hardware and software and wouldn’t have been possible without midi.
HUGO HAS HAD AN AMAZING COLLECTION OF DRUM MACHINES THROUGH HIS STUDIO, CHECK OUT THIS GALLERY FROM HIS FLICKER ACCOUNT!
I Started recording with midi back in 1985. Over the years I have amassed a great selection of gear. I have owned most samplers and synths and still have a huge EMU collection including Emulator 2,3,4,emax plus others mostly korg stuff and roland synths also a Chroma polaris (my 3rd) around about 100 midi synths,samplers & Expanders. all piped in to 3 MX9000 Euro Desks chained together to produce 144 inputs! all fed in to a Mac Pro and logic plus a Tascam 2488 for back up.
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
••Tell us about yourself briefly.
Studio owner
1987-1989 was part of the electronic band Athena with Andrew Hughes and Keith Larkworthy.
Recorded the album DREAM ODDISSY using 2 X korg poly 800’s , Elka soloist 505 Casio pt20 Casio ct102 , Casio Vl , Yamaha dd10 drum machine.
All down to a tascam porta one.
Second solo album THIS LAND recorded between March 1992 and March 1994 and the first to be released on the Sincity Records label.
The album was recorded in a new purpose built studio- Worlds End.
Equipment used for the album was..
Roland D20 ,Roland TR505 , Casio cz5000 , Yamaha DX21, Korg Wavestation , Emu Emulator 2 ,Emu Emax 2, mixed with a tascam mm1 sequenced with dr T running on a mega Atari ST. This was the first recording we did going straight to digital tape (Philips Dcc)
The vocals were recorded through an Shure sm58 direct to a digitech compressor and effects.S1998 saw the release of the album MASQUERADE 88-98
This album was a 10 year compilation of the last 3 albums plus previously unreleased material.
It included the track tiger lily which used over 500 samples of sounds captured out and about on location with a Sony minidisc.
The next album to be released on the Sincity records label was Dangerous LOVE
this album introduced other vocalists and we went on to form the Pop group The Final Demand.
The Final demand were KELLY WIGGINS KEITH LARKWORTHY AND PETER JAMES-STEPHEN.
In late 1998 the double a side single SOMEONE/OVERDRIVE was released this sold very well and had a considerable amount of AirPlay .
In 1999 the album FRESH FROM THE BOTTLE was released. This album was mainly written using the emulators and a korg wavestation and trinity.
By August 1999 the band had split and Worlds end studios relocated.
2000 -2005 Director of Athena Music Systems
Studio rack mount computer systems
ATHENA/EMU SYSTEMS VAMPIRE RACK
SEE MUSIC PRESS OF THE TIME
The Vampire Rack PC was the worlds first dedicated 2 unit 19 inch sampler PC. It could import and export any sample in any format and had a 6 tray raid hard disk system . It was the first dedicated rack mount sampler to use the Emu Systems Emulator X software and 1212 hardware.
In October 2004 edition of music tech magazine there was a centre page review of the vampire rack where it scored 7 stars…
Athena systems also manufactured liquid cooled systems for the construction industry
The Lighting system built using the shuttle bare bone shells
2005-Present
Owner of label and Polaris studios (previously known as WORLDS END STUDIOS
POLARIS STUDIOS is the current base for Peter James-Stephen’s music output
Currently working on the 7th and 8th studio albums
Titled OLYMPUS AND BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER.
Also working on film and music video to accompany new albums and will be touring towards the beginning of 2017.
•What was your first encounter with MIDI?
1985 was the first time I used midi with a CASIO cz5000 joined to a Sequential Prophet 600 with an Atari ST
Never looked back since!
•How do you use MIDI today?
The studio is split into 4 midi zones
Each midi zone has 2 Philip Reese v10 midi through ports allowing 20 instruments to be connected in each zone without chaining them.
Each zone is then fed in to my master keyboard which is a CME VX8 this has 4 midi outs.
The CME VX8 is them connected to a apple pro running logic via usb.
The beauty of this system is o only have to switch on the synth or sampler I want to use at the time
This reduces unwanted noise in to the system.
All of the instruments are always connected to my 3 behringer mx9000s which are joined together using the X pander ports to give 144 inputs at mixdown
•How has MIDI allowed you to do what you do?
Without Midi I wouldn’t have been able to record or tour with my rig!
Hi, Like most of us, my setup is always evolving, but this is its current state. I work mostly OOTB (Out of the Box), but once I’ve got something going I’ll record into the computer for rearrangement and editing (esp. for length!). I have two main MIDI work stations, with a BeatStep Pro and a Squark Pyramid as the respective controlling sequencers. I also have multiple MIDI-synced stereo loopers for guitar and whatever else calls for it. Here’s a breakdown of the two MIDI stations (left-right):
Station 1:
Korg MS2000
Roland HPD-15
KAOSS pad quad
Beatstep Pro
Samson SM10 mixer (under the BSP)
iPad 2/Alesis IO dock
Electro-Harmonix Epitome
Moog Minitaur
TC Ditto x4 (on floor, obscured by table).
Other than the MS2K and HPD-15, this is all mounted in a Furman road case for portability.
Bottom – Matrix-6R, Yamaha MJC8, Roland MKS-7. The rest of the gear belongs
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
•Tell us about yourself briefly.
I’ve been playing music most of my life; I got started in the 70s as a guitar player via a healthy infatuation with progressive rock and fusion. Today I spend most of my time earning a living outside of music, but playing, writing, and recording music are still my obsessions.
•What was your first encounter with MIDI?
My first exposure to MIDI was in the mid-80s when the bass player I played with, a guy named David Garza, got a DX7. So I would say he turned me on to MIDI. A couple more keyboards came through our hands including a Korg DSS-1 and a PolySix. It was incredible that they could be stacked and synced via MIDI; we incorporated sequenced keys into our live performances starting in 1986, which was great for doing Peter Gabriel and David Bowie covers as well as our original tunes. Around 1987 I got an Alesis HR16 and a couple of midiverbs to support my 4-track recordings. By ’89 I had a PC with Cakewalk 2 (DOS) and a MIDI interface, which I synced to the 4-track via SMPTE. Next came an MKS-7, Matrix 6R, Peavey SP/SXII (yep, that’s right), SY77, ADAT, Yamaha O1V and a MIDI-based guitar rig centered around a Marshall JMP-1 MIDI-controlled preamp plus Quadraverb GT. This is way too much detail I’m sure but writing it makes me realize how central MIDI has been to my musical life.
•How do you use MIDI today?
These days, due to the limitations I have in terms of time, I mostly do improvised music and jamming, and MIDI is as important as ever. I use an iConnect MIDI 4+ in my live rig along with thru boxes to plumb MIDI wherever it needs to go. For my guitar rig, MIDI is used to keep things in sync, but I also have a MIDI pickup that I use to double up guitar lines w/synths. I use MIDI-synced loopers (Pigtronix) and effects on guitar, and keep them in sync with my table-top synths and effects. With this setup I can create solo soundscapes all day long, or fill out a duo or trio to make it sound much bigger and deeper. I have various keyboards, sequencers and controllers as well. I’ve upgraded to an O1V96i for my main desk. I’d incorporated a laptop into my rig for the last 5 or 6 years, but lately I’m drawn to staying OTB.
•How has MIDI allowed you to do what you do?
Very little of what I do in a live setting would be possible without MIDI. I do like to “just play” whether it’s acoustic or electric guitar, but I quickly hear additional parts that I want to add, and it would be frustrating not to be able to do that if I didn’t have MIDI.
•Anything else you’d like to add?
I’ve probably said enough! I don’t have a lot of published output but I occasionally put stuff up on SoundCloud as Mothhaven (https://soundcloud.com/mothhaven). I’m glad the MIDI association exists and wish you guys the best.
My rig is focused on Modularity. In addition to the Eurorack Modular synthesizers, I employ a modular MIDI setup which consists of two Alyseum AL-88C MIDI>Ethernet interfaces. These MIDI Interfaces connect to a high-speed switch which is part of my larger home network. This means that any computer on my network can access the MIDI ports. The MIDI Interfaces can operate stand-alone (without a computer) or with the Copperlan software, to route MIDI in and out of my computers and even between the two MIDI interfaces. This allows me to route MIDI data from any keyboard or sequencer to any MIDI compatible sound source. Here is a list of MIDI equipment I use:
Roland V-Synth GT
Elektron Analog Four
Elektron Octatrack
Mutable Instruments Ambika
Nord Drum
Nektar Panorama P6
Nektar Panorama P1
Arturia MicroBrute
Arturia BeatSetp Pro
Novation Launch Pad I
ntellijel uMIDI (MIDI>CV Interface) 2x
Alyseum AL-88c
E-RM MultiClock
The Multiclock is a very important part of my rig.
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
Wow, I’m totally surprised and honored!
Well, my name is Justin Sullivan, I’m also known as justin3am in various online communities. I work with sound and attempt to make music. 😉 I don’t know, I always have trouble talking about myself… on the other hand I can talk about gear all day!
My first experience using MIDI was with a Yamaha PSR keyboard, a parallel port>MIDI adapter and a MIDI sequencer that I got from the local computer store (remember those?). I think it was Magix Music Maker; whatever it was, it came on a bunch of floppy disks. I didn’t have any experience playing the keyboard… but that did’t matter as I was fascinated by the way it communicated with my computer.
Today, MIDI is an integral part of my approach to music. I’m just a single person, so the ability to control multiple instruments from a single controller opens a lot of possibilities. Sequencers allow me to compose compositions that I wouldn’t be able to achieve otherwise. Combining the two via a computer gives me freedom to make a dynamic performance out of static sequences and phrases.
Many modern music applications have features to get very complex results from simple control messages (CCs, notes, Program Changes). For example, using a single physical control to adjust several parameters at once or scripting routines of events which can change depending on variables and logical arguments to make generative compositions, which are still controllable. Most of that is not made up, I promise!
Since I’ve started using MIDI over my studio’s network, I’m able to pass messages between multiple computers. I use one mainly as a tape machine and the other as the primary MIDI sequencer. MIDI over LAN allows me to keep both machines in sync. Of course you can do the same with a USB MIDI interface but I find it much easier to manage complex MIDI routing using the CopperLAN software with my 2 Alyseum AL-88Cs. Both interfaces are connected to a high speed switch, which enables me to sed MIDI between either computer and the instruments/effects in my studio.
I’m very interested in using MIDI with easily programmable micro controllers (i.e. Arduino) to drive motors, solenoids and other stuff. I’ve found that there are many tools out there which allow me to use MIDI to control instruments which primarily speak the language of voltage (modular synths) or physical force (acoustic instruments). It’s a fantastic time to be a synth nerd/sound junkie! Ha!
Boy, that’s a bunch of words!
I’m totally stoked to be a part of this contest and to share my enthusiasm for music technology!
The Monolith The Moog Sub37, Moog Minitaur and Minimoog VoyagerXL all sync to the midi clock generated by Ableton Live. The two customized Arturia Beatstep Pro sequencers also sync to the clock, while sending their sequences back to Ableton, which distributes the midi to the synths as well as the Roland TR-8 Drum Machine. This method allows for capturing of the midi data and the printed audio separately in Ableton, rather than have the sequencers route directly to the synths. One of the Beatstep Pros sends CV and drum gates to the modular synthesizer to sync the analog sequencers as well as trigger envelopes and sync LFO’s to the midi clock. There are two midi keyboard controllers, a CME xkey25 which is dedicated to the Moog Minitaur, as well as the global transpose functions of the two Beatstep Pro sequencers. There is also a Nektar iX49 which is dedicated to the Waldorf Streichfett string synthesizer. There are three hardware delays, which all sync to midi.
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
•Tell us about yourself briefly.
I am a commercial photographer and cinematographer and I use my synthesizers to record scores and backing music for the films I make for my clients, and as a way to relax at the end of the day.
•What was your first encounter with MIDI?
I started with midi in 1986 when my family purchased a Casio CZ-1 phase distortion synthesizer. Using midi to notate into and from our Apple 2 just opened up a whole new world to me. Flash forward to 2002 when I started using Ableton Delta 1.0 and discovered soft synths. I didn’t even use control voltage until 2015, so I have worked my way backwards.
•How do you use MIDI today?
I use midi to sequence and sync three hardware synthesizers, analog and digital delays, hardware sequencers and a six foot tall, Moog format modular synthesizer. I use Beatstep pro sequencers (two of them) to sequence and clock my gear via midi and CV/gate. I know people associate MIDI with “music made by computers, not people” but for me, it has allowed me to step away from the computer and get hands on with hardware.
•How has MIDI allowed you to do what you do?
MIDI allows me to keep everything sync, automate parameters and get equipment made in different decades, thousands of miles apart, to speak the same language in real time, so I can focus on what’s important, making music.
•Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks for the opportunity to share my love for midi and synthesizers.
This is my “Battery powered studio” currently unplugged since I’m missing the multi channel audio interface that could handle most of my synths at once for live play. I’m also hoping to record the new CD with all of them and make some live gigs in local clubs. I’m trying to limit my self only to battery powered hardware to not spend the fortune on the audio and get as many instruments as I can. My biggest dream is to buy the Suiko ST-50, TB-303 and OP-1, I’m also hoping to get the cash for Roland Boutique series, and I’m 100% sure that I will get the upcoming Volca FM. My main DAW of choice is the Propellerhead Reason, which helps me well to run the Sound Design and Soundware testing company ( www.naviretlav.com ).
Here is the full list of the gear included in photos: Suzuki Electric Taisho Koto, Korg Electribe, Gakken NSX-39 ( Pocket Miku ) ,Stylophone, Mixtape Alpha, Korg Volca Beats, Korg Volca Bass, Korg Volca Sample, Korg Volca Keys, iPad 4 GEN (mostly for Animoog), Korg SQ-1, Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators, Novation Circuit, Yamaha QY70, Yamaha SU200, Yamaha QR10, iConnect midi2+, Korg Monotron and Monotron Delay, Zoom MS-50G, Behringer BCR200, Line 6KB37, Zoom H2n, Korg Kaoss Pad and Kaossilator, Sennheiser HD380 headphones and two notebooks running Propellerhead Reason.
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
•Tell us about yourself briefly.
So, here I am, young sound designer and owner of Navi Retlav Studio, a small sound design studio that focuses on direct collaboration with Propellerhead Software, Rob Papen, Blamsoft, Synapse Audio, FXpansion and many more less known VST developers. In general me and my team, we work as freelancers with top of the line VST developers and our sounds can be found in over 30 products. My personal goal is to be well known like Richard Devine, and set new standards in the music industry, especially if I could switch from VST to hardware sound design at some point of my career. Recently I’m also experimenting a lot with convolution reverb engines, and developing our own custom impulse responses that could easily be used like brand new effect devices rather than just the average reverbs. Hopefully in upcoming months I will finish coding our first VST/RE effect for commercial release. Meanwhile I also plan to record new CD and a set of video live performances with all my gear.
•What was your first encounter with MIDI?
If I remember correctly, the first time ever when I saw the MIDI pin connector was in the old Yamcha workstation/arranger style keyboard in my aunt’s house. She was learning the basics and I always liked to play a bit with that keyboard. Where it comes to the software, I have a very short memory about playing with tracker style DAW on AMIGA 500. Than the first proper midi interface that I bought was the legendary BCR2000 which I still have and use up to this day.
•How do you use MIDI today?
Today, I use midi with iPad thanks to iConnectivitiy midi2+, sync all my gear to Propellerhead Reason DAW by linking it from by old BCR2000 and the new Korg Electribe, than I also use the pulse signal to sync with my KORG Volcas and Pocket Operators, and finally using Korg SQ-1 sequencer I play live sequences with Yamaha QY70. On top of it my BCR2000 is mapped in reason as controller for all the FX devices, and my Line 6 KB37 is the master keyboard for all synths. It’s really surprising how many synths you can chain together with midi and audio sync.
•How has MIDI allowed you to do what you do?
I use midi every day in my job. Without it I wouldn’t be able to control RE and VST instruments that I work with, and adjust parameters on the fly without reaching for the mouse. I plan to do way more live gigs in near future, and if possible turn it all into successful entertainment platform by streaming them live on twitch and youtube. For example some of them you can watch here.
It’s funny that some people think that MIDI is the relic of the past, but to be honest it’s essential tool for all of us and I can’t see the future of music without midi.
•Anything else you’d like to add?
Recently I found that in some of my gear the classic midi 5pin connector was replaced with the audio jack and adapter, it’s a nice move, until you realise that there is no standardisation for it yet and the adapter from Korg Electribe doesn’t work with the Novation Circuit. In general I wish that hardware developers could agree and keep it all the same across all the devices. Even more, I think that the idea of audio jack midi could be expanded, and the new synths could also have the option to send the audio sync pulse into that port, so we could easily sync our volcas and other gear to that clock or use midi adapter if desired. I’m also waiting for the announcement of the first ever synthesizer with the new MIDI 2.0 protocol that is still under development and might finally bring some new light and options for the musicians.
To finish it all with the good vibe, here is the quick song that I made to bring back the retro style to our hearts.
From left table around to right; Roland VT3, Scarlet 2i4 (1), Macbook Pro (1), Novation Launchkey 25, Akai MPK49, Ableton Push 2, Macbook Pro (2), Scarlet 2i4 (2), KRK Rokit 5 (x2), Pioneer receiver w/ 12″ sub, Native Instruments Maschine, Pioneer CDJ800 (x2), Technics 1200 (x2), Behringer 12″ PA monitor (x2).
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
I grew up listening to all different forms of music. Everything from folk, blues, and jazz, up to hip-hop, R&B, and electronic dance. I played some alto saxophone in middle school, then gradually inched towards a passion for electronic music. I picked up my first set of Technics 1200’s when I was 15 years old and began playing parties all over the west coast (and continue this today). In 2011 I returned from being injured in Iraq and began playing around with different DAW software programs (mainly Ableton).
In 2012 I started to gather some different MIDI gear, and started learning the basics; quantization, mapping, etc. This is around the time I began getting some work signed by different labels around the globe (USA, Canada, Switzerland, France, and Germany). In the autumn of 2015, I began classes at Full Sail University, to receive my bachelor’s in music production, and one of the opening classes was on MIDI and the basics of working with MIDI, and different DAW’s.
These days when I’m making music for personal betterment, and fun, I’ve been using the new, Ableton “Push 2”, and absolutely loving its features. I also use Native Instruments’ Maschine along with the Traktor Scratch A10 setup. This allows me to use both Technics 1200’s, both Pioneer CDJ’s as well as add some personal flavor to each mix with the Maschine. When I’m doing school work, I’m mostly using my AKAI MPK 49, and the Novation 25 key, keyboards. Much of what we’ve been working on thus far is scales, chords, progressions, and other basic “musicianship” techniques.
Using MIDI has definitely broadened my technique when using different DAW’s. In school we use it daily in both Logic Pro X, and in Pro Tools. It has made time management when working on tracks a breeze; something that would otherwise make piecing together a rhythm, or melody/harmony, hours to come up with. MIDI has made sitting down in the studio each day, and coming up with something “fresh and new” each time, much easier.
Bio:
Doc Manny (AKA Steve Fields), hails from Oregon and has represented the Northwest house music scene since 1995. Doc has spent much of his DJ career living and playing in such cities as Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, Boise and San Francisco. Over the last couple of years Doc has headlined with such artists as DJ Mes (OAK), Johnny Fiasco (SEA), CZBoogie (CHI), Choco (1200 Warriors) (NYC), Mikey Valesquez (LA), Lurob (SF) and JT Donaldson (NYC), just to name a few. Doc resided in Honolulu, Hawaii from August of 2009 until April 2013 where he played such clubs as “Asylum Afterhours” which is regularly noted as one of the top 10 nightclubs in the world in DJ Magazine.These days Doc Manny has built up his label affiliation by producing tracks and working with such chart topping labels as, Jack Locker, Midwest Hustle, Wetsuit Records, Home Again Recordings Digital (HARD), Caboose Records, O.X.O Recordings, Spins & Needles as well as Sutra Sounds. In the summer of 2012 Doc started the record label that has blown up on Beatport, Traxsource, Juno, iTunes and many other digital download sites all over the Globe. This label is known as “House Call Records” and has already built up a list of affiliations by signing such names as Corduroy Mavericks, Tim Rella, Trevor Vichas, Forrest Avery, Louie Gomez, HapKido, Nic-E, the 1200 Warriors, CEV’s, 4 Peace, J. Caprice, Nick Jagger, Lipp Trixx, Marc Fairfield, Jason Wolfe, UC Beatz and the list keeps growing and growing. Pushing the envelope even further with his passion for, “tech-house”, and “downbeats”, Doc started a sister label to House Call in the winter of 2014 known as, “Double Wide Recordings”, which is already lining up the heat from some of the heaviest hitters in the electronic music industry.Wanting to further his career in the audio industry, Doc began his journey to receive his bachelor’s degree in Full Sail University’s, online Music Production Program where the curriculum covers everything from A&R to mastering/engineering a production. After completion of the program in 2018 you should start looking for “Steve Fields” compositions and “Doc Manny” production works to be showing up everywhere from TV commercials to your favorite music streaming service… Stay tuned!
The goal of my rig has always been – it must be compact and convenient for electronic music live playing supporting flexible multichannel midi routing and multitimbrality. My first MIDIsystem was centered around my own DIY MidiBox hardware sequencer project kindly shared by developer Thorsten Klose.
An 8 midi ports Miditemp midi router/processor and Doepfler MMR4 midi/merger/switcher are what allowed me flexibly to connect number of midi controllers and route them independently to any of connected synthesizers through fantastic MidiBox arpeggiators or directly as appropriate for particular situation. Unfortunately even 4U based this setup was not that easy to carry around due to the involved synthesizers and controllers. So luckily after iConnectMidi4+ midi matrix router/processor and Squarp Pyramid midi became available I was able to squeeze my rig into something more portable – single 4U space + brilliant LinnStrument
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
•* Tell us about yourself briefly.
Working as designer, I’m also passionate about electronic live music… as much live as possible 🙂
* What was your first encounter with MIDI?
Early 90-ties with Yamaha QY-20 sequencer connected to midi controller keyboard (RMIF TI-5 synthesizer) – that was my first MIDI setup
* How do you use MIDI today?
Mostly to control sound engines from controllers while playing/jamming live, programming drum and rhythm tracks and occasionally to capture performances and musical ideas
* How has MIDI allowed you to do what you do?
MIDI means everything to me while creating and playing music live, without MIDI I would probably still be stuck at prepared piano level and occasional synth jamming
* Anything else you’d like to add?
My full story with embedded links follows below –
My connection to music is rather based on texture rich multi-timbral orchestral classical arrangements than guitar rock, so aside from occasional prepared piano experiments, my musical journey started in late 80-ties, when I studied at Riga Technical University and got hands on my first synthesizer – RMIF OPUS (http://www.ruskeys.net/eng/base/opus.php ) – bi-timbral polyphonic analogue monster – functionality hardly available these days. It was lot of fun layering sounds on analogue tape, but unfortunately the result after numerous overdubbing through analogue delays and reverb was very noisy and, of course, there was no MIDI, no synchronization, no pre-sets, what made quite hard for me to reproduce anything.
In early 90-ties I discovered MIDI with Yamaha QY-20 sequencer. MIDI sequencing and multi-timbrality finally allowed to create clear sounding music and soundscapes, but then for long time I was not happy with the sound generated by digital sound engines. Later, switching to computer with Yamaha SW PCI SW1000XG made sound design and production more pleasant (like this production below called elektrogans-virtual-love), but limited sequencing options upset me again, because at that time only linear sequencing was available on computers, whereas I wanted to play/jam live combining MIDI with dynamic loops and live arpeggiators.
Next MIDI milestone for me was Korg M3 workstation with KARMA engine, what allowed dynamic live MIDI sequences and arpeggios, but was quite hard to program and required computer software to do so effectively. At the same time I also found amazing MidiBox project ( http://www.ucapps.de ) developed by Thorsten Klose and kindly offered to everyone as DIY project. I learned that MidiBox Sequencer perfectly fits into my MIDI usage concept and took a challenge and successfully built one myself also utilizing my engineering and design background and again had lot of fun playing live MIDI at my home studio. This soundtrack is an example of such live performance without overdubbing.
However involvement of MidiBox sequencer, MIDI controller keyboards, and hardware sound modules raised another challenge – how do you connect and synchronize them together? So I had to build my first 4U rack-mount MIDI rig which I built around MidiTemp PMM88 matrix and Doepfer MMR4/4 MIDI processor allowing quite flexible MIDI routing and processing so that with simple touch of a button I could easily route MIDI signals from any of my controllers to any of sound engines, through or bypassing MidiBox sequencer at any time while keeping everything in sync – yet pretty hard to set everything up.
So far great for studio, but not so great for live rehearsals, when I joined to Charisma (https://charismalv.bandcamp.com ) helping them with computers and synth sounds. Carrying that all equipment around (music is my passion and not job) on regular basis still seems rather impossible. The introduction of iConnectMIDI4plus and Squarp Pyramid sequencer allowed me to build new, more mobile self contained 4U rack which is compact enough, weights around only 15 kg, and doesn’t require external connections other than simple audio and USB (MIDI via USB), but I had to sacrifice midi routing flexibility because iConnectMIDI4plus unfortunately doesn’t allows flexible enough reconfiguration on the fly from remote controller, also beautifully programmable arpeggios from MidiBox sequence are not there any more. Thus I still find missing essential full featured connection/link between MIDI controllers and sound generators and sadly I can’t code, so this remains in my vision and layout drafts.
Desire for multi-timbrality combined with lack of computing/storage resources determined my choice in favour of MIDI based work-flow opposed to common audio layering/overdubbing approach. So MIDI means everything to me to create live layered multi-timbral electronic music while at the same time I’m really impressed with emerging MPE. When playing LinnStrument, for example, I frequently feel that there is much less need for arpeggios and preprogrammed sequences, because MPE brings such a sparkling inspiration and breathtaking experience to me. I would definitely say that with MPE MIDI has come to whole new level, making electronic instruments more alive than ever before. I’m looking forward. Future is optimistic!
Moonwerk Labs Space Station was created 5 years ago by two aspiring musicians with a passion for Electronic music. We implement the use of MIDI with the help of MOTU’s MIDI Express 8×8 units. Dane Blaesing (the other 1/2 of moonwerk) is the mastermind behind the visual design of the studio, using LEDs to showcase EVERYTHING.
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
Moonwerk consists of two people; Dane Blaesing and Zac Pescetto. We started our studio around six years ago, slowly accumulating gear as time went by. We were introduced to MIDI right from the start when Dane purchased a Dave Smith Mopho. Fast forward; we are now using two MOTU MIDI Express’ to control everything in our studio. There are sixteen synths we have full control over through MIDI. From triggering notes, to controlling all parameters with cc messages and automation in Ableton Live. We also have a road setup to implement MIDI on the go, which includes a Motu Micro Lite and numerous portable synth modules. We hand-solder all of our audio cables routed to our MIDI and outboard gear. In addition, we’ve built our Black Lion summing mixers and make all of our own repairs/upgrades/modifications to our gear. Moonwerk does everything in house, from sound design to mixing & mastering, photography & graphics, lighting, and even hand building our gear stands and modular synth cases.
Output REV Output Signal Waves Diamond Waves Codex Waves Element
UAD Plugins (numerous)
Xfer Serum
Propellerhead Reason 6
U-he Diva
U-he Braille
U-he Zebra 2
Motu Ethno Instrument
The MIDI Association Artist Interview
Tell us about yourself briefly.
I’ve been making music and dealing with Music Technology since the late 80s. I was a sound developer for Eye&I Voice Crystal (Yamaha, Ensoniq, Korg, Roland soundcards), LA RIOT (AKAI, Ensoniq Sample CDs) and Alesis (Quadrosynth) back in the early 90s. I taught Synthesis/Sound Design at UCLA for a semester in 96 (very cool gig I must say) and had various other studio gigs throughout LA and SF in the 90s. I did the score for Libertarian Presidential candidate Andre Marrou back in 1992. I worked at Opcode for a bit in the mid 90s (great people and products) and had two record deals, three records released and some movie scores to my credit. I am now known as Swirve and besides producing Dance records I am a partner in RemixxMe Productions here in Kansas City.
What was your first encounter with MIDI?
Wow, I’d have to say it was in 1987-88. (I’m getting old) I had a Juno 106, Ensoniq Mirage, Alesis HR16 and had just got the Roland Mks-50. I needed to trigger the Mks-50 from the Mirage. I remember working on an album back in the 90’s where we had a few Opcode Studio 5s connected to over 40 synths at the same time. MIDI sure was fun back in the day, still is.
How do you use MIDI today?
I use MIDI a lot still, not so much with MIDI cables, it’s all mostly through USB, save for the Voyager. The hard part about having so much hardware versus the software is keeping it all ready to go the moment the project loads. I use SoundTower (I Highly recommend it) to control most of my hardware synths either as a librarian or even plugin in LOGIC. MIDI allows for the gear to send various MIDI data to the units in addition to patch information, making project recall and patch perusing much better and even on par with some soft synths I have.
How has MIDI allowed you to do what you do?
I know I covered a lot of this in the previous answer. In electronic music, I’m constantly evolving the sounds, either through plugins or through MIDI data. Being able to connected to all this various gear, with a standard such as MIDI, allows for me to be in a project, change a sound source and be able to use the exact same MIDI data on the new sound source without a hiccup. I am sure I am one of the few that keeps my event list open in LOGIC the entire time I am recording.
Anything else you’d like to add?
It is a privilege and an honor to be chosen in the top ten for this contest, I’ve seen some amazing rigs out there. As for MIDI, It’s a testament to the standard that it has been widely used this many years later even after the rest of the music industry has changed so dramatically. MIDI is still MIDI and that’s a good thing. As for my wall, I got the idea from several music stores, and figured “why not”. So I had my contractor reinforce the wall to support the weight of 8-10 synths. Thanks to the folks at Gear Sluts for the great idea on where to find the adjustable keyboard arms.
It was during high school when I was about 16 years old so maybe 1991. I had started buying a bunch of analog and digital keyboards at second hand shops. I had Jupiter 6 (one of the two first instruments to have MIDI), a Roland TR909, and I noticed that it had these jacks on the back- MIDI In and Out,
I started researching ways to connect things together. I initially started out with CV/gate connections on my Arp-2600. I began experimenting with CV and controlling the Arp-2600 with the Arp sequencer. Learning the basics about sequencing. Shortly after this I was decided to integrate MIDI into my workflow, and began researching how build my setup around a MIDI sequencer. I got a computer, and also bought two Alesis MMT8 midi sequencers. I spent several months learning this setup, and discovered that MIDI was going to play a big role in my musical productions.
At that time there wasn’t a big Internet presence. So I would read magazines like Future Music and Electronic Musician and they used cover a lot of midi setups of artists that I was heavily following at the time. I learned a lot about how to work with bigger MIDI setups, and soon after this bought my first MIDI interface by MIDIman.
TMA:
You mentioned CV and Gate, it is amazing that there was never a standard for such a simple interface protocol, There were two ways to do it and they both still exist. How important is it to you that MIDI products from 20 years still work with your newer gear?
Richard Devine:
For my work in particular it’s extremely important, I need access to both old and new technology at the drop of a hat. I never know what the client will ask for. I do a lot editing with piano roll editor, and MIDI CC automation. Almost every job that I have worked on has used MIDI extensively, in controlling Virtual Instruments or hardware units in the studio. It’s become the central communication system to all my instruments.
I don’t know what I’d do if it went away. Without MIDI I’d be totally screwed.
by Richard Devine
Sometimes I have to turn in stuff within an hour. I’m working with Google on a pretty hefty virtual reality project and the turn around times and deadlines are incredibly tight and hectic. So in designing my studio I have two setups, the mixing area and editing station. Both areas are completely MIDI’ed together and ready to go. Everything is always armed and ready to record.
I’m really excited because after this Google project is finished I am going to rewire the entire studio and use the new iConnectivity MIO10 systems. I have Cat5 wiring on both the rear and back walls of my studio. I use them now for connectivity to my digital console and to my personal cloud storage work drives. I am going to make the leap to network MIDI, and use the Ethernet connections on my Mac Pro and Macbook Pro. The goal is to have either computer be the controller of all my MIDI devices. With the built in software I can map out different port configurations/filtering very quickly and also store and recall presets. I thank god a company like iConnectivity has stayed up with the latest trends in technology. I haven’t found any other company that is currently addressing MIDI interface design with more modern computers and hardware.
It’s great time to making music with MIDI now.
by Richard Devine
Article Update
Our Friends at Synthtopia let us know that Richard created a free sample library based on samples of the Mysterious Ringing Rocks of Montana.
The Ringing Rocks are a unique geological formation that features rocks that ring musically, when taped with a hammer. They are natural lithophones – instruments that are struck.
A little over 7 years, when we started we were going to be gas and oil services company. The original idea was allow people to use a iPhone to take data from oil fields. We pivoted and thought about products and product that would connect to an iPhone. One of the people in the company was a professional musician. So we decided would be a good place to start because MIDI is from an engineering point of view it’s pretty simple. We ended up having a distribution channel and manufacturing in the music channel so we decided to stay. It’s been a constant evolution of building our brand. Last year at NAMM was the first time that we really started to have brand recognition where people would come to our booth at NAMM and say “hey, we know you and you can solve our problems.”
We think the new MIO series is really the culmination of our goal of developing the most sophisticated MIDI devices on the planet.
We sent Richard two MIO10s because you can connect two MIO10s together and control all the mapping and filtering for both.
All our products have our core MIDI Data management system. One of the advantages of that system is we can send System Exclusive messages to change all the channel and port mappings and filtering. It’s amazing because we use MIDI to control the MIDI managment in our devices so our products are completely MIDI centric.
Another advantage is how efficient MIDI is. In our MIDI management system we process everything within 200 nanoseconds.
Check out this video about using the iOS app iMIDIPatchbay with iConnectivity devices. It’s got lots of great tips about MIDI routing.
Michael Loh from iConnectivity gives a brief overview of the mio series of USB/MIDI interfaces. Not only can you connect multiple computers to mio interfaces…
Not to be outdone by McDonald’s or Bud Light, Pizza Hut in the UK has worked with TMA member Novalia and released a limited edition DJ Pizza box. DJ Vectra
Novalia creates paper thin self adhesive touch sensors from printed conductive ink and attached silicon micro controller modules. Their control modules use bluetooth MIDI connectivity.
TMA member Novalia has recently had three very successful partnerships to bring interactive conductive ink installations featuring BTLE MIDI to SXSW, McDonald’s locations in the Netherlands and Moogfest 2016.
Novalia creates paper thin self-adhesive touch sensors from printed conductive ink and attached silicon microcontroller modules. Their control modules use Bluetooth MIDI connectivity.
Novalia’s technology adds touch, connectivity and data to surfaces around us. We play in the space between the physical and digital using beautiful, tactile printed touch sensors to connect people, places and objects. Touching our print either triggers sounds from its surface or sends information to the internet. From postcard to bus shelter size, our interactive print is often as thin as a piece of paper. Let’s blend science with design to create experiences indistinguishable from magic.
by Novalia
DJ QBERT: INTERACTIVE DJ DECKS
One of Novalia’s first big projects came about when they worked with DJ Qbert to create the world’s first interactive DJ Decks in an album cover.
QBert’s Kickstarter funded Extraterrestria album featured a set of working Bluetooth MIDI decks and controls that connect to iOs and OSx. Touching the paper connects to the Algoriddim DJAY app, allowing the user to scratch, mix and fade any songs they load into the software. Complete with two decks, a cross fader and an array of SFX buttons beautifully printed onto paper using printed electronics and artwork designed by Morning Breath for QBert, the decks demonstrate the possibilities for interconnectivity between the physical and digital in a way that can enhance user experience.
Bud Light Interactive Wall at SXSW
At SXSW, Novalia partnered with SXSW sponsor Bud Light and Mediacom, to create interactive music walls that connected people to music through touch, connectivity, and data. Up to 15 people could interact with the music simultaneously.
Wasn’t it fun when we were kids to doodle on restaurants’ paper placements with crayons? Well, McDonald’s has introduced a high-tech, musical version of that sort of play with McTrax—a snazzy placemat that acts like a little music production station. TBWA\Neboko in the Netherlands created McTrax.
However there was very little explanation of how MIDI enabled all of this cool technology. The placemat, developed with This Page Amsterdam and Novalia uses conductive ink, a small battery and a thin circuit board with 26 digital touchpoints. The Novalia board sends MIDI signals via BTLE MIDI to a smartphone that has the McTrax music app downloaded on it. The contains audio loops, synths and musical effects and you even sample your own voice.
Recently Kate Stone, CEO of Novalia ,was at Moogfest where she presented some Novalia controllers with DJ Lance Rock (Yo Gabba Gabba!), Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Bootsy Collins (Parliament/Funkadelic), Malcolm Mooney (Can), Peter Conheim (Negativland), Dr. Kate Stone (Novalia), Van Partible (Johnny Bravo), and DJ Nanny.
Bud Light, McDonald’s, Yo Gaba Gaba, Devo, Parliament, Novalia conductive ink and BTLE MIDI.
Okay, I admit it. I’m a sucker for this sort of thing. First, I have been into MIDI my whole life. Second, I lived in Japan for 7 years and have climbed Mt Fuji (twice). Third, I love the combination of MIDI and art especially visual art.
So when I saw this I was hooked even before I watched it.
The Beautiful backdrop of the world heritage site Mt. Fuji was used to stage the first Live performance using MIDI controlled LED flying machines, accompanied by Shamisens, the Japanese traditional guitars.This was done so by utilising more than 20 units of these flying machines, flight swarming formations, music, and 16,500 LED lights to combine into a single audio visual extravaganza. Furthermore, we are able to control the flying machines, visual and audio aspects concurrently, using the DMX512.
by Creative Director by TSUYOSHI TAKASHIRO Film Director by SHU SHINKAWA Director of Photography by KANEKO SATOSHI Flying Videography by DISUKE OHKI Music by Tsukagaru-Shamisen, OYAMA-KAI Sound By MANABU NAGAYAMA & MASAKAZU UEHATA Production Company by FPI, Inc. Produced by MicroAd, Inc.
The sky is one of the few remaining frontiers in the new cyber space,It is the objective of this project. I would like to reach out to as many people in various places in the 21st century of fireworks.”
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.
I know I am.
Updated with a Youtube Interview by Orchestral Tools
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.
“Fingers” – guitarist for Compressorhead.
It is equipped with two hands, with a total of 78 fingers
People who tinker with robots, art installations and circuit bending are right in our wheelhouse . They seem to share a passion for pushing the limits of what MIDI can do. Here’s a quick selection of some of our favorite MIDI robots curated from the web.
Eric Singer and the League of Electronic Musical Robots (LEMUR)
When we first started The MIDI Association,we reached out to Eric Singer and he has been a member of our educational advisory panel since the very beginning. Eric founded The League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, or LEMUR, in in 2000 , LEMUR is a group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments that play themselves. Here an interview with Eric from Motherboard.
Recently Eric did an installation for the LIDO nightclub in Paris.
The Guitarbot is a guitar that can be played by MIDI files.
Eric Singer worked with another member of our educational advisory panel on this project.
Paul Lehrman is the Director of the program in Music Engineering at Tufts University and an adjunct Professor in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. Paul has had a long relationship with MIDI and actually released the first all MIDI album “The Celtic Macintosh” in 1986. Paul has also been on our educational advisory panel since it’s inception.
Paul Lehrman showing Herbie Hancock the joy of MIDI.
Eric and Paul worked together on Anthiel’s Ballet Mecanique which was performed at Carnegie Hall and at the National Gallery of Art among many other performances around the world.
Perhaps Eric’s most well known project (although he has worked with They Might Be Giants and many other musicians was he work with Pat Methany on the Orchestrion Project.
Chico Macmurtrie and the Robotic Church
Somehow Brooklyn has become a haven for musical robots and there are a number of robotic MIDI artists working there. One of our favorites is Chico Macmurtrie. His group, Amorphic Robot Works (ARW) created a robotic MIDI driven band of 50 pieces that toured Europe for many years. Now he has “revived” these mechanical “saints” and 35 computer-controlled pneumatic sculptures ranging in size from 12 inches to 15 feet are installed in a former Norwegian Seaman’s Church in Redhook known as The Robotic Church,
While responding to computer language (MIDI), they are anthropopathic in nature and channel air to activate their inner biology.
Matt Steinke’s dense, funny, haunting installations and performances feature everything from animatronic puppetry and meticulous animation to interactive homemade robotic sound apparatuses. Each piece offers an incomplete glimpse into an evocative, elegant, claustrophobic cosmos.
Steinke holds a MFA in Art and Technology Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon graduation, he received The Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Interdisciplinary/Computer Art. He received the 2015 New Music USA Project Grant for Composers. His “Tine Organ” instrument was a finalist in the 2015 Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. His work has been featured in Wired, Artweek LA, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Spin, Rolling Stone, Keyboard Magazine, Drum Magazine and on the cover of Tape Op. As a founding member of the Northwest noise-punk bands, Mocket and Satisfact, he has made over a dozen recordings for Kill Rockstars, K Records, and Up Records and has performed with his homemade robotic musical instrument ensemble, Octant, across the US.
His Tine organ is MIDI controlled.
Tesla Coils, Robotic Drummers and MIDI, what’s not to like!
Designers of the original Singing Tesla Coils, ArcAttack specializes in providing innovative entertainment, Tesla coil fabrication and creating unique things.
Compressorhead has performed at festivals around the world doing covers of classic rock songs, but have their own studio album planned for this year.
Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology
Gil Weinberg is the founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, where he established the M.S. and Ph.D. programs in Music Technology. He developed robots that interact with humans in uncannily well…. human ways. The Georgia Tech Center is really doing some interesting stuff with music technology!
Shimon has “eyes” that can respond to the conductor’s baton.
Gil also worked to develop a prosthetic robotic hand for Jason Barnes, a drummer who lost an arm in a freak accident. Though technically not MIDI, it is a truly inspiring story.
Guthman Musical Instrument Competition
If you don’t follow it, you should. The Guthman musical instrument competition is held every year and there are always really cool and unique instruments that show up like the one below.
There were several demonstrations at the Annual General Meeting of the MIDI Manufacturers Association. Here are a few of the highlights. Jordan Rudess of Dream Theatre showed how expressive MPE could be in the right hands at the MIDI Manufacturers Association afternoon sessions on Sunday.
The MMA has established an MPE working group and is planning on moving forward quickly to define the specification. MPE is also featured in the GEOShred, the OS application developed by Jordan and MoForte. We also got a quick private demo of that from Jordan at the show.
Unique MIDI Controllers at NAMM 2016
There were a lot of very unique MIDI controllers at NAMM this year. One of the trends was products using the new Bluetooth Low Energy MIDI specification that the MIDI Manufacturers Association finalized this year.
Korg’s nanoKONTROL is a light-weight and compact mobile MIDI controller and the nanoKEY a keyboard that both feature BTLE MIDI and are battery operated and can connect wirelessly with your iPhone/iPad or Mac/Windows.
Yamaha showed two products that let you add BTLE MIDI to your current MIDI products.
The UD-BT01 adapter lets you connect devices with a USB TO HOST terminal to iOS devices and Mac.
The MD-BT01 adapter lets you connect instruments with MIDI IN/OUT terminals to iOS devices and Macs
These should also work with Android Marshmallow devices as Marshmallow supports BTLE MIDI. At the MIDI Matters panel at 2016, Pete Brown from Microsoft also mentioned that it is on the roadmap for Windows 10.
There were some really unique MIDI Controllers at the show. Here is one that got a lot of attention, Tribal Tools’ Kadabra..
“KADABRA Is a smart innovative wireless musical instrument that makes the impossible – intuitive. There are 24 capacitive copper pipe keys carved into the lower part of the body, flanked by smart multicolored LED lighting. The upper section is home to 12 control buttons, three thumb buttons and three pressure sensors, six utility buttons and a wheel encoder. Up to 16 different sounds can play simultaneously and motion sensors allow the player to control different parameters or produce specific sounds/effects with sharp or flowing movements. Kadabra has A long range wireless technology with zero latency, Dedicated software for computers which can sync with stand-alone VST instruments, MIDI devices or digital audio workstations over MIDI.
Tribal Tools aims to release the Kadabra in the second half of 2016”
Zoom showed the ARQ Sequencer, Drum Machine & Synthesizer. ARQ is a drum machine, sequencer, synthesizer, looper, and MIDI controller with a built-in accelerometer. It’s wireless Bluetooth Ring Controller let’s you control the internal sounds and sequences as well as other MIDI devices.
We’d like to thank all our media partners including Sonic State, Harmony Central, Synthtopia, New Bay Media and Sound on Sound for all the great coverage of The MIDI Association launch.
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.
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.
For years now the Brent Ross, Creator & Designer of the DC Cemetery has been creating some of best Halloween haunts by using all kinds of technology including MIDI. Here is an article form 2008 updated with the 2014 video and information on where you can see the 2017 version DC Cemetery.
It’s the week before Halloween, and a line stretches down around a corner. Muffled sounds of screams drown out the nervous laughter of the people in line as it creeps forward. As you round the corner and head towards the house, the light in the trees casts an eerie shadow on the ground. You find it hard to contain your own inner-child’s excitement as you near the house. You can feel your pulse quicken and spine tingle as you see an mysterious fog floating low on the ground. You peer around the corner of the display only to witness a ghastly site: a putrefied skeleton rises from his coffin as nearby a ghost floats above.
As you take in the scene, suddenly a face rises from a vat of bubbling green goo… You walk on a bit and stifle a scream as you see a man struggling to escape from a crypt, being held back by skeletal occupants. Suddenly, the music swells and a 14-foot tall grim reaper stands up, waving his arms, and starts speaking… to you. You sub-consciously take a step backwards, as it is it all terrifyingly real.
Are we at the latest haunted house at Disneyland? Or perhaps one of those terrifying dark rides at Universal Studios? No, we’re in the Silicon Valley suburban enclave of Mountain View, California, home of Brent Ross, who works as at a financial advisor for most of the year. But come Halloween, he is the architect of an astonishingly realistic, fully animated display that creates massive lines that snake around the block and delights the thousands who attend. An Industrial Design major by training, Brent brings his considerable creativity to bear on his amazing Halloween displays, designing and building these spectacular haunts for the terror and enjoyment of the community.
Brett grew up like many kids excited about the notion of a good scare. He got his start making little scenes using a black light and a bowl of dry ice fog on his porch, but soon it evolved into a black plastic maze, then a wood framed cavern, and finally, the steel and wood monstrosity that covers the entire front yard of his parent’s house.
Although he delights in the reaction of the people who come to see his display, the real motivation for him is the challenge of creating an original display that is better and better each year. It’s a ton of work, and a huge strain on his family life, but the challenge of adding new aspects to the attraction – typically 1 or 2 new props and as many as 5 or 6 changes to the display – is simply too exciting to resist.
How impressive are his displays? Amazing enough to pocket the $50,000 first prize in a nation-wide Halloween display competition, that’s how. But even more amazing is the incredible way he goes about controlling this amazingly ambitious show… entirely from a single computer… using MIDI.
Most people think of MIDI as a music technology. And rightly so, since the “M” in MIDI does standard for Music, as in Music Instrument Digital Interface. However, many people don’t understand that there are several other “flavors” and uses of MIDI that allow you to do all sorts of things, including controlling an entire show like this one. In the case of Brent’s Halloween extravaganza, MIDI was something he stumbled upon one year after trying to synchronize a number of pneumatic actuators to control the motion of one of his Halloween props. A neighbor, Dave Fredrichs, stopped by while he was setting up and said “You should use MIDI for that”. His initial response was “What’s MIDI?” but once he experimented a bit with it, he realized that there was simply no better way to accomplish his ghoulish goals: “Dave to opened my eyes to the possibility of using MIDI, using real-time recording of musical notes and converting them into electrical signals that could then be used to turn pneumatic valves on and off. Before that day, I was hard-coding microcontrollers, something that was extremely difficult to do with multiple elements (props) running simultaneously, and then trying to sync audio to the mouth movements.”
The alternatives for Brett are far scarier than MIDI: to accomplish much the same functionality, he had to use dedicated industrial programmable controllers, which would control the pneumatic solenoids using a somewhat cryptic (no pun intended) step-by-step programming protocol, entering the duration and delays of every event manually using unsynchronized timers to control the sequences, and then being left with the daunting task of locking up all of this motion to the audio soundtrack that went along with the show.
The notion of using MIDI to control physical devices is actually quite well embraced in some markets. The MIDI “Show Control” protocol supports the automation of lighting, stage effects like fog machines, and other elements of stage craft. In Japan, MIDI protocol has even been adapted to control servo control motors in robots. And it all makes sense since MIDI is really just a descriptive protocol that describes a performance event.
MIDI describes these perfromance events by breaking down an action into separate parts: when a key is pressed on a keyboard, a MIDI message is generated that says which key was pressed (the MIDI note number / MIDI note on event), and how quickly it was pressed (the MIDI velocity), and in some cases how hard the key was pressed (MIDI aftertouch message). Some time later when you release the key, a MIDI Note Off message is generated, and any clever piece of software can easily determine the interval between the time the key was pressed and the key was released. Link a bunch of events together and you have a song… or a scare!
This “performance description language” is what makes MIDI so incredibly popular amongst musicians – you’ve recorded all the “mechanical” aspects of the performance, allowing you to go back later and manipulate those aspects of the performance, fixing notes, durations, velocity, or modifying the performance by adding real-time controllers, much like going through a rough draft document and making edits with your word processor.
In the context of Halloween, MIDI is the perfect tool for controlling performance of a different kind allowing you to individually control pneumatic solenoids using MIDI messages, letting you individually control each movement as well as editing the “performance” of those movements until you have the most natural and realistic motion possible. In Brett’s case, he uses MIDI on messages to close a pneumatic solenoid valve that then moves a cylinder by filling it with air from a compressor. When a Note Off message is received, then the solenoid opens and the air is exhausted, causing the cylinder to retract. By the same token MIDI messages can be used to turn on or off smoke machines or strobe lights… the possibilities really are endless, and entirely practical.
There is another aspect that makes MIDI attractive for using it beyond the paradigm of music performance, and that is the fact that MIDI technology and tools are well understood, easy to use, and remarkably affordable. In fact, it was the affordability of the solution that intrigued Brett once he understood what it could do for him: “The inspiration to convert to a MIDI-based control system came when I had a large Grim Reaper prop sitting in the garage for 2 years. I was saving up to buy a 50 output sequential microcontroller that costs over $2000 – and it didn’t have real time programming! Dave was inspired by the mechanical aspects of the prop and asked if he could “tinker” with the prop to get it running. He came back a week later with a cart loaded with a PC, MIDI keyboard, and a MIDI to parallel converter board mounted to a piece of plywood. Within an hour or so of wiring and playing with note assignments, the Reaper came to life and I was sold.”
The benefit of MIDI to Brett is that it enables him to use affordable “off-the-shelf” tools to orchestrate all this magic in his award winning shows. For example, the “central command” of his show is a garden-variety PC running Steinberg’s Cubase MIDI sequencing software.
Cubase software, or any MIDi sequencer for that matter, is designed to record, play, and edit a MIDI performance with extensive editing capabilities. Modern sequencers, called Workstations, also include recorded audio, turning the software into a comprehensive system for all aspects of a musical performance. Since the MIDI messages can be also used to control movements of characters instead of describe a musical performance, Brett is able to use the audio aspects of Cubase to manage the sound effects and soundtrack of the display, while using the MIDI aspects to control all the movements.
To control the hundreds of pneumatic cylinders throughout his display that make his creations move, Brett uses readily available “MIDI to Switch” technology that allows you to send MIDI messages to a relay board that closes switches in response to the particular “note on” or “note off” event. Although Brett uses control boards from a company called SD, other solutions are available such as from companies like Doepfer of Germany and MIDI Solutions in Canada.
“I recommend the SD MIDI converter boards to the point of where I now distribute their product for them on www.dcprops.com. I find the SD products are the most cost efficient and expandable of the solutions out there, and their tech support for these types of applications is far superior to others. Add to that the fact they are designed and manufactured here in California so shipping is a lot faster then the overseas alternatives. SD has also come up with a dimmer pack that expands the output so you can use it for dimming 110V lighting!”
Besides enabling him to use off-the shelf technology to control his shows, the simplicity of MIDI technology means his entire show is controlled from one rack of gear, allowing him to easily move his “control central” from place to place and store it in the off-season.
Brett’s rig consists of an enclosed, wheeled server rack with a series of 1U rack mount audio amplifiers (the blue boxes in the picture), multiple surge suppressors, a rack mount PC running Windows with two M-Audio DELTA 1010 and one 410 audio card, providing 24 mono audio outputs. The cards also provide the MIDI I/O to connect to the MIDI to switch converters that control the pneumatics via 24V solenoids.
Inside the slide mount drawer that houses the MIDI to Switch converter boards that provide a total of 256 24V DC outputs to drive the pneumatic solenoids, all powered by a 20-amp 24V DC power supply and battery backup power source. That was particularly important in the old days when we were blowing breakers every 20 minutes due to the overloading the electrical circuits with too much lighting and air compressors!
Even though Brett doesn’t use MIDI for making music, it certainly empowers his creativity while providing a reliable, cost-effective solution that delights the community year after year: “In my opinion there are many advantages to using MIDI, starting with giving you a centralized control hub and letting you easily perform a looped show. MIDI provides cost effective expansion capabilities, and the excellent real-time control provided by sequencers like Cubase combined with an easy to use interface makes programming the show very easy. Add to that the fact I have control over all aspects of automation and the soundtrack with support for multiple channels of audio and you can see why MIDI is a great solution for me.
There are challenges though. Comments Brent: “Since MIDI is designed to make use of a musical keyboard, using regular switches to trigger MIDI events is difficult, although he is working with SD Designs to create a “Switch to MIDI” converter to use on the show. Also, since the workstation sequencer runs on a computer, there are the standard issues of using a computer that presents its own set of issues when compared with the single-purpose industrial controllers. This is because no computer is ever as stable or reliable as a dedicated hardware device, but in this case the versatility of MIDI + audio makes up for it.”
MIDI may be a little scary to some people, but with a little effort you can easily learn to exploit all the power and convenience this technology has to offer. However, for some people, MIDI will always be scary, especially when it is enjoyed in the form of a remarkable Halloween display in Northern California. Cue the lightning sounds… and be aware of what lurks in the vat of bubbling ooze….
