Midi and Life: What Does It Mean to Be Locked-In? and Do We All Act the Same?

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Midi and Life: What Does It Mean to Be Locked-In? and Do We All Act the Same?

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MIDI exists in nearly any usable piece of consumer technology. Most of the sound we hear - alarms, ringtones, modern music, musical ambiences, etc are made in MIDI.

So what is MIDI exactly?

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The best way put by instructables.com is "MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a protocol developed in the 1980's which allows electronic instruments and other digital musical tools to communicate with each other. MIDI itself does not make sound, it is just a series of messages like "note on," "note off," "note/pitch," "pitchbend," and many more. These messages are interpreted by a MIDI instrument to produce sound. A MIDI instrument can be a piece of hardware (electronic keyboard, synthesizer) or part of a software environment (ableton, garageband, digital performer, logic...)." Source

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Looks like music huh? But doens't it look more counter-intuitive and not free-flowing like playing and enjoying music really is?

My Experience

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As a music composer, every single thing you do musically to digitally input musical information is a midi signal right now. For my wind instruments, I use a breath controller that sends MIDI CC #02 (continuous controller data) for breath values. Midi has 127 parameters, most of which are assignable. So for a grand piano loaded, the MAXIMUM amount of dynamic layers from quiet to loud are 127. That's actually an enormous amount... but on an actual piano, each note is different dynamic levels so in comparison to an acoustic piano; MIDI is limited.

Music is a great framework for me to hear how a piece could sound, but it feels like a middle-man to making actual professional music. But the truth is, it's just not at this point in technological time. Unless youc an afford a Hollywood orchestra to record your midi-to-score process, MIDI is the best bet to making stuff sound good.

Here's a track I wrote using MIDI (basically most tracks are written using MIDI in some way).

Here's a track I wrote using a MIDI click, but the rest is free flowing. The solo was recorded without any click track. It sounds messy, in ways it is and in other ways it's more human and natural. Take a listen!

Speech

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It's been predicted for some time that computer speech would get better and better over time when there's a better system for it like MIDI for music. Or perhaps the design for speech would be assigned to music and work even better. It's doubtful to me that anything will replace MIDI anytime in the near future.

Acoustic Musical Notes vs. MIDI

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A true musical note (as mentioned before with an acoustic piano) is a seemingly bottomless idea. MIDI is a brilliant way for musicians to document ways parts are performed, tempos, and is a great teaching tool.

After MIDI came about, music was treated less like an idea and more like a rigid structure that had more mandatory elements which can't be avoided. It is possible to say that snap autotune is also a byproduct of MIDI directly because of this. Hearing music more and more locked in is due to this quantization of both tempo and pitch of music we write. I often quantize my music, but at a subtle percent at 20-40% because my timing with latency isn't the strongest. Latency and delay come from connectors, computers, and cables which create a slight delay measured in milliseconds (ms). Sometimes the latency gets larger depending on the load capacity and lots of other factors such as RAM load speeds (becoming less of an issue with technological advancement).

Comparing MIDI Locking-In to Scientific Method

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Science can disqualify thoughts as it continues. People should no longer reasonably believe that flat Earth sprang into being thousands of years ago because of science and research. And most would agree it's for good reason that certain ideas are thrown out based on science proving another idea is a better idea.

MIDI removes how flexible something can be designed, or often how something is designed in the first place. The options are limited. To be able to make something "in" with what's politically possible, fashionable, easy to program, or creative, it's impossible to make it perfect using MIDI as a structure. MIDI does well at some things, but for something fluid like music it's slowed down where the industry could be and where artists could be with creative expression.

In a way, MIDI sort of removes lots of ideas that don't fit into the pitch/tempo grid it established. It also narrows the potential ideas and cements them into stone. This is NOT the future of music. I am saying this now. I've seen some people developing some things like MIDI but with thousands of steps vs 127. It sounded great, but I am hoping that Digital can create something even better than that. Music is a living thing that shouldn't be cramped down into a number that a child can count to.

Should a musician give in and just deal with MIDI? Or should we push to have something better?

Roli Seaboard

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Roli is a good example of how you can take MIDI's structure and blow it out of the park by taking advantage of it's flexibility to the maximum. I'll do a separate post on the seaboard because it's just ridiculous and is my most sacred composition tool for organic digital composition.

Mystery of MIDI and Life

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Music pushes the edge of ethereal, mystery, emotion, memory, and many other things. Music can help ponder things that aren't defined and can't necessarily be defined by words, MIDI forces it to be defined by relatively finite numbers.

It seems that more and more people are becoming MIDI-like. Always structured sort of the same, act the same, get the same type of jobs, not reinventing the system unless it's within the parameters of the already established system. People are becoming more and more limited to being defined by what can be shown in a computer alone. What's most important is that music can be changed and abandoned, scrapped... but we can't do that to ourselves. So being aware of how this might affect our lives and seeing clearly life around us is important.

MIDI seems to have become TOO hard to change. They were free in the 1600's to make music limited to the instruments they used, but today we are doing the same thing but in 1's and 0's up to 127. People now have expectations lowered and more common for a musical sound that is locked-in, tuned, tempo-synced, and perfect mathematically. This doesn't represent who we are, and we should take a listen and look around for what else there is out there.

Basically, we have lowered our standards in order to accept what MIDI has brought us. It is a BRILLIANT invention, that should have been advanced as technology is now able to handle more.

Steemians, I would love to go on and on, but want to know what you all think of this! Please comment below.