[HN Gopher] In praise of MIDI
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In praise of MIDI
Author : omnibrain
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-12-20 08:11 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Maybe of interest: Midi 2.0 https://www.midi.org/midi-
| articles/details-about-midi-2-0-mi...
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| Are they finally using the 5 pins of the cable? Midi 1 uses only
| 3 !!!
| bfrog wrote:
| MIDI is still an amazingly simple, yet useful encoding. To think
| its been around since 1982 is astounding. I'm excited to see what
| MIDI 2.0 really brings and if its truly worth the added
| complexity.
|
| The 1.0 encoding is _incredibly_ simple and to have gone 40 years
| (and still going), with many many devices being compatible with
| the protocol, is something that should absolutely be celebrated.
|
| Here's to 2.0 being _just_ as long lived and successful,
| presuming its just as simple but expands on the field sizes,
| timing improvements, and flexibility in terms of non-western
| music as it seems to promise.
| billyhoffman wrote:
| Fun fact: several computer games in the late 80s used MIDI to
| support cross computer multiplayer. At the time Ethernet/LAN
| cards on home PCs were rare, but if you played games you mostly
| likely had a sound card/MIDI card!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze
| grubbs wrote:
| My mom was a pianist and purchased a Yamaha diskclavier in the
| late 90s. One summer I was able to download the Final Fantasy 7
| soundtrack to a floppy disk in MIDI format. Was then able to
| insert the disk into the diskclavier unit and the piano proceeded
| to play FF7 songs with the keys and everything. My parents
| thought I was some genius at the time :)
| btown wrote:
| The recent video on MuseScore 4 has a fascinating (though
| simplified) perspective on how limiting MIDI is:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qct6LKbneKQ&t=21m35s
|
| MIDI's issues in a notation context are twofold: non-
| standardization of controls for e.g. choosing articulations for
| string instruments, and an inability to communicate future
| information if known to the MIDI producer - say, for instance,
| knowledge that this Note On event is the beginning of a phrase
| that will last for 2 measures, as known to notation software.
|
| There's a real way in which MIDI solved for communicating
| _trigger events_ over the wire, but was not extensible enough to
| allow for further backwards-compatible standardization that would
| let it communicate _music_ over the wire. By contrast, the web
| evolved from communicating hypertext to sending entire
| application environments and executable code over the same
| protocols. The web was born later, to be sure, but in an age
| where an Arduino can execute JavaScript, I wish we were looking
| to much more extensible modes of communication as inspiration for
| what can be done with interoperable musical devices.
| kazinator wrote:
| Some 12-15 years ago, every browser would play MIDI files
| readily.
|
| They were used as ring tones on phones.
|
| Seemingly overnight, that all vanished. I shared a .mid file with
| someone a few years ago (someone at Google!) and they were not
| able to play it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Not bad, but completely skips over the piano-centric nature of
| MIDI and the ways in which this has hobbled musical creativity
| for 4 decades (despite the rest of MIDI expanding it). The good
| parts of MIDI are ... OK, the bad parts are terrible. The best
| thing about it is really just about the only bit of technology
| the audio tech world ever managed to agree upon that was license
| free and at least adequate for some important tasks.
|
| Ever since MIDI, every audio tech company has been convinced that
| _its_ technology was going to be the next MIDI, and that the
| licensing fees from it would the ticket to an island of their
| own. E.g. check the state of audio-over-IP. You can almost hear
| people saying "I mean, imagine how much Yamaha & Sequential
| could have made if they had _licensed_ this! "
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