Handmade Music Night (pic courtesy of '3rd Ward')

I catch the L train from the 49th St Station in Times Square (MidTown Manhattan) for a journey into an evening of handmade musical instruments in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn (an outer borough of New York.)

I was to meet Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music. Composer/musician Peter also writes for the Macworld, Keyboard, and Computer Music magazines.

I emerge from the Morgan Ave subway station to a narrow street void of architectural embellishment. A quiet and unassuming place; at least I thought. I walk down a row of concrete and brick walls before I turn round the corner to what seems like the Bohemian part of this ‘town’. I spot the Archive Cafe, our meet point and I walk in. I made a quick glance of the menu on the board behind the service area that included tofu sandwiches, before sitting down to an early dinner of egg sandwich and homemade lemonade in the 21st Century version of the convivial atmosphere of a coffee house; where everyone wears headphones while they work on their laptops.

I message Peter who soon waltzes through the door. We had never met despite years of email correspondence. He turns to scrutinize me, first with a frown and tilt of the head, before a look ensues that silently called out ‘I am sure it is you from your photographs, but I shall quickly look away in case you think I am being obnoxious’.

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One of Coca Cola’s most successful advertisements was centred around a group of ethnically-diverse people, perched on a hilltop singing a song by the New Seekers. Entitled I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke, it was Bill Backer’s idea for the beverage to be “a commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes”. Bill – then creative director on the Coca-Cola account - came up with the idea after being stuck in an airport hotel due to inclement weather. This was in 1971. The rest is ad history. (#1)

This is also the story of Ge Wang, music professor and SMULE cofounder.

We meet at CCRMA, Stanford University CA, one sunny day in June 2009, and Ge tells me he wants to teach the world to sing, but with the iPhone.

Who would imagine that one day our cellphones would be musical instruments? Multimedia artist Laurie Anderson did in an interview I conducted with her in 2003. (#2)

Seven years later I meet the man who makes her dream come true. Seven years later, the cellphone has reached pandemic proportions.

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A huge thank you to Shueh-li of Xenovibes for being our first artist guest blogger, and for starting off with such an interesting and thoughtful post on Midi. There’s really no substitute for the perspective of an artist who has actually used technology to make a living. When your music and career’s on the line, that’s when you find out if a gizmo works or not.

However, I think it’s worth exploring some of the downsides of Midi in more detail.

It’s important to distinguish between Midi as a control protocol (eg, Midi pedals and mixers that use Midi to control parameters like volume and panning) and Midi as a medium for recording music performances. The former relies primarily on Midi continuous controller (CC) signals – turn a knob and a stream of info gets sent to gradually adjust a setting; while the latter relies on Midi note signals – press a key on a Midi keyboard and the corresponding note gets played by a synthesizer or sampler and/or recorded.

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It’s most interesting how Midi has taken the world by storm, yet very little is known about this humble but intelligent servant.
Born in 1981 to audio/design engineers Dave Smith and Chet Wood, Midi brought the world together by becoming the universal language for synthesizers and computers to exchange information about a musical performance (the tune “It’s a small world” plays in the background.)

Within the shell of the interface that gave inter-connectability to electronic musical instruments was the common language that later took on a role that extended far beyond its beginnings as a musical slave.

This protocol consists of the parameters of a musical performance and the operations of the synthesizer, and could include note-on and off messages, velocity, pressure, continuous controller expressions, use of the pitch-bend wheel, footswitch, etc. Represented by bits, bytes, words and nibbles these messages are now being used to gain control of other “intelligent performance machines” such as lighting boards, theatrical equipment and computer graphic generation in real-time interactive shows.

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