https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/arts/music/dave-smith-dead.html Tonight I had a taste for some MIDI music. In searching the Web for it, I came across this obituary of Dave Smith, who passed a week ago. Known as a synthesizer designer of the late 70's, turns out he collaborated with Roland to create the MIDI specification. This is a little out of my interests; but MIDI is really familiar to anyone who did personal computing and digital audio instruments in the 80's. Maybe arcade games too, that's how they sounded. MIDI is both a simple cabling and serial interface to connect digital audio instruments to a computer; and a specification for codes to represent instruments, tones and duration. Something between sheet music and a piano roll. The instrument renditions are pretty simple: square and triangular waveforms with envelopes. Not a hard program to write in 8-bit assembler, a simple D/A, even a 1-bit R/C network. It's incredibly data-compact to represent a song by notes and instruments. That mattered with 70's and 80's computers and later with consumer electronic piano keyboards, drumsets, etc. But to this day, a Web browser and most audio playback programs can play a MIDI file. So I thought I'd give a shout-out as I'm listening to a MIDI theme from Duke Nukem. MIDI piano works pretty well too, there's lots of piano-roll to MIDI out there. So a Scott Joplin tune from 1902, realized in MIDI, sounds alright. Or Gershwin! 89K bytes: https://www.midis101.com/free_midi/68230/Gershwin__Medley_From_An_American_I... regards, Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT comcast DOT net
On 6/9/22 23:47, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
MIDI is both a simple cabling and serial interface to connect digital audio instruments to a computer;
I have to speak up here. MIDI is often used to connect musical instruments to a computer, especially hobbyists at home, but that's not its only role, and I'd argue from my own experience that it's a comparatively minor role. MIDI is also used to interconnect instruments, and connect controllers (like keyboards, pedals, pads, etc that don't have synthesizer circuitry in them) to instruments. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On Fri, Jun 10, 2022 at 10:01:57AM -0400, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/9/22 23:47, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
MIDI is both a simple cabling and serial interface to connect digital audio instruments to a computer;
I have to speak up here. MIDI is often used to connect musical instruments to a computer, especially hobbyists at home, but that's not its only role, and I'd argue from my own experience that it's a comparatively minor role. MIDI is also used to interconnect instruments, and connect controllers (like keyboards, pedals, pads, etc that don't have synthesizer circuitry in them) to instruments.
For anyone who would like to learn more about the contributions and career of Dave Smith, Syntaur posted a nice tribute to him yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyvbOYBBc2I ObVCF: His Prophet 5 design was one of the (if not the) first commercial synths to use a microprocessor to control an analog sound path. BLS
Thanks for posting, Herb. On 6/9/2022 11:47 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/arts/music/dave-smith-dead.html
Tonight I had a taste for some MIDI music. In searching the Web for it, I came across this obituary of Dave Smith, who passed a week ago. Known as a synthesizer designer of the late 70's, turns out he collaborated with Roland to create the MIDI specification.
This is a little out of my interests; but MIDI is really familiar to anyone who did personal computing and digital audio instruments in the 80's. Maybe arcade games too, that's how they sounded.
MIDI is both a simple cabling and serial interface to connect digital audio instruments to a computer; and a specification for codes to represent instruments, tones and duration. Something between sheet music and a piano roll. The instrument renditions are pretty simple: square and triangular waveforms with envelopes. Not a hard program to write in 8-bit assembler, a simple D/A, even a 1-bit R/C network.
It's incredibly data-compact to represent a song by notes and instruments. That mattered with 70's and 80's computers and later with consumer electronic piano keyboards, drumsets, etc. But to this day, a Web browser and most audio playback programs can play a MIDI file.
So I thought I'd give a shout-out as I'm listening to a MIDI theme from Duke Nukem. MIDI piano works pretty well too, there's lots of piano-roll to MIDI out there. So a Scott Joplin tune from 1902, realized in MIDI, sounds alright. Or Gershwin! 89K bytes:
https://www.midis101.com/free_midi/68230/Gershwin__Medley_From_An_American_I...
regards, Herb
I meant to reply to it, but ended up doing travel. Dave Smith in recent times had started a company called Dave Smith Instruments (known as DSI in the music world) that made some killer newer instruments, and then I think switched back to the Sequential brand. They are raellllllyy nice modern synths that seem kinda similar to the old ones but usually have like an OLED screen or something. They are nice, but they are serious coming in at like $2000 - 3000 I think. High quality stuff. Also Dave Smith teamed up with the Oberheim guy (Tom I think) to release a newer Oberheim synth that is awesome as well! OB-6 I think is the model, not to be confused with the Matrix 6 from Oberheim. It is sexy. I actually post "Wanted to buy broken synths" hoping to land a Prophet or Oberheim DMX drum machine, or LinnDrum or.... it works a little. Currently rebuilding a Roland Juno 106 and an Ensoniq TS-12. No leads on Sequential stuff yet. A sort of lead on a LinnDrum but a late model, not the type Prince used. Arcade games used digital sound chips but AFAIK they weren't really a midi interface between the board and chips. But might be simialr chip that is in the midi synth modules in a few cases. Yamaha chips often. Not sure if the arcade game development tools use midi -- I wouldn't be surprised if they did (Stuff like Cakewalk?) But... I happen to own a pretty rare, not well liked arcade machine known as Keyboard Mania. Keyboard Mania was made by Konami / Bemani in partenrship with Yamaha, and it has two 24 key midi keyboards under 29" CRTs sideways. There are lines that come down and you have to hit the keyboard keys in time with the line on the right note (like all the music games.) But the crazy thing is -- it has a real Yamaha Midi synth module board in it and the computer crate (It's a 603e PPC IIRC) lets the note data pass through to the real midi synth. It plays the background music from a CD-ROM CDDA audio I think, and yuo are playing over it. Midi cables go from each keyboard into the crate, and the crate has midi out to the synth module. Not common, but also not very liked of a game. But interesting. And heavy as hell. If I wasn't doing other duties at VCFe, I would do a table featuring the two 80s MIDI portables. The Yamaha C1 and the ATari STacy! Recent rebuilds. - Ethan
On 6/16/22 20:14, Ethan O'Toole via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Arcade games used digital sound chips but AFAIK they weren't really a midi interface between the board and chips. But might be simialr chip that is in the midi synth modules in a few cases. Yamaha chips often. Not sure if the arcade game development tools use midi -- I wouldn't be surprised if they did (Stuff like Cakewalk?)
There wasn't much crossover between those two worlds, at least not that I've seen. It seems the majority of arcade games use very simple, not exactly high-fidelity (but still great!) sounds chips like the AY-3-8910 and -8912, sometimes multiple of them. I'm sure you've seen those; the way they work it doesn't even make much sense to do development or prototyping with MIDI or synths from the music world for them. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
participants (5)
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Brian L. Stuart -
Dave McGuire -
Douglas Crawford -
Ethan O'Toole -
Herb Johnson