We have received our CES Allied Association Booth for 2025 and want to invite everyone to come see us at Booth 8578 of Las Vegas Convention Center in the North Hall.
We may have a slightly streamlined booth compared to last year partly because a lot of the instruments that companies have loaned us are out with the Riverside City College students who will be performing at the 2025 NAMM show.
Here is a picture of our CES 2024 booth.
Also l at CES 2024, we had a surprise visitor to our CES booth.
We have been making great progress with the Music Accessibility Special Interest Group and Arcana Instruments, BetterMaker, and Audio Modeling (along with Sam Prouse and Jay Pocknell) have been working on an amazing demo of voice control of hardware and plugins that will be featured at the NAMM 2025 booth.
We want to thank the Allied Associations team of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®.
Just like The MIDI Association and NAMM, they are a trade association. They are a “little” bigger because they represent the $398 billion U.S. consumer technology industry.
Watch the promo video on YoutubeMIDI Association Hall A Booth 10302Three Days of Educational Sessions about MIDIMap of The MIDI Association booth and MIDI Association Members Booths In The MIDI Showcase
MIDI Association NAMM Booth Events Thursday, January 23
MIDI Association Lifetime Achievement Awards 2025
Thursday, January 2311:00 AM-11:45 AM 45 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
The MIDI Association will present John Bowen, Karl Hirano, Tadao Kikumoto, Tetsuo Nishimoto, Chris Meyer, Jeff Rona and Brian Vincik with MIDI Association Lifetime Achievement awards for their contributions to MIDI from 1983 to 1990.
MIDI 2.0 Network (UDP) Transport Specification
Thursday, January 231:00 PM- 1:30 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
The Network MIDI 2.0 (UDP) Transport Specification defines a way to connect home studios or performance venues via Ethernet and wireless LAN on a local area network using MIDI 1.0 and MIDI 2.0 UMP packets.
TamiX interviews Innovative Chinese MIDI Companies
Thursday, January 23 3:30 PM- 4:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
Tang Nan (artist name TamiX) who runsMidifan, the largest Music Production website in China will interview Hotone, Medeli, MIDI Plus and Robkooabout the latest developments in MIDI technology in China.
The Music Accessibility Special Interest Group
Thursday, January 234:30 PM- 5:15 PM 45 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
The Special Interest Group on Music Accessibility allows artists, researchers, and others in the music production community to interact directly with MIDI Association companies and provides a forum for discussions surrounding music accessibility and MIDI.
Riverside City College MIDI Jam
Thursday, January 235:30 PM- 6:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
Come see what this group of talented young music production students have been inspired to create with MIDI. Special thanks to Artiphon, Caedence, Jamstik, Playtime Engineering, Robkoo and others for their donations to the all-MIDI jam.
MIDI Association NAMM Booth Events Friday, January 24
Latest MIDI 2.0 Developments in Apple, Google, Linux and Microsoft Operating Systems
Friday, January 2410:30 AM- 11:00 AM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
The MIDI Association and its members will provide updates on the latest developments in the major operating systems. If you are a developer of MIDI products, this is a presentation you won’t want to miss.
DAW Control Profile-Replacing Mackie control
Friday, January 24 11:30 AM- 12:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
With MIDI 2.0 support already beginning to appear in Digital Audio Workstations, plugin developers are benefitting from the work being done by the MIDI Association member companies that develop those plugin formats – Apple (Audio Units), Avid (AAX), Bitwig (CLAP) and Steinberg (VST). The DAW Working Group is working on a DAW Control Profile which would supersede proprietary control protocols like Mackie Control and Logic control with a true industry standard for controlling DAWs via external hardware and software.
Build Your Own Audio and MIDI Plug-ins Using JUCE
Friday, January 24 1:00 PM- 1:30 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
Senior JUCE developer Anthony Nicholls will show you how you can use JUCE to create your own, unique, audio and MIDI plug-ins that you can make available to other people.
Plugin Formats Open Source Support for MIDI 2.0
Friday, January 241:30 PM- 2:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
The MIDI Association member companies that develop plugin formats – Apple (Audio Units), Avid (AAX), Bitwig (CLAP) and Steinberg (VST) are working together to develop open-source software that will enable plugin developers to quickly and easily interface with external MIDI gear without the need for any in depth knowledge of MIDI 2.0 or MIDI-CI.
MIDI 2.0 Piano Profile Progress Report
Friday, January 242:30 PM- 3:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
At NAMM 2024, we showed off a working prototype of the MIDI 2.0 Piano Profile.
This year we focused on two other important parts of the Piano Profile- DAW Plugin support and implementation guidelines with accompanying Audio and MIDI files.
MIDI 2.0 Drum Profiles
Friday, January 243:30 PM- 4:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
The MIDI Association has made significant progress this year in developing some Profiles focused on electronic drums and drum machines.
MIDI In Music Education and SAE Mexico
Friday, January 244:30 PM- 5:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
SAE Mexico has been selected to begin work on The MIDI Association’s MIDI In Music Education curriculum by the NAMM Foundation.
They will provide the curriculum materials in both English and Spanish under a Creative Common license and have a unique relationship with Coursera, the massive open online course provider.
Digitaize – Transforming strings with the power of MIDI
Anaheim Convention Center | Front of Hall A | The MIDI Association Booth 10302 800 W Katella Ave, Anaheim, CA, United States
Digitaize takes a completely new approach to augmenting acoustic instruments. This innovative technology uses a unique sensor system to acquire real-time playing data from musical instruments. In this demonstration, the Digitaize Module uses software instruments from Spectrasonics, Moog, and Audio Modeling, a hardware from CME and Roland to showcase its versatility.
MIDI Association NAMM Booth Events Saturday, January 25
MIDI Association Open Meeting
Saturday, January 2510:00 AM- 10:45 AM 45 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
Please join us as we introduce the new MIDI Association Executive and Technical Standards Boards, review the previous year’s progress and take a look at what we want to accomplish in 2025.
MIDI Innovation Awards 2024
Saturday, January 2511:00 AM- 11:30 AM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
Join Jean Baptiste Thibeaut from Music Hackspace and Martin Keary (host of the 2024 MIDI Innovation Awards Show) as they introduce the winners of the 2024 MIDI Innovation Awards.
Innovators Meetup with Rock Paper Scissors
Saturday, January 2511:30 am – 12:15 pm AM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
Meet all the musical instrument, software and app innovators at NAMM! Everyone gets the mic in this networking session. Give your 30-second introduction, connect faces to names around the room, then break to network one on one. Leave with connections to collaborators, customers, allies, and friends.
Riverside City College MIDI Jam II
Saturday, January 254:30 PM- 5:00 PM 30 minutes (America/Los_Angeles)
MIDI Association Booth 10302 (Hall A)
In-Person Only
Come see what this group of talented young music production students have been inspired to create with MIDI.
Special thanks to Artiphon, Caedence, Jamstik, Playtime Engineering, Robkoo and others for their donations to the all-MIDI jam.
ADC is a non-profit event, dedicated to the audio community, focused on learning, facilitating networking and positive working relationships, sharing best practice, and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion across all that we do.
Audio Developers Conference
Tickets to ADC24
Tickets to ADC24 are available for both in person and virtual attendance and range in price with discounts for Academics and Students. Click the button below to see all the options.
MIDI Association Companies Sponsor The Audio Developers Conference 2024
For many years now The MIDI Association has been a community sponsor of the Audio Developers Conference.
At ADC24, MIDI Association members Juce and Focusrite are Gold Sponsors of the conference. Arturia, Avid, Muse Group and Roland are Silver Sponsors and Steinberg is a Bronze sponsor.
MIDI Association Companies Presentations At Audio Developers Conference
MIDI Association companies are giving a number of presentations at ADC24.
The MIDI Association is actually underwriting support for the Workshop: Inclusive Design within Audio Products.
This workshop which is being run by Jay Pocknell of the Royal Institute for the Blind highlights the work being done to make music music more accessible to everyone and features the work of many of the people in the MIDI Association’s Music Accessibility Special Interest Group.
Workshop: Inclusive Design within Audio Products
What, Why, How?
14:00 – 17:00 UTC | Monday 11th November 2024 | Empire
Following the success of last year’s ‘An Introduction to Inclusive Design of Audio Products’, we are delighted to be presenting a follow up this year. The session will promote the work happening across the audio industry to support accessibility and inclusive design. We will focus on providing practical design principles for attendees to take away, backed up by engaging lived experience insights and demonstrations.
In particular, we will showcase the practices of two companies who have been making big waves within accessible music in the last year: Ableton and Arcana Instruments. Jay Pocknell and Tim Yates will be exploring how these companies involved the disabled musician community throughout the design of their products, as well as sharing accessibility top tips for attendees to take away, along with insights from musicians Elizabeth J. Birch and Andre Louis.
Why is this important?
As the audio industry seeks to improve diversity within its workforce, and the music industry seeks to widen the diversity of artists creating music, it is essential that inclusion becomes woven into the design of the tools available.
Overview of the social model of disability. 10 mins.
Why design inclusively? The importance of accessibility in mainstream audio technology. 10 mins.
Inclusive design principles and best practice guidelines for music-making and audio products, including examples from products already on the market. 40 mins.
[Break. 10 mins.]
Call to action. How to learn more, further resources to explore. 5 mins.
Case study – Developing with the community: what Ableton have learnt since investing in accessibility and connecting with their user community during the development of Live 12, Note, and Move. Andre Louis will also demonstrate the accessibility features of Ableton Move. 30 mins.
Case study – From the ground up: how Arcana built a company around inclusive design and developed their first instrument, the Arcana Strum, for all. 30 mins.
Panel Q&A. All panellists. 30 mins.
Beyond ValueTrees
(Confessions of a ValueTree Skeptic)
15:40 – 16:00 UTC | Monday 11th November 2024 | Bristol 2
Presenter:Brett g Porter Lead Software Engineer Artiphon and Executive Board of The MIDI Association
The JUCE website says “The ValueTree class is JUCE’s secret weapon,” and it’s true. They give you:
A really easy way to capture and pass around the entire state of your application’s data at run time
A rich mechanism to watch that data at a fine degree of granularity
Trivially easy persistence of application state
…but at the cost (in comparison to using native POD or class/struct variables) of being:
slower
less convenient to use
less type-safe, since all values are stored in the JUCE var variant type.
This talk will explore the new Cello library to abstract away the underlying API calls in favor of syntax that’s more like working with POD data. The original goal was to be able to write code something like the below, but using ValueTrees as the backing data store:
Roland’s Holistic Approach to AI for Music Creation
12:20 – 12:50 UTC | Tuesday 12th November 2024 | Bristol 3
Presenter:Paul McCabeSVP Research & Innovation Roland Future Design Lab
Presenter:Ichiro YazawaAdvanced R&D Group Leader Roland Future Design Lab
Presenter:Kazuyoshi SasamoriAI Product Manager Roland Future Design Lab
This presentation introduces Roland’s approach to AI for music creation and will include a technical demonstration of a new AI-powered application. Roland will also overview its holistic strategy for AI which considers R&D, policy, and governance mechanisms. As a general-purpose disruptive technology, Artificial Intelligence is in the process of impacting virtually every aspect of life, including creativity. As a leading music technology innovator, Roland is highly optimistic about the potential of AI to enhance and empower human music making but is deeply aware of the need to innovate responsibly.
Expanding SDKs and APIs in Pro Tools
12:20 – 12:50 UTC | Tuesday 12th November 2024 | Bristol 1
Dave TylerSenior Manager, Development Partner Program Avid
In this session, we will discuss how SDKs will play an important part in the future of Pro Tools to enable the integration of partner technologies and workflow solutions.
Introducing ni-midi2
A Modern C++ Library Implementing MIDI2 UMP 1.1 and MIDI CI 1.2
14:00 – 14:50 UTC | Tuesday 12th November 2024 | Bristol 1
Franz Detro – Member of the MIDI Association Technical Standards Board and contributor to MIDI 2.0 and USB Audio/MIDI Device Class specifications. Co-founder of midi2.dev – a collaboration platform for MIDI 2.0 developer resources.
MIDI 2.0 implementations arrived in recent macOS and Linux versions, and Windows MIDI 2.0 support is expected to arrive end of 2024.
ni-midi2 is a modern C++ library implementing MIDI2 UMP 1.1 and MIDI-CI 1.2. The platform-independent library allows you to easily migrate your code to support MIDI 2, while maintaining compatibility to the traditional MIDI 1 protocol.
The talk will cover basic concepts of the library and real-world examples of how it helps you to achieve protocol-agnostic MIDI 2 support in your codebase.
Sponsor Talk from Focusrite
12:20 – 12:50 UTC | Wednesday 13th November 2024 | Bristol 2
TBD
Going Deeper with CLAP
12:20 – 12:50 UTC | Wednesday 13th November 2024 | Bristol 3
Alexandre Bique of Bitwig and Urs Heckmann of u-he join the stage to present updates on CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin API). A lot has happened since CLAP was presented at ADC 23. Alexandre and Urs will briefly focus on industry adoption and give an overview of latest extensions, roadmap and goals. Then they’ll be digging deeper by showing example implementations of some of CLAPs core features, such as Polyphonic Parameter Modulation and Voice Info.
An Efficient, Open-Source C++ Loop Classifier and Tempo Estimator
The Algorithm Behind Audacity’s Brand New Tempo Detection Feature
15:00 – 15:50 Wednesday 13th November 2024 UTC
Matthieu HodgkinsonSenior Software Developer Muse Group
An efficient, offline C++ algorithm for loop classification and tempo estimation is presented, alongside its evaluation framework. The framework provides the area under the ROC curve (AUC) of the classifier, facilitating regression-free development and tuning of the algorithm. The AUC is now 0.93 when evaluated against the set of files (publicly available on freesound.org under the Creative Commons license) listed in the framework’s source code. By providing computation time measurement, the framework has also been useful for optimizing the algorithm, which is now typically over 2500 times faster than real-time (measurement made on a Windows laptop with a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12800HX processor and 32 GB of RAM). Furthermore, the framework can be used to set the target false positive rate according to the requirements of your application. Algorithm and evaluation framework are open source, and care has been taken to keep the algorithm easily reusable.
The algorithm can be seen as a “classical” algorithm and reuses ideas described elsewhere in the literature. However, the idea behind the classifier is original. A set of loosely plausible numbers of tatums (or ticks) fitting in the duration of the provided audio file is taken. The likelihood of each tatum count hypothesis is evaluated by measuring the distance of each onset to its closest tatum and using the onset’s strength in the weighted average of all distances. The average is then compared to a threshold, and, if below, a disambiguation step is carried out, where the number of tatums is reused to determine the most likely tempo (BPM) and time signature.
As implied above, the input audio must be a loop for its tempo to be detected. This limitation was not deemed critical for the application the algorithm was intended for. On the other hand, it opened possibilities to improve the discriminant factor of the classifier, allowing a higher success rate while keeping the false positive rate low. This choice may explain the originality of the approach despite its simplicity.
As you can see the Audio Developers Conference and The MIDI Association have a close and copacetic relationship because many of our corporate members are supporters and sponsors of the Audio Developers Conference.
If you are at ADC24, please keep your eye out for these presentations and come up and say hello to the many MIDI Association members who will be there.
2 Days of Video Game Music, Sound, Dialogue and More
Game Music and Sound Design Conference
GameSoundCon 2024- October 29-30- Burbank Convention Center- Burbank, CA & Online
GameSoundCon 2024 is hybrid!
We attended GameSoundCon and got to catch up with composers, sound designers, dialogue specialists, researchers, educators and others who want to keep up with the cutting edge in video game sound, music, dialogue and technology.
Topics included:
Video Game Music Composition
Game Sound Design
Technology
Business/Career
Virtual/Mixed Reality Audio
Dialogue/Performance
Interactive Audio Research
Ludomusicology and the study of game music and sound
Tutorials
Game Music and Sound Design Education
The composers we tlaked to were very excited about the developments in MIDI 2.0 in particular the Orchestral Articulation Profile which will solve many problems with the way articulations are currently handled.
The MIDI Association and IASG Team at Game Sound Con
The MIDI Association was the booth the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) as Steve Horowitz, IASIG chair is also the executive director of the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) program at SCFM.
Pictures above form left to right are Pat Scandalis and Austin Smith from the IASIG and George Sanger (The Fat Man).
George Alistair Sanger (The Fat Man) is often described as a “Legendary Game Audio Guru,” and has been creating music and other audio for games since Thin Ice for Intellivision in 1983.
The Fat Man hosted the annual Texas Interactive Music Conference and BBQ (Project Bar-B-Q), the computer/music industry’s most prestigious and influential conference. The IASIG is contemplating a reboot of Project BBQ perhaps even at a different location.
Most recently George was the Audio Director (and the first audio hire) at billion-dollar tech startup Magic Leap.
Steve Horowitz
Chair of the Interactive Audio Special Interest group Executive director of the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) program at SCFM.
Athan Billias
Former President of The MIDI Association MIDI Association Executive Board Member Chair of the Orchestral Articulation Working Group
The MIDI Association will be participating in the Audio Engineering Society 2024 which happens October 8-10 at the Jacob Javits Center In New York City. While a large group of MIDI Association members will be on planes headed to Shanghai for Music China, another group of MIDI Association members will head to the Big Apple…
Announcing Audio Developers Conference 2024 The 10th Audio Developer Conference (ADC) returns in 2024 both in-person and online in a new city, Bristol, UK. The in-person and online hybrid conference will take place 11-13 November 2024. Talks at ADC range from audio research, to professional practices, to standards in audio development, as well talks about…
The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group of the MIDI Association is the longest running SIG in the organization. IASIG is an organization in partnership with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the MIDI Association (TMA) that brings together experts to share their knowledge and help improve the state of the art in audio for…
The IASIG is an organization in partnership with the International Game Developer’s Association (IGDA) and MIDI Association (TMA) that brings together experts to share their knowledge and help improve the state of the art in audio for games, websites, VR content, and other interactive performances. Our members share tips and techniques, study trends, and create…
A Week of Game Audio Lessons The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) of the MIDI Association is the special interest group that represents MIDI and audio to the gaming community. This year the all virtual Game Developers Conference includes a number of sessions sponsored by the IASIG and other sessions on audio that should…
What Is Interactive Audio Game Music is incredibly unique because unlike almost every other form of music which is based on a linear temporal framework (a song starts and plays uninterrupted from begin to end), game music is inherently interactive because it depends on the user’s game play to decide what music plays at what time. If…
PR firm Rock Paper Scissors, Inc. explores the new terrain at the epicenter of music and technology through their PR and marketing services as well as the Music Tectonics Conference, podcast, online events, and in-person meetups.
Everything Music Tectonics does explores the seismic shifts that shake up music and technology the way the earth’s tectonic plates cause quakes and make mountains.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
On October, 23, 2024, Rock , Paper, Scissors hosted a creators fair at the at the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica. Rock, Paper, Scissors has been working with The MIDI Association for the last few years and at NAMM 2024 hosted an innovation meetup at The MIDI Association booth.
There were a lot MIDI Association companies at the Creators Fair event.
We also got to connect with a whole bunch of students from the Riverside City College Music Industry Club including club president Harley Glenn. Professor Jenny Amaya provides tons of students ( last year we had 60!) to help with our MIDI Association NAMM booth. One of the outcomes of yesterday was getting artiphon, Audio Modeling, Caedence, Geoshred and Robkoo to provide gear for the RCC Music Industry Club so they can start rehearsing for an all MIDI band performance at NAMM.
Music Industry Club (MIC) The purpose of this organization shall be to offer its members the opportunity to gain knowledge, insights, experience, and artistic development in the music industry and community.
Riverside City College
Roland
Roland had a booth showing off their newest samplers and had a Roland Showcase – Sampling Techniques with Jay Ybarra ft. the P-6 & the SP-404MKII.
We were just in Shanghai with Buchla artist TamiX and then got to to meet up with Peter Nyboer from Buchla at the Creators Fair.
Buchla
Blipblox
MIDI Innovation Award entrants, BlipBox was there.
Adam also did an interview with Seids, who works with a lot of MIDI Association companies including Apple Logic and Focusrite.
Dawn Audio
Diego Pinzon, from Dawn Audio was there and we also got a chance to meet co-founder, Mandy Ortiz. We spend a lot of time catching up on the DAW working group activities and the MIDI In Music Education Initiative.
Athan Billias and Diego Pinzon from Dawn Audio. Mandy Ortiz, co-founder of Dawn Audio
Eternal Research
Another MIDI Association member and Innovation Awards entrant Eternal Research was displaying their Demon Box at the Creator Fair.
We also got to catch up with MIDI Association members Andrew Sherbrooke from Art and Logic and Scott Barkley from Whirled Notes.
Crazy Pants, MIDI Hoodie and MIDI Hat
At the very end of the event, we ran into the organizer, Dmitri Vietz from Rock, Paper Scissors and one of the artist who gave a talk at the event, Ricky Tinez. Ricky was wearing his MIDI hoodie from his website.
Crazy Pants (that’s Dmitri’s nickname), Ricky Tinez in his MIDI Hoodie and Athan Billias with his MIDI hat at the Music Tetronics event.
Already looking forward to next year’s Music Tectonics
This was a really well produced event with tons of great content, lots of music tech start ups and of course a lot of creators who love MIDI.
We are planning on an event with Rock, Paper, Scissors at NAMM 2025 as they are in The MIDI Showcase.
We have even started planning for next year’s Music Tectonics event because it was such a great event in a stunning location.
The Music China 2024 edition was an extraordinary and opportunity-filled experience for us at Audio Modeling. In collaboration with the MIDI Association and in the MusicX area, we had the chance to explore the Chinese music market and strengthen our presence in this key sector.
Discovering the Chinese Music Market
During the event, we had the opportunity to deeply understand the specific characteristics of the Chinese music market by meeting key players in the industry. We discovered a strong interest in the integration of technology in music education. The role of music education in China is central and constantly expanding, representing a great opportunity for us to develop innovative technological solutions that can make a significant impact.
Partnership with ROBKOO: A New Chapter
One of the highlights of Music China 2024 was the signing of our partnership with ROBKOO, a leading company in the production of electronic controllers and wind instruments. This collaboration marks a strategic step for Audio Modeling, opening doors to a growing market where electronic controllers are becoming increasingly popular.
The partnership with ROBKOO highlights the importance of a rapidly growing sector in China, allowing us to work with a leading company to develop cutting-edge and accessible musical solutions for an ever-expanding audience.
Awards and Innovation: The Success of UniMIDI Hub
At Music China, we were proud to receive two prestigious awards: the MIDI Innovation Award and the China User Choice Award, both won thanks to our UniMIDI Hub prototype. This project embodies our vision of musical accessibility, aiming to make music creation accessible to everyone.
UniMIDI Hub represents just the beginning of our commitment to creating an inclusive musical ecosystem, usable by people with disabilities as well as anyone who wants to explore new forms of musical expression.
Lecture at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (SHCM): Engagement and Interest
Another significant moment during our time in Shanghai was being guests at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (SHCM), where we held a lecture on our SWAM instrument physical modeling technology. The lecture saw great participation and interest from the students, who asked numerous questions to understand how this technology can revolutionize the way music is produced and performed.
The enthusiasm shown by the students at the Shanghai Conservatory confirmed for us how strong the interest in technological innovation is within the Chinese educational sector. We are confident that this collaboration will continue to develop in the future, helping to train the next generation of musicians through advanced technologies.
Music China and the Chinese Musical Instrument Association (CMIA) have really stepped up their support for MIDI and digital music making and right next to The MIDI Association booth was the X Stage where we did a number of presentations over the course of 4 days.
Brian Hardgroove and Sennheiser Immersive Audio Presentation
Because of a long standing relationship, Sennheiser supported Brian Hardgroove’s appearance at Music China’s opening performance. He also did the first presentation on the X Stage next to The MIDI Association. Brian along with IMAC advisory board member Nevin Domer (who ran a punk record label in China and speaks fluent Mandarin) and Zhao Yajun, engineering specialist for Sennheiser presented a talk on the X Stage. Brian focused on the process of cross border, cross cultural communication in working on songs with Bian and Kong and Zhao Yajun focused on Sennheiser products particularly the HD490 Pro headphones.
The MIDI Association had worked with Music China and Sennheiser so people could come to The MIDI Association booth and register to receive a copy of a song written by Brian which featured Bian on Erhu and Kong on piano and also enter a drawing to win a pair of headphones.
This really helped us increase traffic at the MIDI Association booth.
MIDI Innovation Awards and Chinese Users Choice Awards Presentation
Finalists in the MIDI Innovation Awards were invited to participate in Synthefest UK 2024 , Music China 2024 and NAMM 2025. Here is an article we did Synth Fest UK on the event and a picture of from the event itself.
In researching this article, we relied on many first person resources and accounts. We have spent a lot of time unpacking these stories from decades ago because we feel that the history of MIDI needs to be captured correctly for posterity. Many people and organizations including NAMM and AMEI provided access to their files about…
Boaz from Arcana Instruments Strum, Jean Baptiste Thiebaut from The MIDI Innovation Awards and Andrej Kobal from seqMPEror.
At Music China we had a great panel and participation by several of the winners and finalists. Here is the promotional video we created to promote the event at Music China.
MIDI Innovation Awards and Chinese Users Choice Awards
Finalists in the 2024 MIDI Innovation Awards were also entered into the Chinese Users Choice Awards where Music China promoted the products in China and users were able to vote for their favorites.
Audio Modeling won both the MIDI Innovation Awards in the non commercial software category and the Chinese Users Choice Awards. We covered this in our article The MIDI Association At Music China 2024
This picture shows the ranking of the Chinese Users Choice Award winners.
There were a lot of MIDI Innovation Award finalists and winners at Music China including Audio Modeling, Arcana Strum, Party Maker and Flex Accordion.
Audio Modeling explains the UniMIDI Hub at Music ChinaHaim Kairy holds up the Arcana Strum at the Music Accessibility panel at Music China 2024Particle Shrine Video at Music ChinaParty Maker and Flex Accordian
MusicX Stage Music Innovation Awards Presentation
Music Accessibility Presentation
Above is the promotional video we created to promote the event at Music China.
The Music Accessibility presentation at the X Stage featured two 2024 MIDI Innovation Award winners. Arcana Instruments won in the Commercial Hardware category for the Arcana Strum and Audio Modelingwon in the non-commercial software category for UniMIDIHub.
In addition to the MIDI Innovation Award winners, we invited two of brand ambassadors and a special guest, Liang Ge from Kong Audio . He showed up several minutes before the start of the presentation because he was interested in music accessibility. His company develops virtual instruments covering modern and ancient Chinese instruments as well as western orchestral instruments.
His English is great so we roped him into being the translator for the Music Accessibility presentation at the very last minute. Thanks to Kong Audio for their support.
Liang Ge from Kong AudioHaim Kairy with Arcana Strum
MIDI In Music Education Presentation
With all the support we got last year from Xinghai Conservatory of Music and this year from Shanghai Conservatory of Music, we know that MIDI In Music Education is going to be an important topic in China in the future.
Zhao Yitian and Athan Billias from the MIDI Association executive board gave visitors to Music China an update on our plans to release a MIDI curriculum created by SAE Mexico and encouraged Chinese universities to translate our documents into Chinese.
MusicX stage MIDI in Music Education Music China 2024
In our next article, we’ll cover the 4 hour MIDI Forum that Music China arranged for Saturday, October 12, 2024.
Sound Without Sight is a new non-profit initiative, aimed at supporting sight-impaired people in the fields of audio and music. They will: showcase blind and partially sighted talent, highlight how accessibility barriers can be overcome, combine collective knowledge, and challenge stereotypes.
They have started started a monthly series of meet ups with next one being on Thursday 17th October 2024, 7pm UK time. that will feature a live demonstration of MuseScore Studio with a screen reader by headline guest James Bowden!
James is Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, and his feedback has been key in shaping the development of accessibility features within MuseScore in recent years.
The demonstration will last around 60 minutes, with a further 30 minutes for questions. This will be a relaxed, informal discussion and audience participation is encouraged.
We thought it was time to introduce the members who regularly attend these meetings so you can get to know their backgrounds and why they are passionate about making music making accessible to everyone. The Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group in The MIDI Association has been meeting regularly for over a year now every other Wednesday at 8 am Pacific Time.
Juho Tomanien- MASSIG Chair
Juho Tomanien is a student from Finland who had a vision for a Music Accessibility Standard. Just because you are blind, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a vision. Take Stevie Wonder whose Inner Visions album is considered one of the greatest records of all time.
Juho reached out to the MIDI Association after someone of KVR Audio suggested that perhaps The MIDI Association might be a good place to start up a conversation about Accessibility.
It turned out that there were already a number of MIDI Association member companies who had been working with accessibility consultants like UK producers/recording engineers Scott Chesworth and Jason Dasent and had already been adding accessibility features to their products. Juce which runs the Audio Developer Conference was also already onboard and had been hosting accessibility workshops at ADC for several years.
In 2023 at the ADC conference Jay Pocknell from the Royal Institute for the Blind hosted a packed session of developers trying to learn how to use Juce to add accessibility features to their products.
Workshop: An Introduction to Inclusive Design of Audio Products – Accessibility Panel – ADC23
MIDI Association members from Audio Modeling, Arturia, Native Instruments, Roland and more have joined together with The Royal Institute for the Blind and visually impaired producers and musicians like Juho, Scott Chesworth Jason Dasent and more to discuss how MIDI 2.0 might enable Music Accessibility and make making music accessible to everyone.
Jay Pocknell-SoundWithoutSight.org and the Royal Institute For The Blind
Jay Pocknell, SoundWithoutSight.org and the Royal Institute For The Blind
As a sight-impaired musician, I first considered plans for a project in 2018. I was achieving my dream of working in commercial recording studios but also found that there were significant barriers to accessing the equipment and culture. I became aware that my fully-sighted peers could be more agile within the industry. Rather than becoming frustrated, I wanted to use my experience as motivation to inspire change. I refused to believe that I was the only person to have struggled.
Ph.D. student at the Music Informatics Laboratory at the University of Milan, in collaboration with Audio Modeling.
From a young age, I was captivated by the transformative power of music. However, as I delved deeper into the world of digital instruments, I began to notice a glaring gap in accessibility. The tools that are supposed to empower creativity often come with barriers that exclude many from fully engaging in music-making. This realization fueled my desire to create digital instruments that are not only innovative but also inclusive, designed to be accessible and usable by everyone, regardless of their physical abilities or technical expertise.
Through my research, I aim to challenge the status quo by designing instruments that are adaptable and intuitive, ensuring that the joy of music is within reach for all. To deepen my understanding and to extend my vision of accessibility, I joined MASSIG (the Music and Accessibility Special Interest Group). Being part of this community has allowed me to connect with musicians who face real challenges in their everyday interactions with digital instruments. These interactions have been invaluable in shaping my research, providing me with insights into the practical needs and problems that must be addressed.
My journey is driven by the belief that music should be a universal language, and to achieve that, the tools we create must be as inclusive as the art form itself. As I continue my work, I am committed to breaking down barriers and ensuring that every musician, regardless of their background or ability, has the opportunity to express themselves through digital music. Short bio: I’m Vanessa, and I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Music Informatics Laboratory at the University of Milan, in collaboration with Audio Modeling. My passion for music and technology has led me to a research project that sits at the intersection of both fields: the ideation and development of accessible digital music instruments.
Emanuele Parravicini, co-founder and CTO of Audio Modeling
Emanuele Parravicini is the co-founder and CTO of Audio Modeling. He holds a degree in Telecommunications Engineering and a Master’s in Information Technology. With a deep passion for music and music technology, Emanuele is a strong advocate for inclusivity, particularly in the realm of musical technology.
At Audio Modeling, he leads the development of innovative products, including the UniMIDI Hub, a software platform designed to integrate various accessible devices. This platform enables real-time control of digital instruments or music production software by multiple users simultaneously, whether they are individuals with disabilities, students, amateurs, or professionals.
Emanuele’s commitment to making music technology accessible to everyone is the driving force behind his involvement in the MASSIG – Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group. His expertise and dedication to inclusivity in the field align perfectly with the group’s mission.
I am Emanuele Parravicini, co-founder and CTO of Audio Modeling. I hold a degree in Telecommunications Engineering and a Master’s in Information Technology. With a deep passion for both music and music technology, I am a strong advocate for inclusivity, especially within the realm of musical technology.
In my role at Audio Modeling, I oversee the development of our products, including one of our latest projects, the UniMIDI Hub. This software platform aims to integrate various accessible devices, allowing real-time control of digital instruments or music production software by multiple users at once, whether they are individuals with disabilities, students, amateurs, or professionals.
My commitment to making music technology accessible to everyone is what led me to join the MASSIG – Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group. I believe that inclusive technology can empower people to create and enjoy music, and I am dedicated to contributing to this important mission.
Emanuele Parravicini
Haim Kairy- CEO – Arcana Instruments
I am an engineer, software developer, maker, entrepreneur, and musician, currently serving as co-founder and CEO of Arcana Instruments. Throughout my professional career in technology startups and consulting for banks, energy, and insurance companies, I never found a true sense of purpose. Music has always been central to my life, playing, recording, producing, and performing. Without it, I would surely be lost.
Eight years ago, everything changed when my friend Boaz, a music-school teacher, showed me a video of Gil, a 12-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, trying to play the guitar. Unfamiliar with CP, I was moved by her passion and frustration as she struggled to control her hands and fingers. Realizing that no suitable instrument existed for her, we were heartbroken. However, seeing Gil controlling her motorized wheelchair with a joystick inspired us to create an accessible musical instrument she could play.
What began as a hackathon project for one girl evolved into a year of research, working with individuals aged 5 to 95 to develop the Arcana Strum, an inclusive, adaptable musical instrument. We raised capital from angel investors and government grants, left our day jobs, and fully committed to this mission.
Meeting hundreds of people with disabilities and making music accessible to them has made a huge impact on me. I’ve come to understand that a significant portion of the population is systemically excluded from learning and playing music, a body-brain-developing, spirit-lifting activity I once took for granted.
As part of the MIDI Association Special Interest Group, Arcana gains invaluable insights from musicians and professionals about music accessibility needs. We aim to contribute our resources, knowledge, and experience to create an inclusive and accessible music landscape for everyone.
Micheal Strickland , Specialized Faculty in Music Technology at Florida State University
Michael Strickland is a passionate advocate for music education and accessibility, leveraging his expertise in music technology to create innovative learning and performance environments. As a member of the MIDI Association, he participates in the Music Education and Accessibility Special Interest Groups, where he promotes the use of MIDI as a tool for enhancing musical expression and inclusion. He is also a skilled performer, engineer, and researcher, with a diverse background in physics, music, and improvisation. He is honored to serve as a judge for the MIDI Innovation Awards and celebrate the creative potential of MIDI.
I have previously worked in the broadcast industry, delivering control and monitoring interfaces for visually impaired users and improving access to various production tools.
I know that improvements to a product’s accessibility improves workflows for all of its users and that considering the access to all elements of a product, for all users at the earliest stage of design is the best way to deliver a product that works best for the widest audience. This is not just a social benefit, it is good business practice. Whilst engaging where necessary with product modifiers (such as screen readers), I much prefer to design products that work for each user’s ability. I consider what interface the users can use and how they can access the features of a product. That includes forgetting about GUI for totally blind users, reconsidering tactile controls for users without physical reach or dexterity, designing workflows with appropriate levels of complexity for users with different cognitive abilities, etc.
All of these considerations, and more should be fitted into as many of our products as we can. The core learning is that user interfaces may be significantly different for different users of the same product, to provide a similar user experience.
I have done this in the past and strive to do so with the projects I work on now and in the future. It is this experience, skillset and aspiration to improve musicians experience that attracts me to MASSIG.
Design for all and all benefit.
Sam Prouse- Music Technologist
Samuel Prouse is a passionate music technologist whose journey with sound began in the vibrant 1980s, inspired by the iconic synths that defined the era. Growing up, He channelled this passion into building rigs, DJing, and live performances, initially as a hobby. In 2008, a deep love for music technology led to a bold career shift, prompting him to pursue formal education in the field. However, just before beginning these studies, life took an unexpected turn with the sudden loss of sight in the left eye, later leading to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. By the end of his BTEC studies, He was registered visually impaired, which brought unique challenges to his educational journey and professional aspirations.
Despite these obstacles, Samuel demonstrated remarkable resilience, earning a foundation degree, a BA Hons, and an MSc in Music Technology. Throughout this academic journey, Samuel explored the creative implications of device interfaces, both hardware and software, with a particular focus on visual accessibility. In 2021, when JUCE released version 6.1 with enhanced accessibility features, he developed skills in C++ and interface design, driven by a commitment to improving accessibility in music technology.
After graduating with distinction, Samuel ‘s PhD bursary proposal was accepted, allowing him to focus his research on universal design concepts within the music technology industry. As an active member of the Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group, Samuel has found a collaborative space to share innovative ideas and concepts, further strengthening his research. Being part of such a committed group has provided constant inspiration to develop new ways of interacting with music technology. Today, he is dedicated to pioneering new ways of interacting with music technology, ensuring that the industry evolves to be more inclusive and accessible for all.
Sam Prouse demoing accessibility settings to the Music Accessibility Standard SIG
Same Prouse Highlights Music Accessibility on YouTube
Demystifying screen readers #1 We can drag and drop.
Accessible prototype synthesiser with voice activated parameters
Accessible piano roll and break point generator prototypes
Designing Plugins for low vision
Music Accessibility at Music China and ADC
We are planning a number of upcoming Music Accessibility events – one at Music China in October and then another led by Jay Pocknell at Audio Developers Conference in November.
Here is a promo video for the event at Music China and then a list of recent posts.
As the VP of Product at Muse, Martin plays a crucial role in overseeing and mentoring the teams responsible for a diverse range of products, including Ultimate Guitar, MuseScore Studio, MuseScore.com, Audacity, Audio.com, and the Muse Hub.
He also runs a YouTube channel called ‘Tantacrul’, where he shares his thoughts on music, technology, philosophy, and design.
The 2024 MIDI Innovation Award Judges
Michelle Darling
Assistant Chair of the Electronic Production and Design Department at Berklee College of Music
Mark Isham
Film Composer and recording artist with over 4 billion dollars in gross of films scored
Bian Liunian
Chinese Erhu musician, composer and musical director of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Closing Ceremonyand the CCTV New Year’s Gala, one of the most watched television programs in the world
Moldover
Musician and instrument designer and is widely recognized as the godfather of controllerism
Jeff Rona
American composer for film and games and the founder and first president of The MIDI Association
Michael Strickland
Specialized Faculty in Music Technology at Florida State University and an active member of both the MIDI In Music Education and the Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Groups of The MIDI Association.
Join us as our esteemed panel of judges review and discuss the three finalists in each of the five categories of the MIDI Innovation Awards and selects a winner for:
Artistic/Visual Project or Installation
Software Prototypes/Non-Commercial Products
Commercial Software Products
Hardware Prototypes/Non-Commercial products
Commercial Hardware Products
For more information on the finalists, click on the link below.
5 OCTOBER 2024 – THE OCTAGON, SHEFFIELD Exhibition \\ Retailers \\ Education \\ Modular Meet \\ Seminars & Demos Come and see Keyboards – Desktop Synths – Modular – Software Synths and much more.
SynthFest UK 2024 takes place in Sheffield on Saturday 5th of October 2024 (10:30am – 6:30pm) and has been created by Sound On Sound magazine to give companies of all sizes an opportunity to showcase their synth products in front of the public in what promises to be a great day out for all musicians, whether a pro, semi-pro or hobbyist. The Octagon Centre, Clarkson Street, Sheffield, S10 2TQ (Next to the University of Sheffield Student Union building)
For more information, check out the Synthfest UK website.
Tickets for SynthFest UK 2024 now on sale via See Tickets
Early Bird Ticket – £15.99 (plus fee) available until 31 August. Advance Price Ticket – £17.99 (plus fee) from 1 September. Walk-Up Ticket – £25 on the day.
Students, Registered Claimants and Senior Citizens (60 Yrs+) – £9.00 (plus fee) Children (14-18 Yrs) – £7.00 (plus fee)
Children (Under 14 Yrs) – Free
Ticket price includes free entry to Seminars and Demos.
Sound On Sound is the media partner of The MIDI Association for The MIDI Innovation Awards and MIDI Innovation Awards finalists, Sound On Sound staff and representatives of The MIDI Association will all be there.
Following companies exhibited in 2023 and many of them have booked for 2024 already with more to come. MIDI Association members are in bold.
The MIDI Association has been actively involved with Music China for many years. You can read about that history in the articles at the bottom of this page.
But in this article, we’ll focus on Music China 2024 because there is a lot going on.
Statistics About Music China
Date: October 10-13, 2024 (Thursday-Sunday)
Last year there were122,184 people who attended Music China from 92 countries and there were 1,832 from 23 countries. You can get an idea of what Music China 2023 was like from this picture.
The MIDI Association Booth
Rendering of The MIDI Association Booth design
The MIDI Association booth will have areas for MIDI 2.0 products, MIDI Innovation Award products and explanations of our major initiatives- MIDI In Music Education, Interactive Game Audio, and Music Accessibility.
This is a picture of Andrea Martelloni, one of the winners of the 2023 MIDI Innovation Awards at last year’s MIDI Association booth at Music China. He traveled to China and spent 4 days demoing to both end users and companies who were interested in his technology.
MIDI Association Companies at Music China
A number of MIDI Association companies will have booths at Music China in the Hall N, MusicX area.
The following MIDI Association companies will have booths at Music China (some in the Music X Area and some in the other halls at Music China).
Music X area
Artiphon
Amenote/Azotech
Audio Modeling
CME
Donner
MIDIPlus
Synido
Novation
ASM-Ashun Sound Machines
Avid
Medeli: W4B42
Ringway: W4E42
Amason: W1D20, N1C55
Donner: W5C52
Hotone: W5E32
Mooer: W5C44
The Chinese Users Choice Awards
Music China arranged for all 15 finalists in the 2024 MIDI Innovations Awards to be entered into the Chinese Users Choice Awards.
This year’s winners of the Chinese User Choice awards are:
Audio Modeling- UniMIDIHub
Artiphon-Chorda
Manifest Audio-Sonification Tools
Christo Squier-Particle Shrine
Playmodes Studio-PPFF
The winner of the Chinese Music Choice Awards will be automatically entered into the Future Shock Awards which includes which includes entrants outside of The MIDI Innovation Awards and also entrants from China.
Presentations at the X Stage in Hall N
The MIDI Association will be doing three presentations at Music China’s X Stage in Hall N.
Chinese Users Choice and MIDI Innovation Award Winners
MIDI In Music Education
Music Accessibility
We’ll provide more details on the presentations and times soon.
Presentations at the Music Lab last year at Music China 2023
Performance at the opening ceremony of Music China 2024 by Brian Hardgroove, Bian Liunian and Kong Hongwei
Brian Hardgroove-Musician/Producer and bass player for Public EnemyBian Liunian- Chinese Erhu musician, composer and musical director of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Closing Ceremony and the CCTV New Year’s Gala, one of the most watched television programs in the world and 2024 MIDI Innovation Award judge.The renowned Chinese jazz pianist, Kong Hongwei (known by his nickname- Golden Buddha) is celebrated as China’s most influential and inspiring jazz musician.
Mr. Hardgroove first started a close relationship with The MIDI Association at the 2023 NAMM show when his band Resonant Alien performed at the celebration at the MIDI@40/HipHOP@50 celebration.
Brian is attending Music China on the behalf of Sennheiser and he has written a song specifically for the occasion that will be mixed in immersive audio. It will feature recorded performances by Mr. Bian and Mr.Kong.
Hardgroove, Bian and Kong will perform the song live at the Music China opening ceremony where people will be invited to come to The MIDI Association to listen to the immersive audio mix on Sennheiser HD-490 headphones.
At The MIDI Association booth, people will be able to scan a code for a free download of the song and enter a raffle to win a variety of prizes including a pair of the Sennheiser headphones, an Artiphon Chorda, NFR codes Audio Modeling SWAM software and Manifest Audio Sonification Tools an other prizes.
Opening Ceremony at Music China 2023
Stay tuned for more about The MIDI Association
at Music China 2024
There is obviously a lot going on at The MIDI Association right now, but check back regularly because there are some really exciting things planned that we are just in the process of confirming. Also check out the following articles detailing our long and friendly relationship with Music China.
By the way for many people around the world, you no longer need a visa to visit China and even for the US, UK and Canada, it is pretty easy to go to Music China under a 6 day transit visa (you just need to travel to another country rather than go directly back to your country of origin).
Entering a New Era for Music and Musical InstrumentsThe Future of MIDI 2.0 Technology Joe Zhang from Medeli and the MIDI Association Technical Standards Board At Music China 2020’s MIDI Technology Forum, Joe Zhang (pictured in the article cover photo) gave an in-depth presentation covering a variety of MIDI topics. Joe is in the R&D department of MIDI Association corporate member Medeli and also…
This is a translation of an article on the Chinese Musical Instrument Association’s website. The original article is linked below. Music China is now scheduled for January 14-17, 2022 Creating an interconnected space for music technology and leading the cross-border integration of the musical instrument industry Under the background of the Internet+ era, science and technology…
The MIDI Association, Music China and the Chinese Musical Instrument Association cooperate together to promote MIDI in China In the past year, with the help of MIDI Association Exec Board member Yitian Zhao, CEO of CME and Technical Standards Board member Joe Zhang of Medeli, the MIDI Association has greatly expanded our promotion of MIDI…
MIDI has grown in importance in China as Chinese companies expand in both domestic and overseas markets The MIDI Association is tasked with promoting and managing MIDI specification for MIDI in every country in the world except Japan where the Association Of Music Electronics Industry (AMEI) is responsible for MIDI. Thanks to the leadership of Yitian Zhao,…
Music China is back after three years During the pandemic, Music China and The MIDI Association worked closely together to keep information and news about MIDI and MIDI products available in China. Music China hosted online events on their WeChat channels and together we figured out a clever way to iFrame our MIDIable meetings so that…
Last year at Music China, Shanghai Intex who runs the Music China show arranged for The MIDI Association to have three brand ambassadors from Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou. They were students who were studying at the school and were proficient in English and music technology. They are an amazing help in communicating with…
The MIDI Association will be participating in the Audio Engineering Society 2024 which happens October 8-10 at the Jacob Javits Center In New York City.
While a large group of MIDI Association members will be on planes headed to Shanghai for Music China, another group of MIDI Association members will head to the Big Apple to represent The MIDI Association at AES.
Lee Whitmore, Chair of the MIDI In Music Education initiative will be there in his role a VP of Education for Focusrite and Steve Horowitz, Chair of the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group will be giving several talks on Game Audio. Here are some topics lead by Steve Horowitz and then a few others by Micheal Bierylo, fomr Berklee College of Music that would be of interest to MIDI Association members.
Get Smart! – Everything you wanted to know about game audio education but were afraid to ask!
Steven Horowitz, Dafna Naftali, Alistair Hirst
Take the Blue Pill-Interactive and Adaptive Music In the 21st century
Steven Horowitz
The Technical Legacy of Dr. Robert Moog
Michael Bierylo, Steve Dunnington
Expressive Control in Electronic Instruments
Michael Bierylo, Jesse Terry, Richard Graham
AI in Electronic Instrument Design
Michael Bierylo, Akito van Troyer
Sustainability in Music Technology Manufacturing
Michael Bierylo
New Directions in Modular Synthesizer Design
Michael Bierylo
There are a number of MIDI Association companies who have booths at AES.
Avid, Eternal Research (makers of MIDI Innovation Award contestant Demon Box), Icon Pro Audio and Juce’s parent company Pace will be at the show.
Step into a world of audio innovation and inspiration at AES Show 2024 NY, the flagship event of the Audio Engineering Society. This annual gathering unites over 10,000 audio professionals, enthusiasts, and exhibitors from around the globe. Whether you’re a seasoned expert, a novice, or a student, the AES Show provides a platform for collaboration, discovery, and learning.
Audio Engineering Society
Below are the prices for attending AES which include a ticket just for exhibits which is quite reasonable.
The 10th Audio Developer Conference (ADC) returns in 2024 both in-person and online in a new city, Bristol, UK.
The in-person and online hybrid conference will take place 11-13 November 2024.
Talks at ADC range from audio research, to professional practices, to standards in audio development, as well talks about application areas and career development. Experimental projects are welcome.
Topics include, but are not limited, to:
Digital Signal Processing
Audio synthesis and analysis
Music technology, DAWs, audio plug-ins
Game audio
3D and VR/AR audio
Creative coding
Other applications of audio programming (e.g. telecommunications, multimedia, medicine, biology)
Design and evaluation of audio software and hardware systems
Programming languages used for audio development (e.g. C++, Rust, Python)
Software development tools, techniques, and processes
Performance, optimisation, and parallelisation
Audio development on mobile platforms
Embedded, Linux, and bare metal audio programming
Low-latency and real-time programming
Best practices in audio programming
Testing and QA
Educational approaches and tools for audio and DSP programming
Planning and navigating a career as an audio developer
Other relevant topics likely to be of interest to the ADC audience
The MIDI Association and ADC
The MIDI Association is a community sponsor of Audio Developers Conference and several MIDI Association companies are paid sponsors of the event.
ADC is run by PACE Anti-Piracy Inc., an industry leader in the development of robust protection products, and flexible licensing management solutions. PACE acquired JUCE a few years ago.
JUCE is the most widely used framework for audio application and plug-in development. It is an open source C++ codebase that can be used to create standalone software on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, as well as VST, VST3, AU, AUv3, AAX and LV2 plug-ins.
Several MIDI Association companies are sponsors of Audio Developers Conference including Gold Sponsors Juce and Focusrite, Silver sponsor Avid, and Bronze sponsor Steinberg.
Franz Detro from Native Instruments will be doing a talk introducing ni-midi2, a modern C++ library implementing MIDI2 UMP 1.1 and MIDI CI 1.2 and also the open source software available on MIDI2.dev.
Franz is on The MIDI Association Technical Standards Board and an active participant in the MIDI 2.0 Working Group, the DAW working group which is working on open source software for how plugin formats including Apple Audio Units, Avid Audio Extension, Bitwig CLever Audio Plug-in, and Steinberg VST3.
He will be available at ADC to answer questions about MIDI 2.0 and The MIDI Association. The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (Tom Poole from JUCE is on the IASIG steering committee) will hold an online meeting during ADC.
The MIDI Association will have both in person and on line representation at ADC and ADCx Gather.
The ADCx Gather one-day online event is free and open to everyone in the audio developer community (registration required). ADCx Gather is hosted in Gather.Town, a browser-based virtual online platform that allows attendees to interact and collaborate in real-time.
ADCx Gather takes place on the 1st of November starting at Noon UTC.
Registration for this event has not yet started. Sign-up for the ADC newsletter and be the first to know when ADCx Gather attendee registrations begin.
Tickets for ADC
There are different tickets available for ADC with in person tickets for corporate, individual, academic and also the same categories for online participation.
The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group of the MIDI Association is the longest running SIG in the organization.
IASIG is an organization in partnership with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the MIDI Association (TMA) that brings together experts to share their knowledge and help improve the state of the art in audio for games, websites, VR content, and other interactive mediums. Our members share tips and techniques, study trends, and create reports and recommendations that game developers, tool makers, and platform owners use to create better products.
IASIG was born out of the Audio Town Meeting at the Computer Game Developers conference in April of 1994. The group first met in June of 1994 to discuss a means for improving audio development tools and upgrading multimedia audio performance. Initially called the AIAMP (Association of Interactive Audio and Music Professionals), the MIDI Association (TMA) assumed responsibility for the group in August of 1994.
IASIG is a partner of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the MIDI Association (TMA).
IASIG operates as an official Special Interest Group of the IGDA, & under the auspices of the MIDI Association, with its own Advisory Board, Steering Committee and Working Groups. The majority of activity is in discussion of various topics of interest to the members, which is conducted via private internet mailing lists. Every participant is free to choose their own level of contribution, and all are encouraged to define issues and establish solutions with assistance from the greater community.
Working Groups are the foundation of the IASIG, which operate as explained in the IASIG Working Group Process. Working Groups are supervised by the IASIG Steering Committee. The Steering Committee ultimately serves the General Membership of the IASIG.
In addition, IASIG may convene an Advisory Board. Advisory Board members are not involved in the day to day management of the organization. As the name suggests, they serve to advise the Steering Committee in areas of specialized expertise, and as ambassadors for the IASIG to specific industry segments.
The process, in general, is geared towards gaining consensus, and the wider SIG membership is given ample opportunity to comment on the progress of each Working Group through reports given at regular physical meetings as well as via e-mail, internet chat rooms, or regular mail (as the case may be). IASIG recommendations will be forwarded to the IGDA, the MIDI Association, and all other interactive audio industry groups as needed to complete the IASIG mission to positively influence the development of interactive audio hardware and software.
Steve Horowitz-IASIG Chair
Steve Horowitz is not only a criticially acclaimed composer and the Chair of the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group, he is also the executive director of Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) program at SFCM, a position he took over in January, 2024.
Horowitz comes to SFCM after 23 years as Audio Director at Nickelodeon where he worked on scoring hundreds of video games.
Horowitz is also the author of The Essential Guide to Game Audio: The Theory and Practice of Sound for Games on Focal press, and newest book The Theory And Practice Of Music For Games, published January 2024.
2 Days of Video Game Music, Sound, Dialogue and More Game Music and Sound Design Conference GameSoundCon 2024- October 29-30- Burbank Convention Center- Burbank, CA & Online GameSoundCon 2024 is hybrid! We attended GameSoundCon and got to catch up with composers, sound designers, dialogue specialists, researchers, educators and others who want to keep up with…
The MIDI Association will be participating in the Audio Engineering Society 2024 which happens October 8-10 at the Jacob Javits Center In New York City. While a large group of MIDI Association members will be on planes headed to Shanghai for Music China, another group of MIDI Association members will head to the Big Apple…
Announcing Audio Developers Conference 2024 The 10th Audio Developer Conference (ADC) returns in 2024 both in-person and online in a new city, Bristol, UK. The in-person and online hybrid conference will take place 11-13 November 2024. Talks at ADC range from audio research, to professional practices, to standards in audio development, as well talks about…
The IASIG is an organization in partnership with the International Game Developer’s Association (IGDA) and MIDI Association (TMA) that brings together experts to share their knowledge and help improve the state of the art in audio for games, websites, VR content, and other interactive performances. Our members share tips and techniques, study trends, and create…
A Week of Game Audio Lessons The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) of the MIDI Association is the special interest group that represents MIDI and audio to the gaming community. This year the all virtual Game Developers Conference includes a number of sessions sponsored by the IASIG and other sessions on audio that should…
What Is Interactive Audio Game Music is incredibly unique because unlike almost every other form of music which is based on a linear temporal framework (a song starts and plays uninterrupted from begin to end), game music is inherently interactive because it depends on the user’s game play to decide what music plays at what time. If…
Last year at Music China, Shanghai Intex who runs the Music China show arranged for The MIDI Association to have three brand ambassadors from Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou.
They were students who were studying at the school and were proficient in English and music technology. They are an amazing help in communicating with people at the Music China show. Not only could they translate, but we had videos we had create descriptions in Chinese and they were quick to figure out how to use the Visibox software to trigger the multiple videos via MIDI.
But it wasn’t until the last day of the show that we realized they were also really creative software engineers. The young student in the picture above had created software to work with a beat boxer to do duo performances.
We were provided a sneak peak at a number of entries to the 2024 MIDI Innovation awards from students at the University and an article about the school.
Students at the Xinghai Conservatory of Department of Musical Instrument Engineering are leading the integration of technology and artistic vision. Their diverse curriculum in musicology, design, physics, computer science,engineering,and mathematics equips them for innovative contributions in electronic instrument design and development. Their works reflect a blend of technical skill, imaginative exploration, and the rich heritage of musical tradition with digital technology. Next you will see some of the students’ best work!
FMB Sequencer made by Bin Yuan（Tyler）
FMB Sequencer made by Bin Yuan（Tyler）, FM sequencer part which uses pitch multiplication, and then connected to the triangle waveform of the FM waveform, while connected to the capture module, through the different pitch threshold set up to capture, so as to realize the real-time adjustment of the FM drum machine.The Bassline section is first set up with a panel control module, which facilitates direct visual control of all the connected functions. The settings for pitch and pitch grab are similar to the FM sequencer, but the waveform settings are different. I set up three waveforms: sawtooth, pulse, and triangle, which can be used separately or together for synthesized sound effects.
The sound effects created by the FM sequencer and Bassline are finally integrated with the mixer and then connected to the three effect modules to add richness to the sound. The three sound effects are Delay, Phaser and Reverb. In the panel design, in order to increase the visual effect, I added a two-position spectrum module, according to the sound or effect triggering adjustments and change the waveform or lighting cue changes, so that the sound and rhythm of the changes in the panel directly show, and at the same time, increase the user’s direct senses.
The “Moon Performance System,” a project by Zilu Li
The Moon Performance System seamlessly integrates MIDI controller, FM synthesizer, and drum sequencer presenting a cohesive and visually appealing design. The unique dual-circuit board MIDI controller allows users to simultaneously control the synthesizer and drum sequencer, enabling instant switching and concurrent play within the same system. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this music system opens up new possibilities for music creators and performers. The Moon Sequencer offers a rich array of features, including the ability to adjust drum tones and pitch, select different effects, and engage in mixing processes without the need for additional sound packs. The Moon Fm Synthesizer boasts a cutting-edge frequency modulation (FM) engine, allowing the use of other oscillators to modulate specific ones, narrowing down the digitalized FM synthesis sound. With its unique XY-axis visual adjustment for envelopes and filtering, coupled with effects like distortion, delay, and chorus, it facilitates the effortless creation of captivating sounds. In summary, the Moon Performance System provides a diverse range of possibilities for music creation.
Yizhong Zheng has created two distinct works, XIAO and DYZZY’s SEQ
The first work is a Kontakt sample-based sound source plugin centered around the traditional Chinese instrument, the xiao. It includes samples of fundamental techniques used in woodwind instruments such as blowing, vibrato, air-driven sounds, and percussion. These samples are categorized into three musical intensity levels: pp, mf, and ff, catering to the needs of music arrangement and production. The plugin also incorporates effects like delay, reverb, chorus, and compression, all of which can be adjusted and viewed through the user interface. In terms of design, Yizhong Zheng used 3D modeling software to create a three-dimensional model of the xiao as the right-side skin window, incorporating elements of vinyl and metal to appeal to modern music producers while blending in elements of both Chinese and Western culture.
The second work, named “DZZYZ’S SEQ,” was crafted by Yizhong Zheng using Reaktor software. In developing this drum sample combination sequencer, he combined existing sequencer functionalities available in the market with innovative features. This drum sequencer comprises four types of drums: kick drum, hi-hat, snare drum, and percussion. Each drum can be modulated through various effects, resulting in completely distinct drum sounds. Furthermore, individual drums can be adjusted for pitch and effects, and mute switches are available for each section to create real-time drum effects ranging from subtle to complex. The user panel’s bottom section corresponds to the beats of the four drums (kick, hi-hat, snare, and percussion) from top to bottom along the horizontal axis. Beneath the green box on the user panel are the corresponding beat positions, allowing users to adjust the volume of individual beats by moving the black square within the box. Finally, a filter effect is placed after all channels to modulate the overall music, enhancing the overall musical experience.
OXIDE-Lofi by Liangsen Chen
“OXIDE-Lofi”is a sophisticated lo-fi effect processor offering a rich toolkit for vintage lo-fi sound production.It features advanced input/output level adjustments for significant sound control flexibility. With its panning control, music can be precisely positioned within the stereo field, enhancing auditory effects. The filter functionality supports various modes to accommodate diverse musical styles and requirements, expanding creative possibilities. Integrated reverb effects enrich the spatial depth of compositions, while seamless DAW integration ensures efficiency and convenience in the music production process. These characteristics demonstrate a commitment to technical innovation and enhancing the user experience in music creation.
The “Ya Sequencer” by Zeya Li
The “Ya Sequencer” by Zeya Li is an advanced 16-step sequencer, equipped with a unique array of features such as four distinct drum kits, versatile melodic and harmonic voices, and a dedicated keyboard timbre for nuanced synthesizer production. It stands out with its live performance capabilities, including a page-turning function, an immersive surround sound system, and seven specialized synth-based sound modules, making it a robust tool for both studio and live settings.
Ya Synth by Zeya Li
The“Ya Synthesizer” , also by Zeya Li, offers a dual approach to sound synthesis, combining additive and subtractive methods. The additive section features a versatile oscillator for generating basic waveforms and enriching the sound with overtones, complemented by pitch modulation, filter options, and an ADSR envelope for dynamic sound shaping. The subtractive section expands the sound palette with waveform selection, noise addition for texture, and comprehensive modulation options including filters, an ADSR envelope, delay, pan control, and reverb, designed to cater to a broad range of users from beginners to experts.
Metal E series by Zichong Wang
The “Metal E” series, crafted by Zichong Wang , showcases a suite of personal music plugins designed for simplicity and efficiency. The series spans across three generations, starting with a synthesizer adept at simulating instruments like trumpets, violins, and guitars with unique control features. The second generation introduces a drum machine sequencer tailored for electronic music, featuring an enhanced interface for optimal usability. The third generation evolves into an effects processor that utilizes C sound’s robust data processing capabilities, offering diverse sound synthesis options. Inspired by guitar effects processors, it allows for seamless effect switching and combinations, illustrating Wang Zichong’s commitment to innovation and user-friendly design in music production tools.
RADARR Semi-automatic playing system by Zichong Wang
RADARR Semi-automatic playing system developed by Zichong Wang, is a revolutionary plugin for enhancing live performances of loop-based electronic music. Utilizing Max/MSP for its development, RADARR comprises a synthesizer section, drum machine, track section, and modulation section. It’s engineered to streamline the workflow of live performances, ensuring stability and orderliness on stage. With a focus on simplicity and a modular interface design, RADARR invites musicians to explore new dimensions of electronic music performance and creation, reflecting Wang Zichong’s vision for the future of music technology.
Here is a performance from last year at Music China featuring an amazing beat boxer from Xinghai Conservatory and the RADARR semi-automatic playing system.
Morphium by Shengxuan Huang
Shengxuan Huang has created an ambient music generator patch called Morphium with Max/MSP, employing algorithmic composition principles. The patch comprises two core sections: sound generation and effects processing. It allows users to craft evolving soundscapes with two independent sound generators for atmospheric and percussive elements. Effects like reverb and tape delay add depth.Envelope followers and a randomizer module shape the sounds, ensuring ongoing evolution. The interface is user-friendly, with oscilloscope visualizations, categorized sections, and extensive sound-shaping options. This patch is perfect for generative background music, infinite pad textures, sound installations, or live performances. It provides endless sonic possibilities, making it a valuable tool for creative endeavors, from studio production to multimedia projects. Let it inspire your next ambient masterpiece!
Spaceship by Shengxuan Huang
“Spaceship” is a software synthesizer plugin developed by Shengxuan Huang, built with SynthEdit to offer extensive sound design capabilities through an intuitive interface. It features a multi-waveform oscillator for creating rich analog-style sounds, adjustable in pulse width and volume. Additional sound shaping is provided by a second oscillator, LFO modulation, a multi-mode filter, and an ADSR envelope, along with a playable keyboard for real-time performance. Aimed at musicians and producers, the plugin encourages exploration and experimentation in electronic music and sound effects, highlighting ease of use, creative potential, and depth in sound programming.
Creative Music Production in China
To sum up, these innovative projects indicate significant advancements in the electronic instrument field. Their work, evidencing comprehensive study and creative exploration, signals the creation of new instruments.
As we prepare to examine these students’ works further, it’s apparent their efforts will enliven the future of music, showcasing a new chapter in electronic instrument design and hinting at transformations in music creation and performance methods.
Ikutaro Kakehashi’s impact on music production is undeniable. He founded Roland and oversaw some of the most seminal MIDI products in history. When he passed away on April 1, 2017, we created an article about his life and times.
Today marks the seventh anniversary of his passing.
Just a week ago, Athan Billias, MIDI Association Exec Board member was in Tokyo after meetings in Hamamatsu with the AMEI Piano Profile working group. He was able to catch up and meet with Kakehashi’s son, Ikuo.
Ikuo Kakehashi (son of Roland Founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, Athan BIllias (MIDI Association) and Takanori Kojima (Tokyo Gakki Expo)
Ikuo updated The MIDI Association on what is going on with Kakehashi Foundation.
The Kakehashi Foundation is a non-profit organization that contributes to the promotion and spread of art that applies electronic technology.
Message from the Chair
The Kakehashi Arts and Culture Foundation is a public interest incorporated foundation based on the surname “Kakehashi” of the foundation’s founder, Ikutaro Kakehashi (founder of Roland Co., Ltd.), and the foundation of the arts and culture that give dreams and hopes to people in Japan and around the world. I was reborn with the desire to become a “kakehashi” Unfortunately, the promotion of art and culture in Japan is lagging behind developed countries due to economic priority and results-based culture. I would like to create a society where culture leads the economy. From now on, our foundation will continue to spread joy and excitement to as many people as possible through electronic technology and electronic musical instruments, in accordance with our basic philosophy of promoting and disseminating artistic culture that applies electronic technology. Specifically, we hold performances and lectures using electronic technology, conduct appropriate and effective support activities in the field of art and culture, and conduct educational development projects such as the Japanese representative office for the Royal Musical Examinations. We would like to contribute to the spread of this technology. We will continue to carry out even more fulfilling business activities in the hope of realizing a rich and creative society. We look forward to your continued support and cooperation. Akiko Santo, Chairman of the Kakehashi Arts and Culture Foundation
Artware Hub in Shinjuku
MIDI Association member AVID has partnered with the Kakehashi Foundation and created a very unique space for electronic music performances.
Shinjuku has a long history as one of Tokyo’s most vibrant areas, and Waseda is arguably the district’s cultural and creative nexus. The area is home to the renowned Waseda University, as well as numerous museums, theaters, night clubs, and performance spaces.
Waseda’s newest venue, the Artware hub, opened its doors in late 2019. Commissioned by the Kakehashi Foundation (Arts and Cultural Foundation), the space is the realization of a lifelong dream of Roland Corporation founder and visionary Ikutaro Kakehashi.
What appears at first glance to be a fairly typical live performance venue is, in fact, much more. Designed as an experimental acoustic space, the facility incorporates an unparalleled 36.8 multi-channel immersive audio system based around an Avid VENUE | S6L live sound system and FLUX::Immersive’s Spat Revolution software engine.
Fast Company recently contacted The MIDI Association about the Music Accessibility Standard.
Janko Roettgers from Fast Company reached out to us and we arranged some interviews with members of the Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group (MASSIG).
It really seems like this Music Accessibility initiative is gaining more and more traction.
The MASSIG meets every other Wednesday at 8 am Pacific to accommodate the many EU based members.
You can join The MIDI Association’s Music Accessibility Standard by registering on the site and indicating Music Accessibility as one of your interests or send an email to info@midi.org and we can get you set up.
Here are some quotes from the article.
The MIDI Association’s work in this field includes an effort to create a technical standard that could help vision-impaired musicians to more easily control their recording and production gear by loading accessibility settings whenever they plug one of their devices into another. The nonprofit also plans to help spread the word about accessibility, and potentially steward open source software efforts in the field.
For Chesworth, the biggest thing music tech companies can do to further accessibility is to actually listen to blind and vision-impaired people. “ The best people to write a screen reader user experience are screen reader users,” he says. Chesworth believes that companies would ideally hire blind developers to work on accessibility, and he even taught himself programming to contribute to the Reaper accessibility extension.
Written for Fast Company by Janko Roettgers, a San Francisco-based reporter who has written for Variety, Protocol, and Gigaom, among other publications.
BTW, the image for this article was generated by AI with the simple prompt ” Futuristic Music Production Studio for people with accessibility challenges”.
The MIDI Association Selects SAE Mexico to create a MIDI Curriculum
Starting in 2021, Athan Billias (MIDI Association President), Denis Labrecque (former MIDI Association Exec Board member) , and Lee Whitmore (MIDI Association Board Member and Treasurer) initiated biweekly meetings of the MIDI Association MIDI in Music Education (MIME) Special Interest Group.
The group includes various MIDI users and stakeholder types associated with music, audio, and education, from academia, manufacturers, retailers, and other thought leaders.
The MIME Special Interest Group has discussed and worked on topics including:
A definition of MIDI users in education and their needs
A MIDI curriculum outline given the rollout of MIDI 2.0
Ideas and a draft for proposal to the board for a MIDI skills certification program
Regular Participants – In addition Athan, Denis, and Lee, the following are among organizations’ representatives that regularly participate in the MiME Special Interest Group:
1500 Sound Academy, CA
Belmont University, TN
Columbia University
Florida State University
Full Sail University, FL
Guitar Center
Indiana University
Musicians Institute, CA
Next Point Training (Avid Certification)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Riverside City College
Romeo Music, Dallas
SAE Institutes Latin America
Sweetwater
Tufts University, MA
And Many More
Lee is the VP of Education for Focusrite and has previously held positions as Berklee’s Vice President for education outreach and social entrepreneurship, and also as the inaugural executive director for the Grammy Music Education Coalition so he is a perfect fit as the Special Interest Group chair.
The MIDI in Music Education Charter
The MIME Working Group developed a charter to establish a concrete set of goals.
To raise awareness about MIDI in education at schools (secondary, college and university, and pro schools), and for manufacturer and reseller staff members. Current work includes:
Establishment of standardized, readily/publicly available content (text/video/modules) for use on MIDI.org, to be added to college courses, more; and,
Creation, launch, and actively manage of a MIDI certification program (perhaps a couple levels, general, MIDI 1 and 2, for coding, etc.).
Motivation behind (benefit to the market) of addressing this topic:
Teaching of MIDI is fragmented and there is no standardized curriculum
We need to explain the benefits of MIDI 2.0 and how it works to music educators.
The MIDI Association is the central repository for information on the latest developments in MIDI.
In a recent survey our MIDI Association Corporate members identified educators as a key segment to reach out to.
Paul Lehrman from Tufts University and former MIDI Association Executive Board member drafted a proposed MIDI Curriculum.
Core Curriculum
First Course: Introduction to MIDI
Module I – What is MIDI?
What can MIDI be used for?
Musical instruments, mixing and processing, live performance, education, synchronization, robotics, stage mechanics, multimedia, toys, web, personal electronics
MIDI History: Pre-MIDI (Voltage Control, Digital Control)
Original use of MIDI was to have one keyboard control several instruments, has gone way beyond that
Benefits of Digital (vs. Analog) Instruments
Control, memory, reproducibility
Module II – MIDI Setups
MIDI signal flow and connectivity, live and studio
Tracks/Channels, Data Editing, Data Manipulation, Step Time, Quantizing, etc.
Editing
Graphic, Numerical, and Notation
Looping, Clips
Tempo Map: Time Fitting and Scaling
Bouncing MIDI tracks
Module IV – The MIDI Specification
Serial data protocol, Bits and Bytes
MIDI Connections: DIN, USB, Bluetooth, Ethernet, iOS, Web MIDI
Thru Jacks, mergers and splitters, Computer interface
MIDI Commands: Command/Status Byte, Data Bytes, Program Change
Channels, Notes, Controllers, Modes, and System Messages
Second Course, Advanced MIDI
Module V – MIDI Products
Hardware:
Instruments, modules, controllers
Software:
Softsynths, DAWs, Plugin Formats, Max/PD, OSC
Module VI – MIDI files and General MIDI
SMF, GM, GM2, GM extensions, DLS
General MIDI devices
Module VII – Advanced Topics
Clocking, MTC, Tuning, SysEx, RP and NRP, MPE, Sample Dump
Module VIII – Other applications
Games
Robotics
MIDI Show Control, museums, multimedia
MIDI 2.0 Topics
(This information can be integrated into any of the above modules. i.e. Each section above could include a “MIDI 2.0 Implications” section )
Expanded control and data bytes
Two-way communication
Property Exchange/CI
PROFILES
Backwards compatibility
Topic Based Courses
Course A: MIDI for Music Creation
Using physical controllers—alternative control surfaces
Combining hardware and software synths
Synth programming
Synth control
Plug-ins control
MIDI clocks-synchronization
Looping and clips
Bouncing
Mixing
Course track B: MIDI for audio production
Control surfaces
DSP control
Mixing
MIDI-to-audio, audio-to-MIDI
Pitch-shifting, harmonizing
Synchronization-MTC
Course track C: MIDI for live performance and show control
Alternate controllers
Mapping
Synth control
DSP control
Looping and clips
Mixing
Course track D: MIDI for scoring video, multimedia and post production
Control surfaces
Synchronization-MTC
SFX, sampling
Ambience, DSP
Mixing
SAE Mexico Selected To Begin Work On The Curriculum
After recieving proposals from Indiana University, Next Point Training and SAE Mexico, the MIME Working Group has recommended that SAE Mexico be selected to start work on the curriculum.
There were a number of compelling reasons for selecting SAE Mexico.
First, they will be able to provide the curriculum materials in both English and Spanish. Second, they have a unique relationship with Coursera, the for-profit U.S.-based massive open online course provider. It has become more and more challenging to actually give away courses on Cousera.
All of the materials created for The MIDI In Music Education curriculum will be given away under a Creative Common license. This means anyone is free to take the materials, modify and adapt them for whatever purpose that need. Universities can include portions in their already existing materials without any concerns about copyrights or licenses. It is a great example of what we do.
The MIDI Association gets really smart people to volunteer to work on really difficult problems. Once we solve those problems, then we give away those solutions for free to allow creative people to make music and art with MIDI.
Juho Tomanien is a student from Finland who had a vision for a Music Accessibility Standard. Just because you are blind, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a vision. Take Stevie Wonder whose Inner Visions album is considered one of the greatest records of all time.
Juho reached out to the MIDI Association after someone of KVR Audio suggested that perhaps The MIDI Association might be a good place to start up a conversation about Accessibility. It turned out that there were already a number of MIDI Association member companies who had been working with accessibility consultants like UK producers/recording engineers Scott Chesworth and Jason Dasent and had already been adding accessibility features to their products. Juce which runs the Audio Developer Conference was also already onboard and had been hosting accessibility workshops at ADC for several years.
In 2023 at the ADC conference Jay Pocknell from the Royal Institute for the Blind hosted a packed session of developers trying to learn how to use Juce to add accessibility features to their products.
MIDI Association members from Audio Modeling, Arturia, Native Instruments, Roland and more have joined together with The Royal Institute for the Blind and visually impaired producers and musicians like Juho, Scott Chesworth Jason Dasent and more to discuss how MIDI 2.0 might enable Music Accessibility and make making music accessible to everyone.
Music Accessibility Standard Meeting at NAMM Booth 10302 Friday, January 26 at 3:00 PM
Jay Pocknell from the Royal Institute of Blind People / Sound Without Sight
At Winter NAMM 2024, we had a meeting of the Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group and discussed the next steps in creating a standard. Audio Modeling who has been working on a reserach project into this area for several years now outlined their vision of what a music accessibility standard could bring to people.
Audio Modeling’s visions for a music accessibility standard for everyone
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 musician) 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 MIDI Association booth (Booth 10302 at the front of Hall A) at Winter NAMM 2024 is very different than our booths in years past.
It is larger with a 30′ by 30′ footprint. A 10′ by 30′ area will be divided into thirds with displays of MIDI 2.0 products, a MIDI Showcase stage for presentations/performances and an area focused on our MIDI In Music Education, Music Accessibility Standard and Interactive Audio Special Interest Groups. But 75% of the booth is dedicated to 50 seats each with a set of wireless headphones so people can come and comfortably watch and listen to presentations and performances.
We also have Booth 10604 which is a 10′ by 10′ booth shared between Intuitive Instruments who won the Commercial Hardware category in The MIDI Innovation Awards in 2023 and the other MIDI Innovation Award winners
Audio Modeling- Camelot Pro
Hitar- augmented guitar for percussive fingerstyle
Sound Sculpture-an interactive musical instrument comprised of 25 location-aware cubes
Studio 108 is a small meeting space for private meetings during the show.
We are being helped again this year by Jennifer Amaya, Associate Professor of Music at the Riverside City College Coil School for the Arts and member of The MIDI In Music Education Special Interest Group.
We will have 70 students helping with all aspects of the booth including running the Yamaha TF3 digital mixer.
We have put together over 20 different presentations and performances highlighting the innovative power of creating music and art with MIDI.
Below is a listing of all the presentations we have planned. The list starts with a Youtube video summary of the each day’s events and then includes the details of each individual event.
Each day ends with a solo performance by one of the artists who performed in our MIDI@40 celebration at the April 2023 NAMM show on the Yamaha Grand Plaza stage.
Thursday, January 25
Friday, January 26
Saturday, January 27
Sunday, January 28
Full Four Day Schedule (3 minutes and 38 seconds)
MIDI Association Companies at NAMM
37 MIDI Association companies will have booths at the 2024 Winter NAMM show.
Many are in the MIDI showcase area, but there are plenty who are spread around the show in different areas including some of the larger companies like Avid, Steinway and Yamaha.
Here is an alphabetical list of The MIDI Association companies at the 2024 Winter NAMM show with their booth numbers.
The 2023 MIDI Innovation Awards live stream event took place on 16 September 2023 at 10 am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern and 5 pm GMT.
The live stream was hosted by composer/UX designer Martin Keary (aka Tantacrul) and British musician, synth maker, and author of the YouTube channel Look Mum No Computer, Sam Battle.
Now in their third year, the awards are a joint initiative created by Music Hackspace, The MIDI Association, and NAMM, created to showcase both products and projects using MIDI .0 and2.0 in fresh and original ways, and to highlight the role of MIDI technology in empowering musical creativity.
The show highlighted the innovative use of MIDI by all 15 finalists and featured interviews with an all-star panel of judges that included:
Nina Richards, electronic musician and synth hardware designerBian Liunian, musical director of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Closing CeremonyRoger Linn, American engineer, musician, and inventorJean-Michel Jarre, French composer and electronic music pioneerPedro Eustache, Venezuelan-born electronic woodwind soloist and composerMichele Darling, Assistant Chair of Electronic Production and Design at Berklee College of Music
WINNERS IN THE FIVE CATEGORIES WERE ANNOUNCED AT THE SEPTEMBER 16 LIVE STREAM EVENT, BROADCAST FROM TILEYARD STUDIOS IN LONDON.
Exquis combines a hardware surface equipped with a hexagonal matrix of keys with a companion mobile app, aiming to provide musicians of all levels with a fun and intuitive way to create new melodies and progressions. By default, thirds are placed next to each other, with backlit keys able to display any musical scale or custom mapping, and chords all placed in ergonomic shapes that make them easy to play, learn and understand.
The keys are firm enough to play short notes with precision or trigger percussion sounds, but have enough play to modulate long notes with physical movement — Exquis also boasts MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) support, meaning that modulation can be applied on a per-note basis within chords. MIDI, CV and USB connectivity is provided, and the included app makes it possible to choose sounds, record loops and quickly try out different parts and arrangements.
Commercial Software ProductAudio Modeling – Camelot Pro
Camelot Pro is a cross-platform (macOS, Windows and iPad OS) app that is capable of acting as a MIDI patchbay/router, setlist manager, digital mixer, software instrument and effects host, PDF music score display and multitrack audio player! Designed to remove the complications of combining MIDI-enabled hardware and software from different manufacturers, the app allows users to control their entire setup from a single location with minimal knowledge of MIDI.
It can be used to switch modes or manage multi-part patches on connected devices without the need to touch the hardware itself, as well as switching between different routing configurations without having to disconnect and reconnect cables. It is also capable of hosting software instruments and effects, and it’s not just MIDI that’s catered for: the device can also be used to manage audio sources, as well as playing backing tracks, displaying scores or sticky notes and much more.
Prototypes & Non-Commercial Hardware Product Andrea Martelloni – HITar
Aimed at percussive fingerstyle guitarists, the HITar is a device that can be fitted to a regular acoustic guitar and is said to reinvent the way in which a player can interact with the instrument’s body. The unit employs five piezo sensors placed underneath the areas most commonly struck by players, and uses an AI engine to determine which part of the hard is used for each percussive hit.
The resulting MIDI output can then be used to integrate hardware or software instruments or samples into a performance, allowing guitarists to trigger drum and percussion samples or blend sample libraries and virtual instruments with their playing.
Prototypes & Non-Commercial Software Products Max Graf And Mathieu Barthet – Netz
Netz is a mixed reality (MR) software instrument that blends the real and virtual worlds by displaying 3D virtual objects within a real environment. It is a self-contained instrument that features an embedded sound engine, allowing users to produce sounds directly from the head-mounted display using hardware such as a Meta Quest 2. Additionally, it can also be used as an MPE MIDI controller to interface with external virtual instruments over WiFi or USB.
The software’s interface appears as a network where nodes represent notes, which can be mapped to a tangible surface for tactile feedback or be positioned in the air. Performers’ hand poses and gestures are tracked in in real time, allowing Netz to translate subtle hand movements to expressive musical controls; gestures such as the opening and closing of fingers — or movements such as wrist rotation — are recognised and interpreted by the system and can be assigned to specific instrument parameters and MIDI controls.
Artistic/Visual Project Or Installation Ryan Edwards And Masary Studios – Sound Sculpture
Sound Sculpture is a large-scale interactive music sequencer designed for installation at venues such as museums, schools, community centres and public art festivals. Comprising 25 cubes kitted out with positioning tags, batteries, processors, a WiFi antenna and an LED array, the installation allows participants to generate musical patterns by physically moving and rearranging the blocks.
A software application continually scans the locations of the blocks, and uses their physical placement to generate a musical composition, typically with the x-axis representing rhythm and the y-axis representing pitch.
TO VIEW THE LIVE STREAM, PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW.
MIDI Innovation Award finalists were also featured at SynthFest UK 2023 that took place in Sheffield, England on Saturday October 7th 2023 (10:30am – 6:30pm) and at Music China in Shanghai on October 11-14, 2023.
The MIDI in Music Education (MIME) Special Interest Group has defined a MIDI Curriculum and a Certification Program
Starting in 2021, Athan Billias (MIDI Association President), Denis Labrecque (former MIDI Association Exec Board member) , and Lee Whitmore (MIDI Association Board Member and Treasurer) initiated biweekly meetings of the MIDI Association MIDI in Music Education (MIME) Special Interest Group.
The group includes various MIDI users and stakeholder types associated with music, audio, and education, from academia, manufacturers, retailers, and other thought leaders.
The MIME Special Interest Group has discussed and worked on topics including:
A definition of MIDI users in education and their needs
A MIDI curriculum outline given the rollout of MIDI 2.0
Ideas and a draft for proposal to the board for a MIDI skills certification program
Regular Participants – In addition Athan, Denis, and Lee, the following are among organizations’ representatives that regularly participate in the MiME Special Interest Group:
1500 Sound Academy, CA
Belmont University, TN
Columbia University
Florida State University
Full Sail University, FL
Guitar Center
Indiana University
Musicians Institute, CA
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Riverside City College
Romeo Music, Dallas
SAE Institutes Latin America
Sweetwater
Tufts University, MA
And Many More
Lee is the VP of Education for Focusrite and has previously held positions as Berklee’s Vice President for education outreach and social entrepreneurship, and also as the inaugural executive director for the Grammy Music Education Coalition so he is a perfect fit as the Special Interest Group chair.
The MIDI in Music Education Charter
The group developed a charter to establish a concrete set of goals.
Name of WG: MIDI In Music Education
MIDI In Music Education (MiME) Special Interest Group (SIG)
Topic and purpose (goal) of this WG:
To raise awareness about MIDI in education at schools (secondary, college and university, and pro schools), and for manufacturer and reseller staff members. Current work includes:
Establishment of standardized, readily/publicly available content (text/video/modules) for use on MIDI.org, to be added to college courses, more; and,
Creation, launch, and actively manage of a MIDI certification program (perhaps a couple levels, general, MIDI 1 and 2, for coding, etc.).
Motivation behind (benefit to the market) of addressing this topic:
Teaching of MIDI is fragmented and there is no standardized curriculum
We need to explain the benefits of MIDI 2.0 and how it works to music educators.
The MIDI Association is the central repository for information on the latest developments in MIDI.
In a recent survey our members identified educators as a key segment to reach out to.
Paul Lehrman from Tufts University and former MIDI Association board member drafted a proposed MIDI Curriculum.
The MIDI Association MIDI Education Course Outline
Guidelines for a 3-semester program of courses for MIDI education and certification
First semester. Introduction to MIDI
I. What is MIDI?
What can MIDI be used for?
Musical instruments, mixing and processing, live performance, education, synchronization, robotics, stage mechanics, multimedia, toys, web, personal electronics
MIDI History: Pre-MIDI (Voltage Control, Digital Control)
Original use of MIDI was to have one keyboard control several instruments, has gone way beyond that
Benefits of Digital (vs. Analog) Instruments
Control, memory, reproducibility
II. MIDI Setups
MIDI signal flow and connectivity, live and studio
On September 16 at 10 am Pacific, a Youtube livestream will showcase the entries of the 15 finalists of the MIDI Innovation Awards, and select the 5 category winners chosen by the jury.
Tune in to discover some of the most exciting music technology products of the moment, and inventors quizzed by an all-star jury composed of Roger Linn, Nina Richards, Bian Liunian, Pedro Eustache, Jean-Michel Jarre and Michele Darling.
Your votes selected the three finalists from each product category. You can click on the image to go to the full article about the product.
MIDI Innovation Award 2023 Finalists
COMMERCIAL HARDWARE FINALISTS
INSTACHORD IC-31
InstaChord is a strummable MIDI chord instrument/controller. By assigning the Nashville Number method to each buttons, even beginners can play right away.
AE-30 AEROPHONE PRO
Roland’s world-class sounds in a high-performance wind instrument that responds to the dynamics and expression worthy of professional woodwind and brasswind players.
Exquis
The expressive MPE controller and intuitive software to produce, perform and learn music
HARDWARE PROTOTYPES AND NON-COMMERCIAL FINALISTS
Abacusynth
Abacusynth is a kinetic synthesizer inspired by an abacus. Its playful interface allows anyone to explore synthesis and timbre, regardless of their musical experience.
Hitar
An augmented guitar for percussive fingerstyle, using AI to transform the body into an expressive MIDI controller for rich multi-dimensional control of drum synthesisers.
Musimoto
MusiMoto is a SW+HW system designed to empower anyone who likes playing MIDI musical instruments to do it while walking, jogging, riding, skating or dancing.
COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE FINALISTS
Beat Scholar
Innovative MIDI sequencer that uses a “Pizza”-like circular interface to give you granular control over any beat division.
Camelot Pro
One program to rule them all: MIDI patchbay/router, setlist manager, digital mixer, software instrument and effects host, PDF music score display, multitrack audio player
Ivory 3
Breakthrough technology combines the realism of digital sampling with the expressivity of modeling. Limitless tone color featuring all new recordings of a German Steinway D.
SOFTWARE PROTOTYPES AND NON-COMMERCIAL FINALISTS
HOT LICKS
A MIDI enabled VST plugin to incorporate a multitude of audiovisual devices into a musical performance.
Music Tapestry
Music Tapestry is a new musical analysis technology that visualizes musical performances in real-time and produces a piece of art.
Netz
Discover Netz, an immersive mixed reality musical instrument and controller featuring a keyboard-like interface with expressive MPE MIDI that learns your gestures using AI.
ARTISTIC/VISUAL INSTALLATIONS FINALISTS
sononyms
sononyms: an immersive sound installation based on the Jazz Cerkno archives and local objects from Cerkno Museum.
Sound Sculpture
Sound Sculpture is an interactive musical instrument, comprised of 25 location-aware cubes. It is a physical sound and light environment that facilitates cooperative sound composition.
THE “DRANKORGEL” PROJECT
The “drankorgel” project is an artistic installation of a MIDI instrument that generates sounds by hitting bottles with spoons and by blowing air over bottles.
We will be sending out more detailed information about the MIDI Innovation Awards live show soon so stay tuned.
We are excited to announce that voting for the MIDI Innovation Awards 2023 is officially open. In the tradition of our past two successful years, we continue to celebrate innovation, creativity, and the fantastic array of talent in our MIDI community. As MIDI marks its 40th birthday this year, we’re thrilled to see how far we’ve come and anticipate the future with MIDI 2.0, which is set to inspire another revolution in music.
This year, you can discover and cast your votes for the most innovative MIDI-based projects across five categories until July 21st. The categories are:
Commercial Hardware Products
Commercial Software Products
Prototypes and non-commercial hardware products
Prototypes and non-commercial software products
Artistic/Visual Project or Installation
The MIDI Innovation Awards 2023, a joint effort by Music Hackspace, The MIDI Association, and NAMM, showcases over 70 innovative entries ranging from MIDI controllers to art installation. The three entries with the most votes will be shortlisted and presented to our stellar jury who will select each category winner.
We’re proud to announce new partnerships for 2023 with Sound On Sound, the world’s leading music technology magazine, and Music China, who will provide exhibition space to our winners at their Autumn 2023 trade fair in Shanghai. Our winners also receive significant support from The MIDI Association and Music Hackspace for the development of MIDI 2.0 prototypes, coverage in Sound On Sound, and an opportunity to exhibit at the 2023 NAMM Show.
The MIDI Innovation Awards entries will be evaluated by a distinguished jury representing various facets of the music industry. The esteemed judges include Jean-Michel Jarre, Nina Richards, Roger Linn, Michele Darling, Bian Liunian, and Pedro Eustache. They’ll be assessing entries based on innovation, inspiring and novel qualities, interoperability, and practical / commercial viability.
Mark these key dates in your calendar:
July 21st: Voting closes, jury deliberation starts
August 16th: Finalists announced
September 16th: Live show online – winners revealed
October: Finalists are invited to participate in the Sound On Sound SynthFest UK and Music China, including the User Choice Awards competition
Vote for your favorites now, and help us champion the most innovative MIDI designs of 2023!
For more details, visit the MIDI Innovation Awards page.
Together, let’s keep the music playing and the innovations flowing!
Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group kicks off with a Youtube Live Stream
Members of the Music Accessibility Standard Special Interest Group (MAS SIG) outlined their vision for the future of Music Accessibility in a Youtube Live event on the MIDI Association Youtube channel.
Musicians and producers who face accessibility challenges including Juho Toumainen, Jason Dasent and Scott Chesworth joined developers and representatives from companies like Arturia, Audio Modeling, Native Instruments and Roland who are participating in the MAS SIG. The group meets every two weeks.
The MIDI association hosted a live roundtable discussion last week, featuring 2022 MIDI Award winners Krishna Chetan (Pitch Innovations), Henrik Langer (Instrument of Things), Markus Ruh (MusiKraken), and John Dingley (Digigurdy). Amongst the winning products you’ll find the Somi-1 MIDI controller, a motion-sensor wearable that converts users’ body movements into MIDI data. MusiKraken’s MIDI controller construction kit similarly tracks your hands, face, voice and device rotations.
The warm reception toward these mixed reality music products underscores a greater trend towards immersion, novelty, and disruption that’s persisted into 2023.
The MIDI medium is the message
Changes to the way we create music can have an impact on the types of music we produce.
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said that the medium is the message, meaning that our tools reveal something about our collective mindset toward the problems at hand. Conventional MIDI keyboard designs are inherited from the classical piano, for example, and with them comes the assumption that musicians should press buttons and keys to make music. Next-generation controllers like MusiKraken and Somi-1 reimagine the controller landscape by turning human bodies into expressive instruments.
Streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music offer a second example of unconscious bias that comes baked into our technology. Artists are required to release songs with a fixed duration, arranged into singles, EPs and albums. This model for music is inherited from legacy formats in the recording industry. As a result, they exclude modern formats like adaptive music and may be limiting our pace of musical innovation.
YouTube differs from other music streaming platforms with their support of continuous music in a 24/7 streaming format. Extreme AI artists Dadabots took advantage of this opportunity by publishing a number of infinite music videos, like the infinite metal example shown below. WarpSound offers adaptive AI music experiences on YouTube, empowering fans to can cast votes and impact the music during their YouTube livestream. These kinds of experiments are only possible because the medium supports them.
Toward more immersive music making experiences
MIDI software is often experienced through an LCD screen, but that could soon change with the rising popularity of virtual and mixed reality hardware.
Earlier this month, Spatial Labs announced their upcoming AR DAW called Light Field. It’s not available commercially but you can watch a demo of their prototype below. Like a laser keyboard, the interface is projected onto a hard surface and users can interact with UI elements to sequence beats, chop samples, and more.
BREAKTHROUGHS IN MIDI COMPOSING SOFTWARE DURING 2023
Artificial intelligence has had a major impact on the creative arts this year. The popularity of text-to-image generators has coincided with a parallel trend in MIDI software. AudioCipher published its third version of a text-to-MIDI generator this year. The app turns words into melodies and chord progressions based on parameters like key signature, chord extensions, and rhythm automation. You can watch a demo below.
The text-to-music trend has continued to gain traction this year. Riffusion paved the way for text-to-song in December 2022, with Google’s MusicLm following suit in May 2023. Riffusion and MusicLM don’t compose in MIDI. They generate low fidelity audio clips replete with sonic artifacts but they’re nevertheless a step forward.
Most people hear AI Music and think of AI voice generators, due to the recent popularity of AI songs that imitate mainstream artists. An AI Drake song called Heart on my Sleeve reached more than 20,000,000 streams in April and May. United Music Group has made a public statement denouncing this practice.
Earlier today, rapper Ice Cube made a public statement calling AI music demonic and threatening to sue anyone who used his voice. Meanwhile, other artists like Grimes and Holly Herndon have sought to come up with models for consensual licensing of their voices.
So far, there has been very little discussion over the tens of millions of music clips used by Google to train MusicLM. As the owners of YouTube, Google has the right to train on the clips in their database. Many of these songs are protected by copyright and were uploaded by everyday users without the original artist’s consent.
This intro to Google’s AI music datasets outlines their training architecture in more detail and addresses some of the ethical concerns at play, as more companies seek to train on instrumental tracks to build their AI models.
THE RISE OF AI DAWS IN 2023
Digital audio workflows can have a steep learning curve for beginners, but artificial intelligence may soon remove that barrier to entry.
WavTool, a browser-based AI DAW, comes equipped with a GPT-4 assistant that takes actions on any element in the workstation. Users can summon the chatbot and ask it to add audio effects, build wavetables, and even compose MIDI ideas. A full demo of the software is shown below.
The AI assistant understands prescriptive commands like “add a new MIDI instrument track with a square wave”.
Vague requests like “write a catchy melody” yield less satisfying results. In many instances, a prompt like that will generate a major scale that repeats twice. Rich descriptions like “write a syncopated melody comprised of quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes in the key of C minor” deliver marginally better results.
The AI text-to-midi problem could eventually be solved by AI agents, a special class of text generation that breaks down an initial goal into a series of subtasks. During my own experiments with AutoGPT music, I found that the AI agent could reason its way through the necessary steps of composing, including quality-assurance checks along the way.
For an AI agent to actually be useful in this context, someone would need to develop the middleware to translate those logical steps into MIDI. WavTool is positioned to make these updates, but it would require a well-trained MIDI composition model that even the biggest tech teams at OpenAI’s MuseNet and Google’s Magenta Suite have not achieved to a satisfactory degree.
POLYPHONIC AUDIO-TO-MIDI CONVERSION SOFTWARE
For years, Melodyne has been the gold standard for monophonic audio-to-midi transcription. In June 2022, a free Spotify AI tool called Basic Pitch went live, delivering polyphonic audio-to-MIDI within a web browser.
A second company called SampLab has since delivered their own plugin and desktop app this year, with more features than Basic Pitch. Both tools are pushing updates to their code as recently as this month, indicating that improvements to polyphonic MIDI transcription will be ongoing through 2023.
Suffice to say that MIDI has remained highly relevant in the era of artificial intelligence. With so many innovations taking place, we’re excited to see who comes out on top in this year’s MIDI Innovation Awards!
Check out these in depth interviews with the winners of the 2022 MIDI Innovation Awards
The MIDI Association invited the winners of the 2022 MIDI Innovation Awards to join this round table on May 20, 20323 to discuss the evolution of their award winning products, discuss how they work with MIDI and share their thoughts on MIDI 2.0.
Participants:
Krishna Chetan, Pitch Innovations
Henrik Langer, Instruments of Things
Markus Ruh, MusiKraken
John Dingley, Digigurdy
Moderated by JB Thiebaut, chair of the MIDI Innovation Awards and Secretary of the MIDI Association
Entries for the 2023 MIDI Innovation Awards close on May 23, 2023
For 2023, The MIDI Innovation Awards are proud to welcome new partners including Sound On Sound, the world’s leading music technology magazine, and Music China, who will provide exhibition space to the winners at their Autumn 2023 trade fair in Shanghai.
Musicians and inventors around the world will have a unique opportunity to present their ideas on a global stage, and the winners will gain invaluable help in bringing their products to market. Prizes include an exhibition booth at the 2023 NAMM Show, coverage in Sound On Sound, an opportunity to exhibit at Music China, and significant support from The MIDI Association and Music Hackspace for the development of MIDI 2.0 prototypes.
The MIDI Innovation awards are open to individuals, artists, and companies who work with MIDI to build innovative products or interactive experiences. The 2023 MIDI Innovation Awards categories are:
Commercial Hardware Products
Commercial Software Products
Prototypes and non-commercial hardware products
Prototypes and non-commercial software products
Artistic/Visual Project or Installation
The MIDI Innovation Awards welcomes entries from, but not limited to: MIDI instruments, controllers, software, art installation, MIDI peripherals, I/O boxes, lighting systems, automated systems, and more.
Entries to the competition are open, and applicants are invited to submit their entry via the button below.
Here is the detailed MIA 2023 schedule.
May 23rd: Registrations close
May 30th: Voting starts
July 21st: Voting closes, jury deliberation starts
August 16th: Finalists announced
September 16th: Live show online – winners revealed
October: Finalists are invited to participate in the Sound On Sound SynthFest UK in the UK and also in Music China including the User Choice Awards competition
Hosted by MIDI In Music Education Working Group Chair, Lee Whitmore, VP of Education for Focusrite, the webinar featured virtual tours of several MIDI In Music Education institutions including Belmont University, Columbia University, Full Sail University and Riverside City College.
The MIDI In Music Education Special Interest Group (SIG) formed in 2014 is a community of educators, musicians, and music technology enthusiasts dedicated to advancing the use of MIDI in music education.
By providing resources, support, and advocacy for the use of MIDI in music education, the SIG is helping to shape the future of music education and empower the next generation of musicians and music creators.
You can view the webinar by clicking on the link below.
The IASIG is an organization in partnership with the International Game Developer’s Association (IGDA) and MIDI Association (TMA) that brings together experts to share their knowledge and help improve the state of the art in audio for games, websites, VR content, and other interactive performances. Our members share tips and techniques, study trends, and create reports and recommendations that game developers, tool makers, and platform owners use to create better products.
The IASIG will be hosting a number of events at the 2023 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco’s Moscone Center held March 20-24.
IASIG Town Hall When: Friday, March 24, 2023 – 12:15 PM -1:15 PM Where: West Hall, Room 3006
The IASIG will be holding its GDC Town Hall in person for the first time in several years.
Want to improve game audio workflow or the professional audio tools available to you? Join fellow game audio educators, sound designers, composers, audio programmers, and other audio professionals at the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) Town Hall.
Get an update on current IASIG efforts, and share your own ideas, suggestions, and recommendations for improving the state of the art in audio for interactive media.
If you do audio, come and be heard.
IASIG Town Hall Sponsors
The Game Developers Conference Audio Track
GDC has its own Audio Track with a full schedule focused on Audio and Music in games.
With the support of IGDA, the IASIG will be holding a meet and greet in the South Hall of Moscone Center on the second floor in Room 203 on Tuesday – 3:00pm PST.
The IASIG is working with GDC on the plans for the annual IASIG Townhall and will send out invites in advance of the conference.
Many companies who have participated in the IASIG have booths at the Game Developers Conference including:
Chase Bethea – the new IASIG Chair- is a NYX award-winning and VGMO nominated freelance Composer/Technical Audio Designer for Video Games and a variety of other Media. He will be at GDC and hosting the Town Hall and looking for Game Audio professionals who want to be on the IASIG steering committee.
With new leadership, a growing relationship as a Special Interest Group of IGDA and the decades long relationship with The MIDI Association, the IASIG is poised to drive new advances in interactive audio in games and continue to serve audio professionals in the game industry.
Chase is also presenting two talks at Game Developers Conference.
Hunting with Hits: Tempo-Slaying Monsters in ‘Harmony”
This talk demonstrates the creation and implementation of an interactive score for a Hunting RPG with rhythm combat mechanics.
In this series of microtalks, developers from six studios will present custom toolsets they’ve built and/or used to help development run more efficiently and comfortably.
Steve Horowitz, is a member of the IASIG Steering Committee and an Audio Director/Composer at Nickelodeon Digital. Steve is also a Faculty Lecturer in Game Audio at San Francisco State University.
Steve is also presenting a talk at GDC.
Developing Together: Game Audio and Game Development Roundtable (Presented by the IGDA)
This roundtable brings together composers, sound designers, game designers, animators, programmers, producers, and anyone else involved with game production and design. Organizers will open up the floor and discuss the latest and greatest trends in games, as well as the most common production roadblocks.
This is what the Federal Trade Commission had to say recently about the gaming industry.
“Today, gaming is the largest category in the entertainment industry, with revenues that far exceed those of both the film and music industries. This year, the gaming industry is expected to be worth more than $170 billion in global revenues, five times greater than global movie box office revenues.”
With autonomous cars on the horizon and Analog Devices already implementing MIDI 2.0 over A2B in a few years people won’t be driving their cars, they’ll be playing games in them or mixing their latest album in immersive audio.
Please join us at the 2023 Game Developers Conference and get involved with one of the fastest growing industries for Audio Professionals.
Are you exploring new ways for musicians to interact with digital musical instruments? Have an idea for an original electronic instrument or controller? Trying to raise investment or attract attention for a new product? If you’re looking to make waves in music technology, you need to know about The MIDI Innovation Awards.
In 2023, MIDI celebrates its 40th birthday. The universal language of synths, controllers, and electronic instruments, MIDI 1.0 revolutionised music in the 1980s. Now, MIDI 2.0 is poised to unleash a second revolution. Massively extended and reimagined for the computer age, yet fully backwards compatible, MIDI 2.0 opens up endless possibilities for creative developers.
A joint initiative created by Music Hackspace, The MIDI Association, and NAMM, The MIDI Innovation Awards are now in their third year. The Awards showcase products and projects that are using MIDI 1.0 and 2.0 in fresh and original ways, highlighting the role that MIDI technology has to play in enabling musical creativity.
For 2023, The MIDI Innovation Awards are proud to welcome new partners including Sound On Sound, the world’s leading music technology magazine, and Music China, who will host the awards ceremony at their Autumn 2023 trade fair in Shanghai.
Musicians and inventors around the world will have a unique opportunity to present their ideas on a global stage, and the winners will gain invaluable help in bringing their products to market. Prizes include an exhibition booth at the 2023 NAMM Show, coverage in Sound On Sound, an opportunity to exhibit at Music China, and significant support from The MIDI Association and Music Hackspace for the development of MIDI 2.0 prototypes.
The MIDI Innovation awards are open to individuals, artists, and companies who work with MIDI to build innovative products or interactive experiences.
The 2023 MIDI Innovation Awards categories are:
Commercial Hardware Products
Commercial Software Products
Prototypes and non-commercial hardware products
Prototypes and non-commercial software products
Artistic/Visual Project or Installation
The MIDI Innovation Awards welcomes entries from, but not limited to: MIDI instruments, controllers, software, art installation, MIDI peripherals, I/O boxes, lighting systems, automated systems, and more.
A jury is being assembled to represent the wider music industry and its many facets, including artists, engineers, and innovators. Entries will be judged on four attributes: innovation, inspiring and novel qualities, interoperability, and practical / commercial viability.
Registration will close in April 2023, and a public vote will begin in June 2023.
The winners will be announced at Music China in Autumn 2023.
For more details, see the MIDI Awards section of this website.
Tapis Magique is a pressure-sensitive, knitted electronic textile carpet that generates three-dimensional sensor data based on body postures and gestures and drives an immersive sonic environment in real-time. Demonstrating an organic and expressive relationship between choreography and music has been a never-ending feat in the performance arts, as seen in previous work by Cage and Cunningham, Horst and Graham, or Stravinsky and Balanchine. Our work unveils dancers’ creative, unconventional possibilities of agency, intimacy, and improvisation over the music through a textile interface.
Motivated by the craftsmanship and connections of cultural textiles such as Javanese Batik or Balinese Ikat to their traditional performance arts, we began to apply an artistic approach into technological textile design and merge new materials, sensing technologies, and digital fabrication with contemporary dance and music into one united and harmonious piece of object and performance.
The tapis design is composed of multi-layer knitted textiles. The top and bottom layers are orthogonal conductive line matrices knitted within a single operation using multi-material twisted yarns. The middle layer is a knitted piezo-resistive textile, a pressure-sensitive layer that interfaces with the conductive matrices to create a sensing grid. The dense geometrical patterns of the stars scattered around the brushstroke details in the tapis represent 1800 pressure-sensing pixels (distributed in 15 MIDI Channels) and are inspired by the galactic space. Parametric design transformed these patterns into a 3-D spatial illusion to illustrate the multi-dimensionality of the sensor data.
The knitted conductive lines are connected to a system hardware consisting of multiplexers, shift-registers, operational amplifiers, and microcontroller that sequentially reads each pressure sensing pixel and sends it to a computer. These pixels collectively generate continuous 3-D spatiotemporal sensor data mapped into MIDI streams to trigger and control discrete notes, continuous effects, and immersive soundscapes through science-inspired musical tools.
Several musical pieces were designed to invoke various emotions to inspire conversations between the choreographer and the instrument. Behind the scenes, runs a digital modular synthesizer made of several patches, each for a different type of performance. The incoming stream of MIDI data is first fed into quantizer modules that align the notes to major, minor, and pentatonic scales, as well as mystic chords. The sounds are then generated by a collection of subtractive, additive, and granular synthesizers. “Venus Sunrise”, one of our performance pieces, as shown in the video above, presents a metaphorical celestial sound of the universe as the dancer is twirling around the stars, traveling through space and time.
Tapis Magique demonstrates the interplay between art and technology, highlighting the deep emotional link between contemporary textiles, dance, and music through the physical-digital connection. It provides a canvas for dancers and sound artists to modulate sound, perform and compose a musical piece based on choreography and vice versa; it also creates an auditory-gestural synesthetic environment that invites and encourages audiences to interact and express themselves with the tapis, experiencing a magical connection that stimulates the body and mind.
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.
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is the technical standard for connecting electronic musical instruments and computers to record, edit, and playback music.Created in 1983 and 40 years later, it is still essential in music education because playing any keyboard note can generate:
Notation
Pitch
Velocity
Panning
Vibrato
Clock Signals
Key Pressure
… and much more, plus hundreds of instruments and sounds; these MIDI messages act as instructions for the computer and music education software.
All this and a bag of chips:looping, randomizing, instant transposing, cut, copy, paste, drop and drag and more.
But it is Web MIDI, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard for MIDI on the Internet that has driven Chromebook adoption in the music education market.
The MIDI Association worked closely with W3C and MIDI Association member Google to get the standard adopted by W3C.
Chromebooks are a new type of computer designed to help you get things done faster and easier. They run ChromeOS, an operating system that has cloud storage, the best of Google built-in, and multiple layers of security.Enter your quote here…
by Google
Google Chromebooks and Web MIDI To The Rescue
Chromebooks flourished after the adoption on Web MIDI in 2015 as it answers urgent music education needs. Chromebook advanced rapidly in its first 10 years, under Acer Inc. and Samsung.Then Lenovo, Hewlett Packard and Google itself entered the market in 2013. It is forecasted that nearly 30 million Chromebooks will be shipped globally in 2022, more than double in 2019.
The education market has 40 million Chromebook users world-wide, a jump of 33 percent over last year. Currently, Google services 148 American school districts and there is a list of those districts here.
World-wide, Chromebook is well established educationally in the international market, notably in Australia, New Zealand and in the UK among other global markets. This is in part due to its excellent, strong security preferences.
Chromebooks are Cloud based which means there is no need to install music programs onto Chromebooks. There are manycreative web-based music programs for students that run from the Cloud. Hence, no problematic installs or technical support and since Chromebook’s tight security controls make installing apps more difficult, they are perfect for education because the school can control what websites the students can access. As a web-browser, Google Chrome is ideal for MIDI operations which is a blessing for Internet-driven Chromebooks. Students can store songs and all of their work and result in the cloud (Google Drive) for easy retrieval. The challenge is finding suitable web-based music programs so we have created a list.
Chromebooks Versus Traditional Notebooks
The main difference between Chromebooks and laptops is of course the operating system. While manylaptops run on either the Mac OS or Windows operating system, Chromebook runs on the web-based Chrome OS, which is fully open-sourced Linux based and its simplicity produces attractive speed. Chrome OS also boasts a stronger security layer with minimal risk for security breaches, hacks, malware, viruses, and other malicious content.
Chromebooks aren’t for everyone, but they probably are well suited for the education market. Educators and students tend to prefer a Chromebook because, 1) light weight for backpack convenience, 2) lower price, 3) longer battery life without charging at school, and 4) better security since students can’t easily load virus-vulnerable programs and other technology issues.
While other laptops are typically more expensive than Chromebooks, they are typically more powerful along and offer more full featured DAW programs like Ableton, Bitwig, Cubase, Performer, and Logic.
The only real disadvantage with a Chromebook disadvantages is that unless you are connected to the Internet, there is not that much you can do with them.
If you are a music educator you should consider Chromebooks are worth the investment, depending on the students needs. Chromebook can now meet a wide variety of computing needs, and a good Chromebook OS laptop or two-in-one can advantages in an educational setting.
Watch this presentation entitled “Are Chromebooks Worth It In 2022?”
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is an all-in-one place for teaching and learning. This secure, easy-to-use tool helps educators manage, measure, and enrich learning experiences.Google Classroom is a free, blended learning platform developed by Google for educational institutions that aim to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students. For example, you can:Switch from class to assignment to student in just a few clicks\
Track student progress in your gradebook and export scores to your school’s student information system (SIS)
Keep grading consistent and transparent with rubrics displayed alongside student work
Store frequently used phrases in a customizable comment bank
Prepare and schedule tasks, assignments, and quizzes across multiple classes
Mastering Music
Mastering Music at https://masteringmusic.online is a complete, pure music suite offering integrated instruction with performance, MIDI and digital sequencing, music theory, ear training and film scoring.The magic of this program is its extremely user-friendly interface for the classroom and for home creativity.
Here is a convenient list of Mastering Music Online features:
Works on all devices including PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, tablets and iPads
Provides 400+ self-paced, step-by-step tutorial lessons for personalized learning mapped to the curriculum
K-12 Lessons categorized by year level and activity type (performing, composing, publishing and musicianship (aural + theory)
Easy-to-use instruction and video help in all lessons with the correct editor and tools loaded ready for immediate use to focus students on the lesson content rather than the technology
All song lessons have attached rubrics to guide teachers on marking criteria
Schools and educators can easily login using their Google or Microsoft Education Accounts Stores songs and results in the cloud (Google or One Drive) for easy retrieval
Use Google Classroom or interface directly with other LMS to easily deploy lessons
Teacher admin functions for account, custom lesson plans, classes and monitoring student results
Contains a full MIDI sequencer for composing, arranging, mixing and notation for playing and printing stand-alone or inside lessons
Record real-time compositions from a connected MIDI keyboard and sync to YouTube videos using drag/drop functionality.
A new music teacher tells the story of how she assigned the students to download another music software to their laptops to complete an exercise to discover that the students were all using Chromebooks and couldn’t install the app. They are now using Mastering Music Online because it works so well on their Chromebooks at home or in class.
The folks at Mastering Music are looking to offer a free one-year subscription to some Google school districts using 1:1 Chromebooks to trial Mastering Music Online and to provide them with feedback.
Auralia
Auralia® is the most comprehensive ear training software available. It has 59 topics and endless customization.Each of the 59 topics has carefully graded levels, allowing you to easily use Auralia® with beginner through advanced students. The integrated course of lessons provides ideal preparation for each topic.All the fundamentals of pitch, rhythm, intervals, chords, scales and tuning are covered and progress through cadences, dictation, harmony, jazz progressions and melodic transcription.
Sophisticated tracking allows you to easily monitor and assess students. You’ll set tasks and assignments, and run exams with high quality content that your students will love.Check it out athttps://www.risingsoftware.com/.
When my daughter was a freshmen college performance major, she called me with distressing problem that she was failing first semester ear training. Fortunately, she had access to Auralia and she earned an A grade. The product worked as advertised.
People like Auralia’s clean, elegant interface, designed to keep students focused on an essential ear training task.
Musition
Musition at https://www.risingsoftware.com/musition is a music education music theory software program. Even if you play by ear, music theory can build understanding of what other musicians are playing and increase your awareness of their melodic, rhythmic and harmonic language. Regardless of your preferred style, classical, jazz or contemporary, Musition’s music theory topics make you a better musician.
Noteflight at https://www.noteflight.com/ took flight in 2008 as an online music writing application to create, view, print and hear professional quality music notation right in your web browser. Noteflight is an international product with over 7 million users world-wide because it serves individual music-makers and music educators at all levels with its family of products.Its playback sound choices are excellent with a good variety of authentic sounding soft synth palettes, plus playback can be straight or swing. This powerful notation program has a fantastic well-organized manual at https://www.noteflight.com/guide#mixInstruments to further exhibit its robust notation capabilities. It offers live recording options as well as transcribing a MIDI performance with impressive importing and exporting options.
Noteflight integrates well with Google Classroom to create a seamless experience for students and teachers. It is a robust notation program that is very popular world-wide with a variety of different timbres available for customized playback.Noteflight for Teachers platform, you and your students get access to features from the premium Noteflight Crescendo membership. This allows students to create an unlimited number of pieces with up to 50 instruments.
Noteflight also provides a marketplace to purchase and sell music all as digital Noteflight notation files. It also offers three different plans for purchase at https://www.noteflight.com/plans.
Flat
Flat at https://flat.io/ is a collaborative music notation platform for new composers and professionals alike. Uniquely, you can compose and write music with others.It has a great feature when you lose the Internet, your work will be reinstated whenever you reconnect.For MIDI composition, you use your MIDI device to input notes and chords with easy transposition and adapt a score to your instrument or register in a few clicks with MusicXML/MIDI Files, youcan easily move in and out of other software products.
Flat offers Advanced Layout Customization to change the density and the style of your musical content.
Soundtrap
Soundtrap owned by Spotify at https://www.soundtrap.com/is a free premium online cross-platform digital audio workstation (DAW) for browsers to create music or podcasts. This DAW is operated by Soundtrap AB, which Spotify bought in November 2017. Soundtrap is offered in English, Spanish, French, German, and Swedish. The Soundtrap DAWincludes inputs for external instruments, an instrument player, a way to input and export MIDI files, collaboration features, Patterns BeatMaker and a built-in autotune provided by Antares Audio Technologies.You’ll have fun creating with its extensive collection of beats, loops and instruments. Soundtrap’s modern DAWs has a central interface that allows a user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final production including music, songs, speech, radio, television, soundtracks, podcasts, sound effects.
Bandlab
BandLab is a dynamic DAW for recording, mixing and collaborating your music projects from start to finish with its “Best-In-Class” award from SBO magazine, [JK1] 100% free Mix Editor. Today’s high school music teachers are very fortunate to have at their fingertips this cutting-edge.The MIDI-driven BANDLAB for EDUCATION is a wonderful music production-education tool to help music educators to meet and exceed standards.It is ideal for and exciting discovery learning and makes differentiated instruction much easier. And it is especially well designed for distance learning needs.Public and private students love the flexibility of creative options BandLab offers.
Band Lab for Education is designed to make life easier for the teacher and a lot more fun and innovative for students. To support this purpose their website is loaded with good information and enticing features.
Perhaps the best news is Band Lab for Education is available to educators via a free subscription at https://edu.bandlab.com. Currently, it can be used on all PCs (using the Chrome and Edge browsers) and an iOS version for mobile devices.This is the most user–friendly and industry–friendly music creating teaching tool on the market because Band Lab for Education is built to integrate with other services, music educators often use it to complement their existing suite of tools.
Band Lab for Education allows a win–win atmosphere for teachers and students, creating true ownership of music skills, pride of achievement and life-long lovers of music.You can take a closer look at:
Compare these robust Chromebook music applications all designed for ideal school and home creativity. There may well be other such music products, but these are arguably the most well-known.
Chromebook is a good fit on the economic and creative horizon of music education.Full MIDI compatibility and seamless Cloud connectivity simplifies teaching and learning for engaging creativity.I hope this inspires K-12 music educators to take a fresh look at this innovative music technology.
Join MIDI Association President Athan Billias, artiphon’s Emma Supica and Oddball’s Pasquale Totaro for a discussion of playful (and round) products that use MIDI from the June 2022 NAMM show
Follow the bouncing ball as it sends out MIDI messages and learn how music teachers in Anaheim are getting kids to express their emotions with MIDI.
Join MIDI Association President Athan Billias, Big Ear Games Aviv Ben-Yahuda , Playtronics’ Sacha Pas and Playtime Engineering’s Troy Sheets for a discussion of playful products that use MIDI from the June 2022 NAMM show.
Sorry, it took awhile to get this interview up. But it was an entertaining conversation. Just remembering how great it was to get everyone together at the June NAMM show has us looking forward to April NAMM 2023 and the 40th anniversary of MIDI!
The NAMM Foundation and the MIDI Association are pleased to announce the MIDIFund, a new donor-advised fund in The NAMM Foundation.
The MIDIFund will support projects and programs that advance engagement in music-making and the varied and unique options to make, create and explore music made possible by MIDI, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface that allows musical instruments to connect to computers, tablets, cell phones, and each other.
For the past several years, the MIDI Association has delivered programs for the public benefit. Between 2020 and 2021, the MIDI Association raised $50,000 and donated that money to the Children’s Music Fund, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides music therapy programs to children affected by chronic conditions or life-altering illnesses, to help them on their journey towards a better quality of life. The MIDI Association had planned to create its own 501(c)3 to focus on these and other projects for the public benefit.
However, at the recommendation of NAMM President and CEO Joe Lamond, and with the help of NAMM Foundation Executive Director Mary Luehrsen, establishing a new donor-advised fund enables the MIDI Association to avail itself of the considerable experience and administrative resources of the NAMM Foundation.
The first major project the MIDIFund is focusing on is the development of a MIDI curriculum and certification program to raise awareness about MIDI in education at secondary and post-secondary schools, and for manufacturer and reseller staff members.
Current work includes: Establishment of standardized, readily/publicly available MIDI education content Creation, launch, and active management of a MIDI certification program
The MIDI Association Executive Board committed to funding the MIDI Fund with $25,000 and matching any donations made to the fund before June 30, 2022.
Ed Cannon, CEO of Zivix, makers of the Jamstick MIDI Guitars has pledged $5000 from the Cannon Family Foundation.
Roland has committed $3000 as a Platinum sponsor.
Steinberg has committed $1500 as a Gold Sponsor.
Casio and IK Multimedia have both pledged $750as Silver sponsors.
That is $11,000 in sponsor pledges matched by another $11,000 in matching funds from the MIDI Association bringing the current total funding of the MIDI Fund to $47,000.
But we are not done yet.
You can fill out the form below to commit to a founding MIDI Fund sponsorship and we will continue to promote your company and your products as we promote the MIDI Fund for years to come.
Join the inaugural webinar of the MIDI Association’s MIDI in Music Education (MiME) working group.
To celebrate “May is MIDI Month,” we welcome Craig Anderton – who’s played Carnegie Hall, written 45 books on music technology, and lectured around the world for over four decades. His talk on “Music, MIDI, and the Art of Inspired Instruction” will open your eyes to the exciting future of music education.
Active MiME members can then join in a moderated panel discussion with Craig, after which we’ll discuss new MIDI Association education initiatives – including a proposed MIDI certification program, and the launch of a trailblazing philanthropic endeavor with the NAMM Foundation.
Simply go to this URL using a Web MIDI enabled browser on May 21 at 10 am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern and 6 pm London.
THE MIDI ASSOCIATION, a global community of people who work, play and create with MIDI and the central repository of information about anything related to MIDI.
On May 28 at 10 am Pacific, 1 PM Eastern and 6 PM in the UK, LJ Rich will host the 2022 MIDI Innovation Awards
This year we are incredibly lucky to have LJ Rich hosting the MIDI Innovation Awards (MIA) show which will feature the 15 finalists from the 5 categories interacting with our international panel of judges.
World-renowned performer LJ Rich presents on the International Technology show BBC Click. She’s also a NASA Datanaut and host of the United Nations ITU #AIForGood Summit.
While filming with Click, LJ’s interviewed founders, hackers, and artists across the globe, meeting everyone from Stevie Wonder to Steve Wozniak. Since reading music at Oxford, LJ’s predicted consumer tech trends for over a decade for the BBC, with particular interest in AI, Music and the human/computer interface.
Meet our international panel of judges
We have an amazing panel of judges with incredibly diverse backgrounds, but they all share one thing – a passion for innovation and for MIDI. Here are some details of each of the seven 2022 MIA judges.
Craig Anderton
CRAIG ANDERTON is an internationally recognized authority on technology and music. He has toured, played Carnegie Hall, mastered hundreds of tracks, and been involved with dozens of major label releases as either a player, producer, or engineer. He’s also written over 30 books (including the seminal Home Recording for Musicians) and thousands of articles, as well as co-founded Electronic Musician magazine.
Known for his ability to de-mystify complex subjects, Craig has given seminars on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and 3 languages.
Michele Darling
Michele Darling is an accomplished sound designer, composer, recording engineer, and educator, who fell in love with electronic music and sound creation at an early age. She worked for 10 years as part of an Emmy award winning interactive production team at Sesame Workshop in NYC.
Also throughout her career, she has worked on a wide range of media from national television shows to video games, from online and mobile platforms to electronic toys and music software for clients such as 4Kids Entertainment, HBO Family, The Learning Channel, Toca Boca, Hasbro, Morton Subotnick, The Criterion Collection, iZotope, and more. Michele worked as a member of the Ableton sound design team for Live 10, creating sound presets for the well-known software for multi-genre music producers worldwide.
Currently, Michele is the Assistant Chair of the Electronic Production and Design Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
John Kao
From John Kao’s website”
“The Economist tagged me with the nicknames “Mr. Creativity” and a “Serial Innovator.” Eclectic is how I would describe my experience, from teaching at Harvard Business School and the MIT Media Lab, to producing feature films and theater, starting high tech ventures and even sharing the bandstand with Frank Zappa and the original Mothers of Invention. I’ve explored what leaders can learn from jazz musicians in my book Jamming and what it takes for a country to innovate in my book Innovation Nation. And my greatest pleasure is working with leaders of all kinds who are on the hot seat to deliver some form of meaningful innovation agenda.”
Helen Leigh
Helen Leigh is an author, education writer, and maker with a focus on creative use of new technologies. She has written playful technology education materials for National Geographic and Intel Education, and has developed a Design, Coding, and Electronics Course for the Royal Court of Oman.
Moldover
“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.” – John Tackett, Crowd Wire
History only notes a handful of artists who successfully pushed the limits – both with their music and the design of their musical instruments. What Bach was to the keyboard and Hendrix was to the guitar, Moldover is to the controller. Disillusioned with “press play DJs”, Moldover fans eagerly welcome electronic music’s return to virtuosity, improvisation, and emotional authenticity. Dig deeper into Moldover’s world and you’ll uncover a subversive cultural icon who is jolting new life into physical media with “Playable Packaging”, sparking beautiful collaborations with his custom “Jamboxes”, and drawing wave after wave of followers with an open-source approach to sharing his methods and madness.
Dr. Kate Stone
From Kate Stone’s website:
“I describe myself as a creative scientist because we all fit in more than one box. I studied electronics and physics, these give my work structure and discipline, however my true skill is creativity. Creatively using whatever I find around me to solve any problem I encounter. My grandmother told me to ‘cut your coat from the cloth at hand’.
I founded and run a company called Novalia, we create interactive posters and other everyday objects that embody the magic of interactivity and connectivity. Posters that talk, books that turn in to pianos and walls that play music. I am Chair of the Executive board of the MIDI Association and sit on the Editors Code of Practice Committee to help keep an eye on what the UK press determine to be acceptable.”
Yuri Suzuki
Yuri Suzuki is an experience and sound designer who works at the intersection of installation, interaction and product design.
His work encompasses sound, music, installations, product design, art direction, education and contemporary art for renowned clients ranging from corporations to musicians to start ups. Projects include a bespoke musical instrument for will.i.am, techno DJ legend Jeff Mills and the AR Music Kit – a music based augmented reality android app turning paper into instruments for Google. He recently has done work for Roland designing the https://808303.studio/.
He was also instrumental in the design in the design of new MIDI logo.
Check out over 100 entrants and then vote for your favorites
There are five distinct categories (listed below) for the 2022 MIDI Innovation Awards.
From May 1 to May 14, you will be able to select three entrants from each category to be the finalists who will participate in the May 28 MIDI Innovation Awards show on MIDI.org.
When voting, you do not have to vote in all categories, but any category you vote in you must select three entrants.
Clicking on the links below shows you all the entrants for that particular category.
On May 15, three finalists will be selected from each category by 50% weighting of the public vote and the judges vote.
Commercial Software-22 Entries
Fluid Chords from Pitch Innovations
Pictured above is this year’s entry from last year’s winner, Pitch Innovations.
It’s clear that one of the trends in MIDI Innovation is more precise control over pitch and tuning.
In the commercial software area, there are a lot of entrants that focus on pitch and pitch control via MIDI Polyphonic Expression.
Entonal Studio is an audio application and plugin that gives musicians the ability to use and create alternative tunings in their music, in any environment.
Infinitone Dynamic Micro-Tuning plugin empowers musicians with Freedom of Pitch, through opening access to the full harmonic spectrum, a.k.a. the “notes between the notes”.
GeoShred, an award-winning, fluidly expressive musical instrument with a performance surface that uses MIDI/MPE to control expressive physics-based models of musical instruments.
But there are entries in other categories that support this trend as well.
If there is one major trend in Commercial Hardware, it seems to be portability.
Piano de Voyage (pictured above) was one of the first MIDI products to have a modular design that allowed greater portability. It is a modular, 88 full-size keys portable piano keyboard.
The Vboard 49 is a portable foldable MIDI keyboard.
The Vboard 25 is a folding MIDI keyboard with standard key width, pads, knobs, and a wealth of features.
POPUPIANO SMART PORTABLE KEYBOARD + POPUMUSIC APP is also a product with a modular design. It was designed into two parts. The right keyboard focuses on melody, while the left chords pad focuses on chords & rhythm. Besides, you can replace the left chords pad via a magnetic extended keyboard, and make PopuPiano a complete E-keyboard.
The POCKETPIANO is “the First Portable, Professional Piano that fits into your Backpack”.
But there are also some Commercial Hardware products that really push the envelope in innovation.
Oddball -Create music by simply bouncing, catching and spinning a ball
PTZOPTICS MIDI CAMERA CONTROL
PTZOptics is adding configurable MIDI control to their award-winning PTZ cameras. Set and call presets, plus operate pan, tilt, and zoom from any MIDI device.
Erae Touch is a Polyphonic Expressive MIDI Controller.
It is born out of a desire to combine both sensitivity and versatility in a seamless object.
Count-Me-In allows the audience of a musical event to use their mobile phones and become part of the show!
It’s pretty clear that one of the major trends in MIDI Innovation is collaboration.
Count-Me-In pictured above is just one example.
DAWn Audio allows artists anywhere in the world to work together live, even if they’re using different DAWs.
THE DAW COLLABORATION FRAMEWORK (DCF) is Browser-based middleware that interfaces with shared Cubase projects via virtual MIDI ports, establishing online collaboration with real-time videoconferencing and synchronised audio and MIDI track mixing.
Another trend we see all over the 2022 MIDI Innovation Awards is creative uses of Web MIDI.
Here are a few.
VOGUM is a web application with extensive MIDI controller support for music teachers, learners and performers.
MIDI PROXY-Use a simple MIDI keyboard with pitch-bend to emulate a controller with faders and buttons. And do it from the Web!
WEBMIDI.js is a free and open source JavaScript library that makes it easy for any website to interact with a visitor’s MIDI devices.
ProtoZOA is a flexible prototyping tool for MIDI 2.0.
Open source firmware provides MIDI 2.0 interfaces and functions for developers to use in their own hardware and software products.
Okay, we may be a little biased here, but if there is one Non-Commercial/Prototype Hardware entry that we think everyone should at least be aware of it’s this one.
Why?
Because the MIDI Association is just about to ship over 50 of these ProtoZOA MIDI 2.0 prototyping tools to MIDI Association members around the world.
AmeNote developed a USB MIDI 2.0 Device, designed specifically to jump-start prototyping and validation of UMP functions and fuel the MIDI 2.0 revolution by encourage speedier adoption of MIDI 2.0 by:
Providing an affordable, flexible prototyping platform to enable software and hardware developers to start testing and prototyping MIDI 2.0 UMP.
Providing a testing platform which connects via the USB MIDI 2.0 drivers recently released by Apple and Google and a test tool for Microsoft as they create Windows drivers.
Providing USB MIDI 2.0 source code that other hardware developers can use under a no-charge permissive license.
But there were also plenty of other interesting entries.
Super MIDI Pak turns your Super Nintendo into a MIDI synthesizer!
The Meta Glove for Augmented Art is a low cost MIDI controller glove that allows musicians and artists to augment their digital expressivity resulting in high impact, high publicity and social media attention for them and their sponsors.
And of course, the POSITRONIC RECURSION STUDIO is a fractal synthesizer from the future. Recurse your MIDI signals, your CV’s or your grandma’s quantum brownies. Innumerable novel HD fractals at your fingertips.
Tapis Magique is a knitted interactive carpet that generates 3D sensor data based on body locations and gestures and drives an immersive sonic environment in real-time.
Respoken is an interactive light and sound installation that creates an experience from the user´s voice. A stage for self-expression manifesting the spirit in light and sound.
The MIDI Innovation awards give a platform to MIDI innovation. This enables winners to accelerate their product ideas through connections to the industry, as well as increase their visibility among musicians and the NAMM community of trade professionals. The MIDI Innovation Awards rewards products, prototypes, installations or concepts that are thought-provoking and inspire new, creative use cases.
The founding partners of the event (The MIDI Association, Music Hackspace and NAMM) are committed to continuing with MIDI Innovation Awards and have laid out a plan for 2022.
Check out the highlights from the 2021 MIDI Innovation Awards
Plans for the MIDI Innovation Awards 2022
Jean-Baptiste Thiebaut, MIDI Association Exec Board member and CEO of Music Hackspace came up with the idea for the MIDI Innovation Awards in December of 2020 and amazingly put together the entire MIDI Innovation Awards 2021 event in a little over a month.
In 2022, we are planning in advance and have more time. The MIDI Innovation Awards activity this year will be focused on MIDI.org.
We will start submissions for entrants to the 2022 MIDI Innovation awards in March.
We will hold a number of MIDI Innovation Award events during May Is MIDI Month 2022.
We plan to announce the MIDI Innovation Award winners at the June NAMM show.
If you are interested in submitting a MIDI Innovation project for 2022, please check the box for entrants/submissions below.
If you are interested in viewing or voting for the MIDI Innovation Awards 2022, please check the viewing and voting box below.
THE MIDI ASSOCIATION, a global community of people who work, play and create with MIDI and the central repository of information about anything related to MIDI.
KnittedKeyboard is a recent project coming out from the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Lab. This instrument provides new interactions and tactile experiences for musical expressions, and it can be easily worn, folded, rolled up, and packed in our luggage like a pair of socks or a scarf. The project was initially motivated by discussions with Lyle Mays, a late composer and jazz pianist in the Pat Metheny Group, who wished a rollable fabric keyboard for composing and performing music on the road.
Credit: Irmandy Wicaksono
The KnittedKeyboard leverages digital machine knitting of functional (electrically-conductive and thermoplastic) and non-functional (polyester) fibers to develop a seamless and customized, 5-octave piano-patterned musical textile. The individual and combinations of the keys could simultaneously sense touch, as well as continuous proximity, stretch, and pressure. It ultimately combines both discrete controls from the conventional keystrokes and expressive continuous controls from the non-contact, theremin-inspired proximity sensors (by waving and hovering on the air), as well as physical interactions enabled by the knitted fabric sensors (e.g. squeezing, pulling, stretching, and twisting). The KnittedKaybord enables performers to experience intimate, organic tactile experience as they explore the seamless texture and materiality of the electronic textile.
The sensing mechanism is based on capacitive and piezo-resistive sensing. Every key acts as an electrode and is sequentially charged and discharged. This creates an electromagnetic field that can be disrupted by hand’s approach, enabling us to detect not only contact touch, but also non-contact proxemic gesture such as hovering or waving on the air, contact touch, as well as to calculate strike velocity. The piezo-resistive layers underneath can measure pressure and stretch exerted on the knitted keyboard. All of the sensor data is converted to musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) messages by a central microprocessor, which will correspond to certain timbral, dynamic, and temporal variations (filter resonance, frequency, glide, reverb, amp, distortion, et cetera), as well as pitch-bend. Audio sequencing and generation software such as Ableton Live and Max/MSP map these MIDI messages to their corresponding channels, controls, notes, and effects.
Credit: Irmandy Wicaksono
“Fabric of Time and Space”, as demonstrated in below video, is a contemporary musical piece exclusively written for KnittedKeyboard to demonstrate and illustrate the multi-dimensional expressiveness of the instrument. The piece is a metaphor for the expanding and contracting nature of the universe and this is represented musically by the glissandi of the melody as well as the interplay between major and minor chords. The metaphorical perturbations of space-time were expressed by the interaction between the performer and the fabric. The musical translation of these expressions were used to shape the envelope of the sound. The underlining technology would enable further exploration of soft and malleable gestural musical interfaces that leverage the unique mechanical structures of the materials, as well as the intrinsic electrical properties of the knitted sensors. For further information about this project, please access its main page.
The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) of the MIDI Association is the special interest group that represents MIDI and audio to the gaming community. This year the all virtual Game Developers Conference includes a number of sessions sponsored by the IASIG and other sessions on audio that should be of interest for MIDI companies.
Join the game industry’s top audio professionals to share knowledge and experience from the real-world addressing audio’s unique aesthetic, technical, business, and logistical problems.
2021 Game Audio Pass Pricing Details
Register for an Audio Pass ($399 – General Registration rate, ends 7/17) to attend all Audio Core and Summits sessions throughout the week. The Audio Pass also includes access to the virtual GDC Expo, Sponsored Content, Networking & Meetings (with other Attendees & Exhibitors), Advocacy Sessions, Special Events, Main Stage Content, and the 2021 IGF Awards & GDCA.
IASIG Town Hall
Wednesday, July 21 | 9:40am – 10:40am
Speakers: Kurt Heiden (IASIG), Steve Horowitz (Nickelodeon Digital, GAI, IASIG, SFSU), Scott Looney (Game Audio Institute), Athan Billias (The MIDI Association) Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass, Career Development Pass Topic: Audio, Special Event Format: Special Event
Want to improve game audio workflow or the professional audio tools available to you? Join fellow game audio educators, sound designers, composers, audio programmers, and other audio professionals at the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) Town Hall.
Guest speaker Scott Looney will discuss the state of VR hardware, software and tools for VR, AR, MR and more. New developments with MIDI 2.0 and info on the upcoming Women in Game Audio roundtable will also be covered. Share your own ideas, suggestions, and recommendations for improving the state of the art in audio for interactive media. If you do audio, come and be heard!
Loud Secrets of Game Audio RoundTable (Presented by IGDA)
Thursday, July 22 | 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Speakers: Steph Nguyen (Independent), Chel Wong (Independent), Bonnie Bogovich (BlackCatBonifide LLC) Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass, Career Development Pass Topic: Advocacy Format: Roundtable
The IGDA Interactive Audio Special Interest Group is hosting a roundtable discussion of women’s experiences in game audio. As the industry grows, more and more women are joining in making amazing audio for games. But the industry has historically been a male dominated one, and there are very clear and prevalent issues that women face. This women led roundtable intends to expose some of these issues, and discuss potential solutions. Some of the topics will include: lauding the professionals who hold the door open for women in the industry, harmful allyship, Women’s health issues, awareness of language, and intersectionality.
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass, Audio Pass
Topic: Audio
Format: Session If you’re specialized in interactive audio, not in programming, you’re still able to make musical instruments using the variety of software and gaming hardware we have nowadays. It’s pure fun as those instruments can be customized from the top to the bottom. It’s possible to use different controllers and play recorded or even resynthesized timbres with them. All this can be done easily: with simple scripts, the power of game engines and audio middleware.
Join Dolby for an online gathering of the game development communityin celebration of GDC 2021, July 19 – 23, 2021
Experience the power of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos in games, hear from industry leaders on the future of game technology, and learn how you can start creating and delivering your games in Dolby today.
MIDI Controllers (Products, Physical Controls, and Messages)
Unfortunately the word controller is overburdened in the MIDI lexicon and probably the most overused word in the world of MIDI.
It can refer to three different things- products, physical controls and messages.
MIDI Controller=Product
People can say MIDI Controller and they mean a product like a IK MultiMedia iRig Keys I/O 25 Controller Keyboard.
They might say ” I’m using The Roland A88 MK2 as my MIDI Controller”.
MIDI Controller=Physical Control
But the word Controller is also used to refer to physical controls like a Modulation Wheel, a Pitch Bend wheel, a Sustain Pedal, or a Breath Controller (yes, there is that word again).
The word Controller is also used to describe the MIDI messages that are sent. So you could say “I’m sending Controller #74 to control Filter Cutoff’.
In fact, there are multiple types of MIDI messages that are sometimes referred to as “Controllers”:
MIDI 1.0 Control Change Messages
Channel Pressure (aftertouch)
Polyphonic Key Pressure (poly pressure)
Pitch Bend
Registered Parameter Numbers (RPNs) in MIDI 1.0 that equate to the 16,834 Registered Controllers in MIDI 2.0
Non-Registered Parameter Numbers (NRPNs) in MIDI 1.0 that equate to the 16,834 Assignable Controllers in MIDI 2.0
MIDI 2.0 Registered Per-Note Controllers
MIDI 2.0 Assignable Per-Note Controllers
To make things a bit more convoluted, the MIDI 1.0 specification contains certain MIDI Messages that are named after physical controls specifically-
Decimal Hex Function
1 0x01 Modulation Wheel or Lever
2 0x02 Breath Controller
4 0x04 Foot Controller
11 0x0B Expression Controller
64 0x40 Damper Pedal on/off (Sustain)
66 0x42 Sostenuto On/Off
67 0x43 Soft Pedal On/Off
But these are MIDI Control Change (CC) messages, not the actual physical controllers themselves.
However most products hardwire the Mod Wheel to CC#1 and set the factory default of Damper to be assigned to CC#64, etc.
Also on most MIDI products you can set your physical controller Mod Wheel to send different CC messages (for example Control Change #2 Breath Controller or Control Change #11 Expression).
MOD WHEEL is a physical controller that always generates a specific message cc001 Modulation Wheel. cc001 (Control Change) can be applied to most any function, it does not have a fixed function. It is most often used to apply Modulation depth to pitch (vibrato) but that must be assigned to the wheel on a per program basis.
by Yamaha Product Specialist Phil Clendennin ( AKA Bad Mister)
So a MIDI Controller has a MIDI Controller that sends a MIDI Controller! Or translated into a sentence that makes more sense-
A IK MultiMedia iRig Keys I/O 25 has a Mod Wheel that sends Control Change (CC) #11 Expression.
The important thing to remember.
The word MIDI controller can refer to three different things.
A type of product- The IK MultiMedia iRig Keys I/O 25 is a MIDI Controller
A physical control- The Mod Wheel on the IK MultiMedia iRig Keys I/O 25 is a MIDI Controller
A MIDI Control Change Message- The Mod Wheel on the IK MultiMedia iRig Keys I/O 25 is sending MIDI Controller #11 Expression
We hosted our final May Is MIDI Month 2021 webinar on May 29 with a focus on Innovation.
There were four presenters covering different aspects of innovation around Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Machine Learning and Gamification
A3E Deep Dive™: AI & Artificial Creativity
Paul Sitar, President- A3E: The Future of Music + Entertainment Technology™
Paul Sitar explained the A3E Deep Dive into AI and Artificial Creativity.
They have assembled a group of AI & Artificial Creativity Think Tank Luminaries to help to do in depth research on these topics.
Here is the list of people currently involved.
1. Jack Joseph Puig (Multiple GRAMMY Award-Winning Producer/Engineer & Vice President Creative Innovation Waves Consumer)
2. Drew Silverstein (CEO/Co-Founder of Amper/Shutterstock)
3. Maya Ackerman (CEO/Co-founder WaveAI | Professor of AI | Woman of Influence 2020)
4. Daniel Rowland (Oscar-winning, Grammy-nom Engineer/Producer & Head of Strategy & Partnerships at LANDR Audio
5. Kevin Doucette (Composer, Inventor, Engineer and Technology Futurist, Intel Corporation collaborator)
6. Tom Austin (CEO – The Analyst Syndicate)
7. Marc-Jean Jot (VP of Research, Chief Scientist at iZotope)
They have also launched a broader survey on AI and Artificial Creativity.
You can take the survey until June 7, 2021 at the link below.
Taking the survey will also make sure you receive a copy of the survey results.
AR Pianist combines MIDI and AI to create virtual piano performances in your home
Craig Knudsen- Yamaha Consultant/Production Manager for the Piano Guys
Fayez Salka, M.D Medical Doctor, Musician, Software Developer and 3D Artist
Jon Schmidt of the Piano Guys poses next to his AR Pianist avatar at the Apple Store
Craig Knudsen, Yamaha Consultant and Production Manager for The Piano Guys and Fayez Salka, M.D Medical Doctor, Musician, Software Developer and 3D Artist discussed VR Pianist.
The full article on VR Pianist can be found at the link below.
Three years ago, while on tour with my band, Ritual Howls, I encountered a problem. After five grueling hours of sitting in a van on our way to the next gig, I had an idea for a drum beat but no way to capture
Aviv Ben Yehuda -CEO of Big Ear Games explained how gamification can be used to create more music makers. Big Ear Games is affiliated with the Lang Lang Institute which is supported by MIDI Association member, Steinway and Big Ear Games uses MIDI Association member Native Instruments technology inside of their game for sounds. Big Ear just announced MIDI support in the app.
Join Solo, our wannabe musician, to demystify the mystery of how music works and level up your inner musician. Play music puzzles, collect instruments and make music.
Three years ago, while on tour with my band, Ritual Howls, I encountered a problem. After five grueling hours of sitting in a van on our way to the next gig, I had an idea for a drum beat but no way to capture it. All my gear was surgically packed away and out of reach. How could I capture my idea and turn it into workable music?
Typically when inspiration for new music strikes, I open a voice recorder app and record myself beatboxing a beat or mumbling a melody. Once I have access to a computer, I listen back to the recording and try to recreate it by moving MIDI notes into just the right place. While this method would help preserve my idea, it didn’t provide a real-time solution.
Being a musician and product designer, I began researching the marketplace for applications or plugins that could translate my beatboxing into usable MIDI notes. I experimented with a couple of products with audio-to-midi functionality, but nothing worked the way I envisioned. Some plugins even required special microphones to work effectively. I needed something that could work in any setting and with any microphone, like the one on my laptop.
I also tried DAW tools that convert audio into MIDI notes, but it didn’t give me the instant gratification of actually playing music. Further, without perfectly separated audio, it created outputs that didn’t resemble my idea. At this point, I knew there was an opportunity and began to ideate a practical solution.
My Voice as an Instrument
After an exhaustive survey of the current marketplace, I started researching artificial intelligence in audio processing. To translate my voice into workable MIDI notes, it was clear that I needed to develop an algorithm with enough smarts to differentiate various types of drum sounds.
As a product designer, I could envision the look and feel of the experience but needed to find AI experts to develop the architecture for my idea. So I assembled a team of experienced digital signal processing engineers to build a complete machine learning neural network to accomplish this end. We call this technology, Bace.
Bace prototype showing an accurate detection of a drum kick sound.
For several months we trained Bace’s neural network. We collected sample data from men, women, children, and adults of different races and nationalities to offer the most comprehensive drum sound classifications. To account for variations of the same drum sounds between individuals, Bace has built-in training mechanics so any user can improve or retrain the model with their own sample data. These mechanics provide better results while adding a personal dimension to the technology by empowering users to define their experience.
While in our training phase, we also wanted to leverage vocal frequencies beyond drum classification for more involved melodic ideas. To achieve this, we integrated pitch detection into Bace’s algorithm. Pitch detection allows users to process and map their voices to a piano roll.
The Future of Music Technology
In building Bace, I’ve realized that technology can complicate the most straightforward solutions. As product designers and developers, we’ve all seen applications with unnecessarily complex interfaces, special hardware, and elaborate design for design’s sake. While novel and sophisticated, these complicated systems can take a toll on the creative process. Controlling drum sounds with my voice was such a natural idea; I could intuitively recognize its abilities and limitations as an artist.
I see the future of music-making as a way of removing complexity and empowering intuition. Bace was born from my inherent desire to capture a drum beat with my voice and translate it into real music at the moment of inspiration. By making music technology more intuitive, we will not only unleash creativity from experienced creators but provide anyone an opportunity to express themselves in new ways. That self-expression is what makes music unique, and it is our job as technologists to foster rather than complicate it.
Saturday May 8, 2021, May Is MIDI Month 2021 Webinar The Healing Power of Music
The webinar kicked off with Michael Boddicker who has played synthesizer, vocoder, accordion and keyboards on albums by many notables such as Quincy Jones, Randy Newman, The Manhattan Transfer and The Bee Gees and worked on many soundtracks including Saturday Night Fever, Battlestar Galactica and The Wiz.
Boddicker is a Board Member of The Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL), and he owns an audio post production facility, Sol7 (aka Sol Seven). In 2019, he co-founded the Los Angeles synthesizer music festival, Synthplex.
He described his relationship with music and music therapy and his chance meeting while out for a neighborhood walk with Raffi Tachdjian.
Check out Synth Wizards interview with Micheal where he show off some sounds from his Moog System 55.
Next Raffi Tachdjian MD, MPH, UCLA professor of allergy and pediatric pain specialist and founder of Children”s Music Fund talked about meeting the young patient pictured above during his time a Massachusetts General Hospital and that inspired him to get involved with music therapy (Raffi is a musician himself) and found Children’s Music Fund. In the past decade, CMF has become a leading organization to deliver research on the positive effects of music therapy in sick children and young adults.
Raffi connected with Suzanne B Hanser who was at Berklee College of Music at the time. Dr. Hanser has a long list of accomplishments.
Professor and Chair Emerita of the Music Therapy Department at Berklee College of Music.
Past President of the World Federation of Music Therapy
Past President of the National Association for Music Therapy
Current president of the International Association for Music and Medicine.
It was an incredible honor to have someone who is so important to the world of music therapy attend our webinar and give an impassioned speech about the healing power of music.
Recently there were studies done on the number of people who feel that they are having symptoms of anxiety. In 2019, the percentage of people in the US was 8 percent. In studies completed last month, that number has risen to 30 percent. Given all that is going on the in world. we all could use the healing power of music so we wanted to share one of the many free Youtube videos from Berklee College of Music that are targeted to help ANYONE apply the basic principles of and reap the benefits of music therapy.
In this episode, Suzanne explains the ISO principle. Simply put, most people think that if you are feeling anxious, you should start listening to calming music right away. But that is actually not how your brain works. This video will teach you how to apply the ISO principle and develop your own music playlist to get from one mood to another.
As with all music therapy, this has been researched, tested and documented and it just works.
Walter Werzowa is the founder of Healthtunes.org. HealthTunes® is an audio streaming service designed to improve one’s physical and mental health by pairing medical research with active music links. Binaural beats and isochronic tones are embedded within HealthTunes® music which are two different methods used for brain wave entrainment.
A binaural beat is an auditory phenomenon when two different sine waves, with a close frequency rate, are perceived by an individual through each ear. This experience enables the listener to perceive a third tone. The third tone is a binaural beat.
You may have heard much more of Walter’s music than you know. He has designed the sonic branding for Intel, T Mobile, Fox Sports, Samsung and many others.
Experts in audio branding, custom scoring and sound design for film, broadcast, advertising, and VR. We are an all-inclusive music production studio. Home of the Intel sonic branding mnemonic audio identity.
There is a new project that we didn’t get to cover in the webinar, but wanted to share here. Walter is using AI and MIDI to work on Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony.
That’s a project that sounds like it deserves a complete article on MIDI.org in the near future.
With an extensive background in the music field, Lori Frazer is the lead program facilitator and technical specialist for the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute. She trains and supports hospital and clinical staff, as well as research teams. Lori’s expertise extends into medical, as well as retirement communities, senior centers, and special programs that enable people with a host of challenges to enjoy the benefits of creative musical expression. She described her work over the past decade with the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute.
Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute (YMWI) continues to be actively engaged in exploring the impact of creative musical expression on the human genome as presented in two peer-reviewed scientific research investigations
Alton Mitchell, the Minster of Worship and Arts at Rodman Street Missionary Baptist Church. He spoke to us from his piano lab and explained how the church pioneered a study on using creative musical expression as a catalyst for reducing cardiovascular risk factors. Active participation in vocal and instrumental gospel music is not only enjoyable but good for the heart and soul. Rodman Street’s Health Ministry is making waves, and creating national news.
DAW software, like Ableton Live, Logic, Pro Tools, Studio One, etc. isn’t just about audio. Virtual instruments that are driven by MIDI data produce sounds in real time, in sync with the rest of your tracks. It’s as if you had a keyboard player in your studio who played along with your tracks, and could play the same part, over and over again, without ever making a mistake or getting tired.
MIDI-compatible controllers, like keyboards, drum pads, mixers, control surfaces, and the like, generate data that represents performance gestures (fig. 1). These include playing notes, moving controls, changing level, adding vibrato, and the like. The computer then uses this data to control virtual instruments and effects.
Figure 1: Native Instruments’ Komplete keyboards generate MIDI data, but can also edit the parameters of virtual instruments.
Virtual Instrument Basics
Virtual instruments “tracks” are not traditional digital audio tracks, but instrument plug-ins, triggered by MIDI data. The instruments exist in software. You can play a virtual instrument in real time, record what you play as data, edit it if desired, and then convert the virtual instrument’s sound to a standard audio track—or let it continue to play back in real time.
Virtual instruments are based on computer algorithms that model or reproduce particular sounds, from ancient analog synthesizers, to sounds that never existed before. The instrument outputs appear in your DAW’s mixer, as if they were audio tracks.
Why MIDI Tracks Are More Editable than Audio Tracks
Virtual instruments are being driven by MIDI data, so editing the data driving an instrument changes a part. This editing can be as simple as transposing to a different key, or as complex as changing an arrangement by cutting, pasting, and processing MIDI data in various ways (fig. 2).
Figure 2: MIDI data in Ableton Live. The rectangles indicate notes, while the line along the bottom show the dynamics for the various notes. All of this data is completely editable.
Because MIDI data can be modified so extensively after being recorded, tracks triggered by MIDI data are far more flexible than audio tracks. For example, if you record a standard electric bass part and decide you should have played the part with a synthesizer bass instead, or used the neck pickup instead of the bridge pickup, you can’t make those changes. But the same MIDI data that drives a virtual bass can just as easily drive a synthesizer, and the virtual bass instrument itself will likely offer the sounds of different pickups.
How DAWs Handle Virtual Instruments
Programs handle virtual instrument plug-ins in two main ways:
The instrument inserts in one track, and a separate MIDI track sends its data to the instrument track.
More commonly, a single track incorporates both the instrument and its MIDI data. The track itself consists of MIDI data. The track output sends audio from the virtual instrument into a mixer channel.
Compared to audio tracks, there are three major differences when mixing with virtual instruments:
The virtual instrument’s audio is typically not recorded as a track, at least initially. Instead, it’s generated by the computer, in real time.
The MIDI data in the track tells the instrument what notes to play, the dynamics, additional articulations, and any other aspects of a musical performance.
In a mixer, a virtual instrument track acts like a regular audio track, because it’s generating audio. You can insert effects in a virtual instrument’s channel, use sends, do panning, automate levels, and so on.
However, after doing all needed editing, it’s a good idea to render (transform) the MIDI part into a standard audio track. This lightens the load on your CPU (virtual instruments often consume a lot of CPU power), and “future-proofs” the part by preserving it as audio. Rendering is also helpful in case the instrument you used to create the part becomes incompatible with newer operating systems or program versions. (With most programs, you can retain the original, non-rendered version if you need to edit it later.)
The Most Important MIDI Data for Virtual Instruments
The two most important parts of the MIDI “language” for mixing with virtual instruments are note data and controller data.
Note data specifies a note’s pitch and dynamics.
Controller data creates modulation signals that vary parameter values. These variations can be periodic, like vibrato that modulates pitch, or arbitrary variations generated by moving a control, like a physical knob or footpedal.
Just as you can vary a channel’s fader to change the channel level, MIDI data can create changes—automated or human-controlled—in signal processors and virtual instruments. These changes add interest to a mix by introducing variations.
Instruments with Multiple Outputs
Many virtual instruments offer multiple outputs, especially if they’re multitimbral (i.e., they can play back different instruments, which receive their data over different MIDI channels). For example, if you’ve loaded bass, piano, and ukulele sounds, each one can have its own output, on its own mixer channel (which will likely be stereo).
However, multitimbral instruments generally have internal mixers as well, where you can set the various instruments’ levels and panning (fig. 3). The mix of the internal sounds appears as a stereo channel in your DAW’s mixer. The instrument will likely incorporate effects, too.
Figure 3: IK Multimedia’s SampleTank can host up to 16 instruments (8 are shown), mix them down to a stereo output, and add effects.
Using a stereo, mixed instrument output has pros and cons.
There’s less clutter in your software mixer, because each instrument sound doesn’t need its own mixer channel.
If you load the instrument preset into a different DAW, the mix settings travel with it.
To adjust levels, the instrument’s user interface has to be open. This takes up screen space.
If the instrument doesn’t include the effects plug-ins needed to create a particular sound, then use the instrument’s individual outputs, and insert effects in your DAW’s mixer channels. (For example, using separate outputs for drum instruments allows adding individual effects to each drum sound.)
Are Virtual Instruments as Good as Physical Instruments?
This is a question that keeps cropping up, and the answer is…it depends. A virtual piano won’t have the resonating wood of a physical piano, but paradoxically, it might sound better in a mix because it was recorded with tremendous care, using the best possible microphones. Also, some virtual instruments would be difficult, or even impossible, to create as physical instruments.
One possible complaint about virtual instruments is that their controls don’t work as smoothly as, for example, analog synthesizers. This is because the control has to be converted into digital data, which is divided into steps. However, the MIDI 2.0 specification increases control resolution dramatically, where the steps are so minuscule that rotating a control feels just like rotating the control on an analog synthesizer.
MIDI 2.0 also makes it easier to integrate physical instruments with DAWs, so they can be treated more like virtual instruments, and offer some of the same advantages. So the bottom line is that the line between physical and virtual instruments continues to blur—and both are essential elements in today’s recordings.
If you don’t know anything about music therapy, this 18 minute Tedx Talk Youtube video is a great way to understand how music and medicine work together to heal.
Music therapist, Dr. Deforia Lane takes you inside University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center to experience first hand the response of patients to music therapy: hear of music’s effects on an unborn child; watch the reaction of a laryngectomy patient; see how therapeutic singing helps a man with stroke to speak again.
Dr. Lane shares her personal challenge with cancer and how music benefited her healing. She ends with a probing question for each all who will hear.
Internationally acclaimed music therapist, Dr. Deforia Lane is the founder and Director of Art & Music Therapy at the University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, OH. She oversees a 9-member team of art and music therapists who serve the 1000-bed hospital. She is a researcher, clinician, clinical training director, teaches at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and has experienced a pioneering career spanning 4 decades.
