MIDI = Musical Instrument Digital Interface

Throughout its existence, MIDI has gained acceptance with industry professionals by leaps and bounds. Not only does it allow for faster creativity, it allows the creator to control many MIDI devices simultaneously, thus saving precious time and energy.

Why?
Mother of Invention: Necessity.
MIDI mostly came about because keyboard players were buying synthesizers in increasing numbers from many different manufacturers, and they wanted to "sync" those various keyboards together, plus "play" them under "computer control" (since computer use was also increasing dramatically during that time).

At the time, IBM had just released its first personal computer, the IBM PC, which gave a "serious endorsement" to personal computers. Also, Commodore had released the Commodore 64, one of the first really affordable "home computers", and sales were really starting to take off with personal computers.

The Commodore 64 had a built-in analog synthesizer chip made by a musical company called Ensoniq. It wasn't very fancy, but nonetheless, musicians started playing around with it, and quickly began to discover that the programmability of digital computers, combined with a musical instrument, offered them a lot of potential solutions to those problems they were having back then.

Roland saw the potential musical use that computers offered. So Roland began work on a musical interface for the IBM PC.

Roland came up with a simple hardware circuit, and a fancy new, "digital language" that they planned to use with all of their upcoming musical keyboards.

Roland and Sequential Circuit representatives used to see each other at NAMM (a business trade show for the music industry), and were talking about how customers were wishing that they had some sequencer that worked with the keyboards from all manufacturers.

And Roland said, "You know, we're working on this new peripheral for the IBM PC to turn it into a musical sequencer, using a hardware/software protocol in all of our upcoming keyboards. Would you be interested in supporting this? We could both benefit from it since you make such a popular synth, and we'll be making a musical sequencer for these increasingly popular personal computers".

The SQ reps said "Sure. We've got some ideas of our own that we're adding to upcoming synths. Maybe we can incorporate these into one standard between us". So Roland sent some design specs to the SQ guys, who made some suggested changes and additions. They both decided to go ahead and adopt this "standard".

Then they thought, "Why not see if we can get some of the other leading musical manufacturers to adopt it, as long as it's not really a proprietary standard anymore?". So, they contacted other popular musical manufacturers such as Yamaha and Oberheim, and got them onboard too. MIDI was perhaps the first true effort at joint development among a large number of musical manufacturers.

After all the hard work and time spent, this digital language allowed the computer and musical instruments to transfer "control data" between them. This new interface was known as a "Musical Instrument Digital Interface" or MIDI. (Roland loves acronyms).

And the first MIDI interface for a computer become the MPU-401 "Musical Processing Unit, model 401" which is still found compatible in todays sound cards.

Next Lesson : When?

This column has been setup to help you learn more about sound technologies. Dr. Rajpal, an expert in the field, looks after this new section.

Pls send in your questions to :
akash@sudeepaudio.com