[gmpi] Re: 3.15 MIDI
- From: "Koen Tanghe" <koen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 23:50:01 +0200
On Tuesday, June 15, 2004 8:11 PM [GMT+1=CET],
Ron Kuper <xxxRonKuper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> You want someone to explain how MIDI works? That's a pretty tall order,
> I would suggest looking for a book on MIDI on Amazon.
I think it's a bit sad to think that Tim's question was just about how MIDI
works...
Of course he's trying to let someone explain how MIDI streams can possibly
fit into the work we have done these last months.
> MIDI is a control protcol. Does that mean it's a "hardware protocol."
> I don't think so. There are dozens if not hundreds of commercially
> viable software synthesizers out there whose control input is MIDI.
Of course there are. But as I already said, I bet lots of software
developers either use MIDI because it's the only control protocol that
exists in hosts, OR they already use a better abstract messaging protocol
internally and just translate it to and from MIDI when communicating with
the outside world, right?
> As a control protocol it has limitations. It doesn't have a
> representation for floats. It makes piano-like assumptions about note
> numbers. But even with these limitations, it's survived 20 years --
> TWENTY YEARS. There aren't many protocols that can claim this kind of
> success.
Yes, that's true. MIDI has been very useful for all these years.
> Today MIDI is software too. And MIDI just works. From a dumb consumer
> card with a built-in DLS synth, to Hans Zimmer with his 20 Gigastudios
> running an external rig... it just works.
>
> A couple of years I was walking the NAMM show floor with my boss. We
> stopped by the Yamaha booth to watch a jazz trio jamming away. The horn
> player was using a MIDI wind controller, streaming dumb 7 or 14 bit
> integers with 0-127 note numbers. He didn't seem to notice or care.
>
> Why do we want to throw aside something so successful and robust?
Let's be clear: we don't want to throw away MIDI tout court. And MIDI IS
suitable for some applications. It should be clear by now that most people
here want a better internal protocol for use in GMPI, and support for MIDI
at the boundaries of the graph so existing MIDI equipment can still be used.
Also, since you try to convince people with an example...
This is just one counter-example that shows there are definitely
professional artists (the people we're making the software for) who do feel
different about MIDI. It's a snippet from an interview with BT (pioneer of
trance, also worked with Peter Gabriel a.o.), taken from his web site
www.btmusic.com. I just cite a part of it here because you brought up an
example of where people seem to get along with it very well, and I
remembered him saying the opposite. Just like I did: judge for yourself what
you can take from it as useful (before anyone starts: there are
exaggerations in there, yes, but it's also a sincere opinion from a very
professional user of electronic music hard- and software). Don't know if
this will do any good, but anyway, here it goes:
Lunar Magazine www.lunarmagazine.com
Embracing BT - by Damon Fonooni
<snip>
Lunar: Concerning your, for lack of a better word, disdain for MIDI,
why is that?
BT: Well, it was a protocol that was invented in 1983-your mouse
communicates faster with your computer than MIDI does-and it's so
inaccurate. It's embarrassing that we use it, to me, in music. It can be so
sloppy sounding. My friends can make tracks in MIDI-I mean, I can't tell you
how many people I've sat down and shown like, "Hey look, you program a beat
and lets listen to it, ok?" And I'll let them program a beat and then listen
to it and I go, "Okay, let's go convert it into audio and I'm going to time
correct it." And then they listen to it and they're like, "Oh god, I'm
destroyed for life-I'll never be able to use MIDI again."
I mean the difference in sound is so astonishing that if you have it
demonstrated to you, you just can't listen to MIDI anymore because it's so
sloppy, and it's disproportionately sloppy. There's a misnomer of MIDI
latency like maybe it's late. It's not late, dude. If you track sixteenth
notes at 120 BPMs coming out of a brand-fucking-spanking-new synth, say the
Trinity, with the Uniter Aid, hooked up to a fast Mac, and track those and
look at them, you'll fucking die! You'll have one that's twenty samples late
and the next one will be 300 samples early and the one after that will be
150 samples late. Now imagine exponentially multiplying that by however many
tracks you've got in the song and it's just a pile of slop. It's just a
joke! And the way that you hear the difference if you have, say, the time
correction demonstrated for you, you hear it and go, "Oh my fucking god."
It's not like some cheesey computer programmer saying (in a rather
stereotypical computer programmer voice), "Uhh, you need to do this to your
kickdrums to make your tracks sound cool." I mean, if you listen to it, it's
like, "Holy shit this sounds better." So that's why I hate MIDI...
Lunar: Well that sums it up...
BT: [laughs] My friends are getting, we're going to do it this
Christmas, but I think it's going to happen for my birthday. They're like,
"We're going to make t-shirts that say 'Fuck MIDI'," and I'm like, "Yeah
(gives an evil laugh)!"
<snip>
Koen
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