Happy birthday MIDI!

Happy birthday MIDI 1.0: Getting pop stars wired for 30 years • The Register


and where would we be without it!! :wink:

I’m old enough to remember trying to sync with CV (control voltage for anyone not of ‘a certain age’)… what a total PITA it was!!!

YAY! MIDI has been both a boon and a bane. But, no doubt if you ever had to do a series of studio config sheets in the 70s, you’ll never truly bitch.

Also, as a guitar player … my first AHA! moment with MIDI, was being able to cab & head switch from a footswitch. I think I did that for the first time sometime around 85/86ish. It was a DIY box and fairly expensive if I remember right.

There are some days now when I sit down and say. “What’s MIDI ?” Yup, I have very firm grasp on it :unamused:
That started in the early 80’s and stayed with me all this time too!

I still have a GSP 2120. The only way to do anything useful with it is to use the MIDI patch editor. I hated the 2120 for guitar, but it is awesome on keys for some reason.

I had, still have, an ADA MP2 tube pre-amp and the midi foot switch controller for it. Used to assign an expression pedal to gain and EQ curve. That was my introduction to midi and CCs in the early '90s.

Steve…I love that approach…Midi was SUCH a block for me in 1985 that I never re-visited it again until 2004 when I started with Cubase. Have a mild grip on it for recording but not like so many guys here do including yourself.

I might have said this before but my first guitar tune was Little Brown Jug, taught to me by my uncle Frank Staffa who was one of the jazz greats. He was a Connecticut Yankee with Rudy Vallee…played with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, gave lessons and played with guys like Bucky Pizzarelli, Joe Cinderella and Tony Mottola

HE POUNDED SIGHT READING and NOTE BY NOTE into my head starting from age 6…Every Good Boy Does Fine…y’all remember that one ! THEN…on top of that, I went to Catholic School !!!

That one and FACE

Don’t get me started on the crap I went through learning the stupid circle of 5ths and its antimatter counterpart the circle of 4ths.

Aloha guys, just to chime in

IMHO MIDI:
A digital piano roll.

Happy birthday
{‘-’}

Yep, I’ve said that as recently as today in another post. But, it’s a digital player piano with about 28409871263809437 additional things to play besides the note.

Wow…made me think a bit…As a kid we had a player piano. I used to stick those paper rolls into the player and watch thousands of those slots pass over the bar and trigger the keys. Long before midi, I think I had figured out that these rolls were multi-tracked. How could one guy play all of those keys at one time :wink:

…30 years…


i’m getting old :astonished:


anyway > happy birthday !!

version 1.0. :mrgreen:

one sentence sums midi up …" midi changed my life for every "
I love you midi , i bless the day I found you now just release V2 you old git :laughing: :laughing: HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I remember the introduction of MIDI with a lot of headaches.
MIDI hubs, thru boxes, had to be self or custom made at first.
PC keyboards also used the same 5 pin DIN plug and you had to be careful they didn’t sell you a KB extention cable instead of a midi cable - although some would in fact work if they were fully wired.
But all in all, the system worked, and that made it worthwhile.
I think I still have some of the original brochures from an early MIDI seminar from Roland or Yamaha.

Player Pianos started in the 1800s. But, if you use the concept of how they work, music boxes go WAAAAAAAY back.

First program I ever wrote (using punch cards!) I still have to this day in the form of an inch wide pink strip of hole punched tape.
Of course I’ve nothing to run it on now…
:slight_smile:

I wrote Fortran II on punch cards for an IBM 360. Didn’t keep the cards. Never been much for keepsakes. Kind of regret that now. Until I see my wife’s life mementos packing every closet, under the beds, the garage and every other cubic inch of available space. Opposites attract. I’m a minimalist and she’s a hoarder. Aargh!

That’s funny…My wife and I are the opposite. I’m a hoarder…she throws out everything. What’s worse is that I may keep something for years in the garage…She eventually wears me down to toss it. Two weeks later…I NEED IT!

I feel bad for my kids…one day they will be going through all this crap and thinking " geez, what the hell was he saving this for ?" It will all wind up in a dumpster

Midi is an amazing technology when you consider it’s age and that it still is a fundamental workhorse 30 years later. I’ve just completed a move including studio from a place I’d lived in for 34 years. With 12 hardware synths and 2 midi interfaces I must have 50 midi cables. If wireless midi ever becomes practical, that would be for me.

As far as holding onto old things ,I’ve had to make some big decisions in the last few days ,ex. I kept every box that software came in . I’d recommend that everyone periodically go thru and dump what you really don’t need or better yet sell it. I found buyers for a Commodore Vic 20,Atari 520 St, roll and tuck Kustom 2x12 guitar cabinet,etc. It’s reall cathartic to get rid of stuff you never use