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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In our next article, we’ll cover the 4 hour MIDI Forum that Music China arranged for Saturday, October 12, 2024.
