MIDI: 30 years old... almost Despite rumours to the contrary, MIDI is not 30 years old today. The concept is older and its actual adoption as an industry standard gets its birthday next summer. Yet as industry standards go, it’s certainly been a robust one. As with a lot of technology standards – remember draft-n Wi-Fi? – manufacturers don't want to hang …
would help if all manufaturers who put MIDI sockets on their machines confirmed to the kind of standard.
had a yamaha something something stand in for a roland something else that had it's drum section on channel 10, instead of the seemingly agreed channel 16 that everything else expected.
made everyone jump when the melody kicked in. i remember their faces ....
good times, happy unbirthday MIDI. i might just dust off the old datel MIDI-X for the A500 later...
I also recall channel 16 for drums but that was likely before General MIDI came about which brought some semblance of order and agreement on how things should be used and which instruments have particular program change numbers and so on.
The physical interface and the fundamentals of the specification were pretty solid but there was a lot of incompatibility as to how the manufacturers treated the information carried and what was implemented on various bit of kit; instrument 126 may have be guitar on one, piano on another, or even whirling helicopter blades! For the drum channel, 'Middle C' might get you bass drum, might be a snare, or perhaps silence. Manufacturers just had to use whatever they could if something wasn't already implemented how they desired so incompatibilities were inevitable.
The actual MMA MIDI Specification (and I have a genuine, official, printed copy in front of me) was just a part of what most people consider to be MIDI.
Hm, I was taught that channel 10 was the standard drum channel. Of course, you can define any channel to mean anything.
Also MIDI is not General MIDI. General MIDI, IIRC, defines the standard instrument patch set including one drumkit. Other MIDI patch sets include XG (by Yamaha) and GS (by Roland). A musical instrument that defines itself as "General MIDI", basically has the same first 127 instruments and drum set as every other General MIDI device. MIDI (sans "General") devices simply have the same communication protocol.
For instance, for some synthesizers such as the Novation K Station or Yamaha AN200 Loopfactory, it makes no sense to have them as "General MIDI", as all of the noises they generate are somewhat wierd, bleepy techno affairs rather than anything approaching "Grand Piano" (GM patch #1) or "Pizzicato Strings" (GM patch #46). The same applies to MIDI controller keyboards or boxes that make no sounds of their own, but are used to send commands to other devices, such as for instance the Evolution X-Session controller box.
Happy owner of all mentioned devices, and yes, they're all awesome in their own ways.
http://www.midi.org/techspecs/gm1sound.php
And still use it. Apart from wear and tear from gigging years ago, my DX7 is still going strong. I think Yamaha misinterpreted the MIDI spec though on this keyboard as it constantly sends out MIDI data as a sort of timing signal.
Still got my Atari 1040ST. Had to upgrade my original 520ST because it couldn't run Cubase. It needed a whole meg to run!! Whoever had the idea to put MIDI ports on the ST was a bloody genius.
I remember part of the midi spec that allowed the transfer of samples over the midi interface using system exclusive messages. I had a yamaha keyboard that claimed to support this, copying out to the sequencer went fine but I never managed to restore the samples back to the keyboard.
I did a gig once with two desktop PCs running windows 95, keyboard and drum machine all nicely synced with midi not even a slight hiccup.
As someone not musically gifted, I pretty much ignored the MIDI ports on my ZX Spectrum and the variety of hardware that superseded it.
What never escaped me, though, was that, twenty-plus years later, those same ports were still present on soundcards and USB adaptors. I was actually quite shocked to research and find that 30-year-old MIDI equipment would work today and modern MIDI equipment would still pretty much work the same on 30-year-old machines. That's pretty unheard of in terms of computer interfaces.
And though I have a MIDI keyboard now, and my talents still lie elsewhere for the moment, it's still the most simple, obvious, genius, and complete protocol - purely through it's simplicity and forward-thinking and not-unreasonable limits. I have recorded short snippets of MIDI in the MIDI equivalent of Wireshark and the amount of data conveyed is pretty diverse (there's a lot of timing and synchronisation info, for instance). And the reproduction has always been pretty much spot on, no matter the hardware. In fact my worst memory of MIDI was trying to load a soundfont into an old soundblaster card on a Linux machine yonks ago (back in the pre-ALSA days) and the problem wasn't the MIDI, just the stupid way the card loaded its firmware.
MIDI should be an inspiration to us all. A simple interface that can do everything, and still brings together instruments and machines that are 30 years apart without problems.
Zillions of wee little MIDI files floating around the 'net; repositories bursting at the seams with thousands each. The files are typically like 10 to 100KB sort of size, they download in a mere second. A typical PC will play them from MIDI file in to audio out (I can't recall the program, but it was dirt-common).
Some of the MIDI files are for simple and crude tunes, while others are fantastically complicated arrangements that sound like, well, music. Audio "quality" is unlimited (in a manner of speaking).
This tidbit is good for perhaps about an hour of audio entertainment if you're otherwise really, really bored on a dark and stormy night.
Since I don't have a musical bone in my body, this is the mid I remember. I remember how many crappy geocities pages attempted to embed and auto play them. Even a 100k file was painful on dailup, and mp3s were just starting to show up. Always fun when 2 windows decided to play at the same time.
General MIDI != MIDI. No, but it's part of the specs produced by the MIDI Manufacturers Association, just as the MIDI File format is. GM basically defined sensible defaults for a lot of things such as drum maps, which is quite handy - I can program drums in my sequencer triggering a Novation Drumstation, and the same unmodified patterns will also trigger an Akai S3000XL loaded with a third party sample set.
If you really want to go back in time, look no further than ASCII. It was coded about 50 years ago and in some form or another is still going strong. EIA-232 (aka RS-232) in some form or another goes back even further and for simplicity is a real deal. Somewhere in my stash is a genuine Bell 103 modem, complete with attached telephone.
So, some standards DO pass the test of time, while others are just imitators. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which are which.
There's plenty more to say about MIDI. Remember the 90s attempt to get past the 16-channel limit by having two separate sets of MIDI ports on each device?
And also the fact that MIDI is an optical connection. True! You never realise it because you only connect the 5-pin DINs, but originally, devices were designed to feed the electrical signal into an LED on the circuit inside that was then read by a sensor, and this data was then used by the machine.
The idea being that any kind of electrical spike or some early 80s roadie idiot trying to blast an audio signal through an audio connector (which they may have mistaken the DINs for whilst spectacularly misunderstanding what MIDI actually was) would only blow the MIDI controller, and not fry the whole machine.
One of the nice things about MIDI is that it was designed for both studio and stage use, the later being prone to all kinds of abuse and dodgy wiring and feeds.
It was also NOT hot swappable, though I never damaged any device doing just that.
All hail any device whose second letter of its moniker is an 'X'. Roland smells of poo and wee.
Actually MIDI is hot swappable, is has no way of finding out if something is plugged in or not. And since the "IN" connection goes directly to the LED side of an optocoupler there is next to no danger.
The optocoupler was essential. It's not just for protecting the circuity, but also to eliminate ground loops whenever possible. Virtually all properly designed communication standards have that kind of isolation. In fact better mixers probably have high quality transformers in their inputs so there cannot be any ground loops.
I guess the main reason why MIDI became so popular is that it is to simple to implement. The only problem was that not every UART could get up to that odd frequency. It was just a tiny bit above what most UARTs could do.
Having met in person and talked to several of the people involved in designing the initial MIDI protocol I can confirm your statement in the last paragraph.
One main requirement of the protocol was that it should be really cheap and simple to fit a MIDI interface on to a synthesizer. That's why they chose the DIN connectors, and that's why they intentionally made both hardware and software simple to implement.
Before MIDI the electronic music world was bitterly divided between different electric communication standards, such as Moog's "Volt-per-Octave" CV signals and ground-loop-closing S-trig envelope triggers versus Yamaha/Korg/'s "Volt-per-Hertz" CV signals and +5V Gate triggers. MIDI was built to overcome that, by allowing just any cheap keyboard and any manufacturer to adhere to the same standard without needing to raise the price - or the complexity - of their products. It was this clever strategy that is the real reason MIDI took over the musical world, in spite of its shortcomings.
Yeah, why *does* it use that weird frequency? 31250 baud is... so very different from anything else in the serial world.
I've also heard that at only 3125 bytes per second, and about three bytes per message, that's only about 1000 messages per second, which isn't good enough for accurate triplets and chords in some situations. *shrug* Can't say it ever bothered me, though.
Nowadays when MIDI messages are transported via USB those MIDI delays are all gone.
However, I have to say I kinda liked them. When running a whole arrangement - drums, bass line and a number of samplers and synths from, say, the Creator sequencer on an Atari ST. which was the standard setup in the late 1980s, it was indeed important to think about what tracks to put on top of the list, as they were played "first" with high priority. Drums at the top, slow attack things like strings at the bottom, and the bass in between.
It was an artifact, and it could add a certain groove to songs. Just like the electric guitar distorsion initially was an unwanted side effect that became musically valuable, I think the MIDI delays and its sometimes chunky resolution are somewhat similar, albeit less acknowledged.
is that a lot of very expensive equipment was made in the days before built in self destruction of gear was commonplace. As a result there will be a lot of good MIDI equipment around for a long while yet.*
When it goes I for one shall miss the joy of a a 4K rig playing a crash chord for as long as it takes you to break the loop
I've got a 50Mhz 486, an MPU401 card, a copy of DR T's copyist and a yamaha keyboard etc from the early 90's that all still works.
And a home made MIDI recorder (of the descant variety) too but we wont go there..
Well in general, "expensive equipment" designed to earn money is still made well and lasts a lifetime. Just look at business computers or laboratory equipment. It's not uncommon for laboratories to have 20 year old pieces of equipment.
However there is a worrysome trend. There is not a single piece of equipment made in this decade still working which is older than 3 years. There is also not a single piece of equipment made in this century which is older than 13 years. I think that's something that's bothering people.
However some people confuse toys with "expensive equipment". I think MIDI and USB are perfect examples. MIDI was designed to be simple, but not particularly cheap. You need an optocoupler for it which is a $0.25 piece of hardware. USB on the other hand was designed to be dirt cheap, that's why there is no isolation and USB buses tend to reset regularly when using devices with external power supplies. USB was never meant to be more than a fancy keyboard and mouse interface. It's one of those technologies designed to be a toy, not a tool. (Still USB for connections inside of devices does have some genuine use)
"However there is a worrysome trend. There is not a single piece of equipment made in this decade still working which is older than 3 years. There is also not a single piece of equipment made in this century which is older than 13 years."
I see what you did there. It's funny. Thank you.
Since it was just an UART on some optocouplers it was actually possible, though not standard compliant, to hook up 2 computers via a pair of MIDI cables. Back in the early 1990s there was some talk of the CCC to use AX25 over MIDI to build a network. I doubt it went anywhere.
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