FEATURE:
Music Technology Breakthroughs
Part Thirteen: MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)
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I might wrap this feature up…
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
in a few weeks, as there are only a certain number of technological breakthroughs that have occurred in music history! So far, I have covered music software, instruments and technology that has changed the industry and the way we enjoy music. Today, I am featuring a breakthrough that, despite some flaws and criticism, has made a big impact through the years. MIDI (Music Instrument Digital Interface) is a fascinating conception. If you are unfamiliar with MIDI, here is some useful history and information:
“MIDI (/ˈmɪdi/; an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing and recording music.The specification originates in a paper titled Universal Synthesizer Interface, published by Dave Smith and Chet Wood, then of Sequential Circuits, at the October 1981 Audio Engineering Society conference in New York City.
A single MIDI link through a MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen channels of information, each of which can be routed to a separate device or instrument. This could be sixteen different digital instruments, for example. MIDI carries event messages; data that specify the instructions for music, including a note's notation, pitch, velocity (which is heard typically as loudness or softness of volume); vibrato; panning to the right or left of stereo; and clock signals (which set tempo). When a musician plays a MIDI instrument, all of the key presses, button presses, knob turns and slider changes are converted into MIDI data. One common MIDI application is to play a MIDI keyboard or other controller and use it to trigger a digital sound module (which contains synthesized musical sounds) to generate sounds, which the audience hears produced by a keyboard amplifier. MIDI data can be transferred via MIDI or USB cable, or recorded to a sequencer or digital audio workstation to be edited or played back.
A file format that stores and exchanges the data is also defined. Advantages of MIDI include small file size, ease of modification and manipulation and a wide choice of electronic instruments and synthesizer or digitally-sampled sounds. A MIDI recording of a performance on a keyboard could sound like a piano or other keyboard instrument; however, since MIDI records the messages and information about their notes and not the specific sounds, this recording could be changed to many other sounds, ranging from synthesized or sampled guitar or flute to full orchestra. A MIDI recording is not an audio signal, as with a sound recording made with a microphone.
Prior to the development of MIDI, electronic musical instruments from different manufacturers could generally not communicate with each other. This meant that a musician could not, for example, plug a Roland keyboard into a Yamaha synthesizer module. With MIDI, any MIDI-compatible keyboard (or other controller device) can be connected to any other MIDI-compatible sequencer, sound module, drum machine, synthesizer, or computer, even if they are made by different manufacturers.
MIDI technology was standardized in 1983 by a panel of music industry representatives, and is maintained by the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA). All official MIDI standards are jointly developed and published by the MMA in Los Angeles, and the MIDI Committee of the Association of Musical Electronics Industry (AMEI) in Tokyo. In 2016, the MMA established The MIDI Association (TMA) to support a global community of people who work, play, or create with MIDI”.
I am always curious to do some background reading and research regarding innovations and wonderful inventions that have changed music. I was a little unfamiliar when it came to MIDI and how it started out. In terms of history, Music Radar wrote a brilliant feature on the thirtieth anniversary of MIDI in 2012. As it turns forty next year, it is fascinating going back to its humble beginnings:
“Absolutely no sound is sent via MIDI, just digital signals known as event messages, which instruct pieces of equipment. The most basic example of this can be illustrated by considering a controller keyboard and a sound module. When you push a key on the keyboard, the controller sends an event message which corresponds to that pitch and tells the sound module to start playing the note. When you let go of the key, the controller sends a message to stop playing the note.
Of course, the MIDI protocol allows for control over more than just when a note should be played. Essentially, a message is sent each time some variable changes, whether it be note-on/off (including, of course, exactly which note it is), velocity (determined by how hard you hit the key), aftertouch (how hard the key is held down), pitchbend, pan, modulation, volume or any other MIDI-controllable function.
The key feature of MIDI when it was launched was its efficiency: it allowed a relatively significant amount of information to be transmitted using only a small amount of data. Given the limitations of early '80s digital data transmission methods, this was essential to ensure that the reproduction of musical timing was sufficiently accurate.
Manufacturers quickly adopted MIDI and its popularity was cemented by the arrival of MIDI-compatible computer hardware (most notably the built-in MIDI ports of the Atari ST, which was released in 1985). As weaknesses or potential extra features were identified, the MIDI Manufacturers Association updated the standard regularly following its first publication.
The most common criticisms of the MIDI protocol relate to timing issues. Although MIDI was efficient by the standards of the early '80s, it is still undeniably flawed to some extent. There is some degree of jitter (variation in timing) present in MIDI, resulting in discernible sloppiness in recording and playback.
Perhaps even more obvious to most of us is latency, the delay between triggering a function (such as a sound) via MIDI and the function being carried out (in this case the sound being reproduced). The more information sent via MIDI, the more latency is created. It may only be in the order of milliseconds, but it's enough to become noticeable to the listener”.
Whilst I have sourced a part of the feature that signalled weaknesses of MIDI and its limitations, there are many more pluses than negatives. I want to end up with a BBC feature that highlights how important MIDI was.
I think we will see more features next year on the fortieth anniversary. In 2012, the BBC were keen to explore the history and legacy of MIDI:
“It's 30 years since the development of technology that allowed synthesisers and drum machines to be connected to computers - and since then MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) has revolutionised the world of music recording.
If you really want to appreciate Pink Floyd's track Shine on You Crazy Diamond, aficionados claim, it's best to have it on vinyl.
The sounds of the synthesisers burst through the crackle on the record as the guitar and drums set a heavy, rolling rhythm.
But despite the awesome creativity of the music, the sound betrays a major limitation to the way electronic musical instruments were controlled at the time.
"You could play one keyboard with your right hand and another keyboard with your left hand," says Dave Smith, a synthesiser manufacturer from California who was working on the issue back then.
"But [musicians] couldn't play more than one at the same time because there was no way of electrically interconnecting them," he remembers.
What Smith did next would transform the way recording studios worked, and create a revolution in music and recording production.
He persuaded manufacturers to adopt a common format which allowed their synthesisers to be controlled externally - by another keyboard potentially made by a rival manufacturer, or even by a computer.
It was called Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) and would soon become the industry standard for connecting different makes of synthesisers, drum machines, samplers and computers.
The development opened up a "whole new era of music processing", as Dave Smith puts it.
"What MIDI did is it allowed the first home studios to be born," he says.
"The computers were fast enough to be able to sequence notes, control the number of keyboards and drum machines at the same time… it kind of opened up a whole new industry."
It was a breakthrough that would have the same kind of impact on popular music as the electrification of guitars decades earlier.
The wide availability of the format and its ease of use helped redefine pop music in the 1980s - giving it a strong electronic feel and spawning many of the contemporary music genres that followed.
Alex Paterson's co-producer Dom Beken remembers how MIDI allowed anyone to create "massive soundscapes".
"Those electronic pioneers and those people who might have been punks before could now just make stuff that people would go mad to on the dance floor," he says.
For Dave Smith, MIDI could only become a success if every manufacturer adopted it - "we had to give it away", he says.
The universality of the format was perhaps an early example of what now gets called "open source" technology - MIDI's backers intended it to be a free gift to the world which allowed anyone access.
Three decades on, and MIDI is still going strong - remaining one of the core components of professional recording and music production”.
I shall end things there but, as I look to the coming weeks and what can be included in Music Technology Breakthroughs, I was keen to spotlight MIDI and its beginnings. There are some weaknesses to MIDI, but it has transformed music technology over the decades. Given all MIDI has given to the music world, I feel it was more than worthy of…
A fond salute.