Mad Skills by Ryan Diduck

Author:Ryan Diduck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mad Skills
ISBN: 9781910924778
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2018-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

By the Summer of 1987, computers of all sorts were mainstays at the NAMM Show. Trond Bra aten Archive, NAMM Resource Center.

Vincik and Clay saw eye-to-eye on MIDI’s networked future with computers, and the MIDI Users Group became the IMA, a non-profit corporation, nonetheless with Clay approaching sermonizing in his editorials for the IMA Bulletin. In its inaugural issue, Clay delivered a sweeping statement of principles: “Accurate information and helpful advice on products and resources are important to any creative process. In the new world of musical equipment/ equipment interfacing (let’s call this musical cybernetics) they become essential services.”16 In addition to the MIDI spec, the IMA would provide those services to its members by setting up seminars and conferences at NAMM and other tradeshows, for the price of an IMA membership (about $300). Because the MMA only accepted manufacturer membership, the IMA would continue as the only officially recognized user-driven MIDI association.

Some musicians imagined MIDI would work in very simple applications, from one instrument to another. If a keyboard player wanted to layer two different instrument sounds together, and have one precisely follow the melody of the other, there was no longer a need to play the same phrase twice, or with two hands simultaneously. Other musicians with more extensive instrument collections realized that they could “daisy chain” several devices, and layer a handful of sounds, essentially making a multi-timbral, multi-manufacturer instrument with a MIDI cable and some elementary technical setup. Others, like Herbie Hancock, for instance, imagined stacks of instruments in rack-mounted cases, each triggered by a single MIDI keyboard controller.

Still other artists who were dabbling in computer code conceived of one or several instruments being played by the software on a single machine. Some professionals saw MIDI as potential competition for media themselves, as talk of the “tapeless studio” began to circulate.17 Recording and storing sequences on a device with digital memory meant performances could be precisely repeated over and over again, without costly analog recording equipment. Because MIDI’s data were small and simple, entire recordings could be miniaturized and stored as MIDI files on a few floppy disks rather than reels and reels of tape.

The development of MIDI was centered geographically in Silicon Valley, just on the cusp of an explosion in digital technological innovation. But personal computers were still out of reach, both price- and technology-wise, and only those few in cutting-edge industries embraced digital forms of communication. Consequently, most correspondence took the form of written letters, many of which started piling up at the IMA’s Los Altos, California headquarters. That level of interest from the novelty-hungry user community would hasten what some felt was MIDI’s premature stabilization in the industry. Musicians were already starting to conceive of and use MIDI in unforeseen ways, and they had questions. Still, the tone of even the most confused user was usually more cordial than communication amongst manufacturers. In a letter dated 15 September 1983, from Bob Moog to the MIDI Users Group, Moog writes: “If you want

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