Synth wars: The story of MIDI (2023)

https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-story-of-midi

by conanxin • 2 years ago

151 69 2 years ago

glimshe• 2 years ago

MIDI should be studied by anyone interested in protocol design. Very few protocols had its staying power - despite not being perfect for every type of music, it has done its job admirably for close to 50 years due to its simplicity and flexibility.

T-A• 2 years ago

More like 42:

MIDI was revealed to the world, on the Sequential Circuits stand at the NAMM show in January 1983 (precisely one year since Smith’s proposal got the brush off)

detourdog5• 2 years ago

Midi being an “artist” tool places it more as a medium like paint. The artist was able to use it to build complex worlds.

MIDI’s cousin RS-422 existed in a technical environment but probably enjoys as much use as MIDI but technicians have many protocols to choose from. the artist just needs to get it speak MIDI to feel in control and the artist generally has fewer stakeholders, which I believe helps maintain continuity of an implementation.

kubielid2• 2 years ago

Midi being an “artist” tool places it more as a medium like paint.

I’ve used MIDI “as paint”.

Written music using code to MIDI(1), and wrote “cross instrument” music, ie using my keyboard as drum machine.

But these days MIDI is chiefly an archival method for me.

Every time I touch my keyboard is recorded, is much smaller than a comparable audio recording, by design “forced fidelity” in the recording, the music is “searchable”, and I am able to pipe the MIDI format through transcription software (which would be near impossible from an audio recording today).

(1) http://overtone.github.io/

epcoa4• 2 years ago

MIDI’s cousin RS-422

RS-422 is a differential electrical interface standard, while MIDI specifies both a current loop electrical interface and a high level protocol, the latter of which is probably its most defining characteristic today as MIDI can run over any serial interface. Today most commonly it runs over USB or its own current loop signaling, and has less commonly in the past been used over RS-232 or RS-422 from time to time. This is to say, it’s a stretch that MIDI and RS-422 are cousins. (Standard MIDI interfaces typically seen with the 5 pin DIN connector are not RS-422 if that is what you’re thinking)

em3rgent0rdr• 2 years ago

MIDI is just good enough for the vast majority of musical needs. Any more complicated and the protocol would have been too hard to implement on early computers.

chrisjj3• 2 years ago

MIDI should be studied by anyone interested in protocol design

Absolutely. A shambles hopefully never repeated.

ZFH• 2 years ago

I was waiting for this comment :)

I'm sure nobody expected it to live this long, as the grumbling about its various shortcomings must've started in the late eighties at the latest. The curse of good enough strikes again ...

BodyCulture• 2 years ago

I want to study it and understand what you mean! Would you please like to describe the shortcomings / problems you see and how it could be done better? That would be so helpful to us! Thanks!

recursive• 2 years ago

Probably won't be since MIDI 1.0 solved most problems good enough. Even MIDI 2.0 after decades is mostly just increased resolution. The only thing I'm aware of that's really missing is polyphonic aftertouch.

makapuf• 2 years ago

MIDI as a non-proprietary, non-patented, non ad supported or privacy invasive protocol opened so many innovation from synth and others electronic musical instruments constructors or makers. We really need this type of candid innovation back.

elihu9• 2 years ago

It's great that it's an open standard, but I feel like the MIDI Association is kind of dropping the ball on openness. You have to register with midi.org just to read the specs. That's not a huge hardship, but it's kind of off-putting.

It also feels like corporate behemoths are running the show. You can register as a site user for free and you can buy a SYSEX Id number for $240 a year, but to actually have a say in anything it looks like you need to be a corporate member.

https://midi.org/corporate-membership-app

Most of the interesting advances in musical instruments these days seem to be coming from small companies making unusual products. Things like the Osmose, the Linnstrument, the Continuum, and so on. MPE serves that community decently well, but I feel like we could at least in theory do a lot better by ditching the piano-centric assumptions built in to MIDI and hashing out a new protocol as a community effort.

TazeTSchnitzel• 2 years ago

I think we are lucky it was created when it was. The temptation to make a much more complex and fragile protocol would have been harder to avoid if they weren't constrained by what could be cheaply and efficiently implemented on microcontrollers in the early 1980's.

JKCalhoun• 2 years ago

MIDI over CAN Bus. I like it.

elihu9• 2 years ago

CAN bus would probably fix the latency/bandwidth issues with serial MIDI, and it side-steps the device/host problem and the short cable problem with USB. I'm in favor.

(I'm actually working on a MIDI controller. It has a CAN bus interface in addition to serial MIDI and USB. I don't have anything to talk to over CAN bus yet, but it's sort of there for future development. I probably won't send actual MIDI over CAN bus, but rather a protocol yet to be designed that's sort of like MIDI but less piano-centric.)

fyt20242• 2 years ago

MIDI? We used this to build a circular LAN and play computer games against each other on the Atari ST

steve19775• 2 years ago

The fact that the Atari STs had MIDI built in was the main reason that they were so successful as computers in recording studios (and that they were much cheaper than Macs certainly helped a bit as well)

ladzoppelin• 2 years ago

I think the Atari's were also known for their MIDI timing which I remember people talking more about in the 2000's.

happyweasel• 2 years ago

MIDI Maze :)

fyt20242• 2 years ago

Yes. Forgot the name but it was midi maze

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze

readyman• 2 years ago

WARNING: Do not click. Website has autoplaying videos.

ksherlock• 2 years ago

"freeing for the first time the act of composition from the ability to play an instrument". I think the player piano, invented in 1896, might have something to say about that. There are modern recordings of piano rolls (eg, Scott Joplin) but I'm wondering if they were ever used like that historically (or in concert). You could make your own piano rolls or record a performance and edit out mistakes (eg, Scott Joplin)

tanseydavid2• 2 years ago

The master rolls for player pianos were made by actual pro players playing in real time. They needed to have the performance chops, even if they maybe were not the composer in every case.

This quote about "separation of composition from performance" applies when you are working with a sequencer because the composer can "step-edit" the musical data note-by-note into the sequencer and then have the sequencer play it back in proper musical (real) time.

golergka• 2 years ago

To be fair, CV/Gate is still widely in use, especially in Eurorack world. You don't build modular synthesisers out of MIDI.

steve19775• 2 years ago

CV/Gate is in use again. There was a time in the 90s when you actually kind of had to search for MIDI/CV interfaces.

A popular one was made by Doepfer - who were also a strong force behind the modular renaissance with their A-100.

timc3• 2 years ago

I don’t think it was that hard. I remember them being around all the time, but maybe it was a European thing with them being readily available here.

worik3• 2 years ago

You don't build modular synthesisers out of MIDI.

Yes you can. I do

elihu9• 2 years ago

One of the things I like about modular is that the v/octave CV standard imposes no assumptions on what kind of scale you're using. 12-tone equal temperament is pretty easy to use, but there's nothing forcing you to that scale if you don't want to use it. (Some modules and MIDI to CV devices have built-in scale assumptions, but it's not baked in to Eurorack modular at the protocol level.)

somat• 2 years ago

MIDI is pretty great, I am about as musically inclined as a wet rag, but I recently bought a bank of midi sliders as it was the cheapest way to get a bunch of dials, buttons and sliders. At first I was looking for libraries to interface with it. But after looking at the spec, it turns out midi is dead simple and designed to be easy for hardware to parse. Super easy to read and generate. So I am sitting here happily hacking away building the dispatch interface for this thing. The icing on the cake is that it turns out openbsd's sndiod includes a midi transport and control system. Which was just one less thing to worry about.

https://www.akaipro.com/midimix

https://computermusicresource.com/MIDI.Commands.html

http://man.openbsd.org/sndiod#MIDI_CONTROL

Update: that was not a great commands introduction, here Are my thoughts. if bit 1 is set it is a command otherwise it is data. commands are split into two half bytes(nibbles?) the first 4 are what command it is(first bit is high so 3 bits or 8 commands) the second four are the channel. some commands have two following data bytes(low first bit remember) and some have one. The main exception is the system command. which is complicated

dmix• 2 years ago

Novation LaunchControl XL > akai midimix IMO

Novation has a web browser editor for customizing the 8 midi banks, using what I assume is the web USB protocol so it can be customized on tablets too. It’s been a joy to use and set up custom workflows, you one for dawless, one for ableton etc.

akx• 2 years ago

Web MIDI API and sysex messages more likely!

squarefoot• 2 years ago

You may find also interesting the projects at ucapps.de, and on the commercial side, the Elgato Stream Deck which has FOSS support.

http://www.ucapps.de/

https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/stream-deck-mini

https://github.com/streamdeck-linux-gui/streamdeck-linux-gui

ajxs• 2 years ago

Very cool article! I had no idea that the idea to use a 5-pin DIN connector for MIDI came from the Japanese HiFi world. One very minor nitpick: 'Running Status' actually refers to a feature in the MIDI specification where multiple sequential messages of the same type can omit the 'status byte'[0]. Stupidly, I didn't know about this feature in the specification when I was writing the MIDI handling routine for a synth[1]. This introduced a bug that took me ages to squash. I was struggling to figure out why everything worked fine when playing notes from my DAW, but notes were getting stuck when directly connected to a synth.

0: https://midi.teragonaudio.com/tech/midispec/run.htm

1: https://github.com/ajxs/yamaha_dx97

elihu9• 2 years ago

That makes me wonder how often one runs across a synth that doesn't support running status. I'm working on a MIDI controller myself, and that's a thing I probably ought to enable if I want the lowest latency.

It seems the standard MIDI libraries that Arduino uses don't enable it by default, but it's a configuration option you can turn on, along with a note not to try to use it with USB[1].

[1] https://github.com/FortySevenEffects/arduino_midi_library/bl...

memalign• 2 years ago

In case anybody is in the mood to browse and listen to a MIDI collection in their web browser:

https://chiptune.app/

everyone• 2 years ago

"Imagine a DAW or plugin that only runs on a certain make and model of computer." - Logic.

fipar• 2 years ago

That’d match the analogy from TFA if it only ran on, say, a 2014 mbp, so while it’s true Logic runs only on macs or ipads (I guess just pros for the latter though I don’t know), I think it’s quite a stretch to say that’s a certain make and model of computer.

worik3• 2 years ago

Has anybody any use for, or used, MIDI 2?

elihu9• 2 years ago

I think the Lumatone uses MIDI 2.0, but I haven't actually seen one of those in person.

I'm working on my own microtonal MIDI controller, and for now it makes more sense to just use MPE. Maybe I'll support MIDI 2.0 eventually, but I'm kind of waiting to see if MIDI 2.0 is a flop first.

worik3• 2 years ago

Is MPE any goode? Any use?

I understand never used it and I looked it up. Seems a lot of complication. It's it worth it?

morganw• 2 years ago

Korg noted that the use of jack plugs to transmit the required signals would cause noise in the system.

No more detail on this, but it was huge for MIDI not to end up "becoming a nightmare of endless fine-tuning better suited to electronics engineers than musicians" like CV/gate was.

https://midi.org/midi-history-chapter-6-midi-begins-1981-198... spells it out in more detail:

Mieda-san from Korg responds on behalf of the Japanese companies to the meetings at the 1981 Gakki Fair with Sequential and Oberheim and confirms the discussion that were they had at the Gakki Fair.

• 19.2kbps is too slow

• ¼” Jacks will have ground loop problems

• There is no concept of synchronization, clock or the ability to start and stop sequences

---

Ground loops are the bane of musician's lives and sometimes the mitigation is the end of their lives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_lift#Safety

_spduchamp• 2 years ago

I use MIDI in projects when I have to, but I usually lean on OSC because I can send it over wifi from a microcontroller and send floats. It just makes a lot of what I do so easy. That said, my stuff isn't very plug-n-play. Would love to see more development of new protocols like O2 and O2lite to build networked ensembles.

tanseydavid2• 2 years ago

I remember going to Sequential Circuits on 1st street in San Jose (on my lunch hour) to buy a copy of the MIDI Specification (I think it was $10). Probably late 1986.

Synth wars: The story of MIDI (2023)

Related Stories