Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in ... - Aaaaarg

ELECTRONIC MUSIC RESOURCES 21
confused with recording the sounds played by the keyboard; MIDI “records”
only a sequence of note values. The timbre, or quality of the sound, is the
provenance of the synthesizer that receives the MIDI sequence. A sequence of
MIDI note values is independent of the sound or voice of the instrument playing
the notes. The same sequence of note values can be played on different
instruments using different voices.
MIDI: Musical Conformity or Just Another Creative Tool?
By 1984, the makers of commercial synthesizers and PCs were feeling
pressure from consumers to provide universal connectivity of their gear. No
industry-wide standard existed at the time for allowing a PC to control or
communicate with a synthesizer. When a manufacturer chose to connect a
computer with a synthesizer, it did so using expensive and quickly outdated
proprietary methods that were unique to its own products. The time had come for
the industry to eliminate this problem.
The answer was a protocol called the Musical Instrument Digital Interface,
otherwise known as MIDI. Introduced in 1984, it was the result of many months
of behind-the-scenes cooperation and squabbling by several leading electronic
instrument manufacturers, including Roland, Oberheim, Sequential Circuits,
Yamaha, Korg, and Kawai.
The MIDI control signal can communicate several parameters about musical
notes that are independent of the instrument on which they are played. These
parameters include the pitch value, its amplitude (how hard a note is played), the
effects of using a pitchbend wheel, modulation wheel, and volume pedal, and
how hard a key is pressed while a note is being sustained.
The MIDI interface was designed with two basic performance applications in
mind:
MIDI can connect standalone electronic music instruments and
permit one instrument to control the sounds being made on several
others. This can be done without a separate computer. The
instruments may or may not have keyboards, although in a typical
multi-instrumental setup there is at least one keyboard that triggers all
of the activity.
MIDI can connect standalone electronic music instruments with a
PC. In this configuration, the computer is used to trigger sounds and
patterns on the connected instruments. Many multiple MIDI channels
may be operated simultaneously in this way.
As with any industry standard, the creation of the MIDI protocol was not
completed without some compromises. The primary limitation of MIDI
is that it was conceived with the production of keyboard music in mind.
This was rightfully viewed as providing the most widespread
commercial application of the standard, but it potentially left in the lurch