MIDI Sucks!

[Spliff]

I am a musician first and a recording artist second, and I HATE MIDI. MIDI provides music without any soul or knowledge of music whatsoever. I have been trying to find some MIDI-free software and having no luck. Please provide pro or con input as to why we should employ systems that produce music without any human influence. there will never be a program sophisticated enough to duplicate the effects produced by an actual person playing an actual instrument. True Musicians, rally with me! ;-)


BTW, how do you make those yellow smileys?

[drstawl]

I have to firmly disagree with you about MIDI. Just have a real musician play a tune on a velocity-sensitive MIDI keyboard through
a decent synthesizer. Record this sound with a good analog deck or digitally, while also recording the MIDI data. Then just have a sequencer play back the MIDI file through that same synthesizer and I doubt you can tell the real from the memorex.

[Spliff]

I'm not talking about keyboards. I'm talking about guitars, drums, bass, horns, and other fully organic instruments. The actual recording style for MIDI is not my beef. I am generally angry at programs like Cakewalk that employ MIDI as the main form of recording. I am trying to put music from real instruments onto my computer and mix them, and I have yet to find a program to do that.

[drstawl]

I see you've never played an AXON neural net guitar to MIDI converter. While this will never (at least not any time soon) be able to reproduce all the subtle sounds of a real guitar, the power of putting your music into this highly editable format is formidable.
And since the AXON is a parallel processing system, the MIDI output merely coexists with the actual sound of the guitar. You can turn off or lower the volume of the MIDI synth with a control right at your fingertips.
As to a non-MIDI recording program:
Sonic Foundry's Vegas Pro!
But why get upset about additional capability that no-one is forcing you to use?
Most of these dual-format recording programs have a control on each track to select audio or MIDI input.

[This message has been edited by drstawl (edited 07-30-1999).]

[Radian]

MIDI may have it's purpose with keyboards and other sounds you may want to trigger, but if you want to keep the sounds of your instruments to the way they are supposed to be played, then you need to go WAV. As far as I know, there is no MIDI that records the actual sound.

I've been using CoolEdit Pro 2 and it's an excellent program. It records WAV files, mp3, etc. You can run your guitar direct to your line in of your soundcard. I run mine right off my guitar pedal and into the soundcard. You can hook up a MIC and go that way. When you are done recording your separate tracks, there are many options to get your recording ready to put on cd. The program was taken over by Adobe and is now called Adobe Audition.

[bennychico11]

reminder boys and girls....MIDI is not audio, so you can't say you don't like the way MIDI sounds or how a person playing MIDI is not a real artist. MIDI is just a computer language. That's like saying you hate the way binary looks. The actual sounds come from the synth. The better the synth, the better the sounds. Also, MIDI can also just be used as a trigger to trigger REAL sounds from sound modules (loops, etc.). Right there you're getting a "musicians soul and knowledge." Also MIDI can be used to trigger lights, on/off switches, punch-in/punch-outs on recordings, etc.

MIDI and synth programming is just a different form of music. The artistry that goes into it is the composer. It's just like electronica music (not necessarily MIDI-electronica but computer music...if you know what electronica is you'll understand what i mean). Anyway...MIDI has it's place in the music world. You'd be surprised how much music you actually like or have listened to that has used MIDI

[bennychico11]

PS.
Funny how you didn't post this in the MIDI forum...scared the MIDI gurus will bash you down?? lol...

[ez_willis]

"I have been trying to find some MIDI-free software and having no luck"

You don't HAVE to use the midi features available on recording software.

[Bulls Hit]

Cakewalk Guitar Tracks is a great audio only recording program.

Not a midi channel in sight.

At least not for recording. It does support midi commands received from control surfaces

[zekthedeadcow]

I guess I'm just completely lost as to why you would go out of your way to find a progam that doesn't support midi... just don't use it... or learn to use it. Midi isn't a recording format like a .wav it's used to trigger other software and is increadably useful. If I wanted 3 synths/samplers to play the same music why bother playing the same music three times for each synth/sampler? If they sound like crap it's not midi's fault... it's either you or the synth.

[t glyptic]

Vegas is MIDI free. No MIDI in that.

[tedluk]

Originally Posted by Spliff

I'm not talking about keyboards. I'm talking about guitars, drums, bass, horns, and other fully organic instruments. The actual recording style for MIDI is not my beef. I am generally angry at programs like Cakewalk that employ MIDI as the main form of recording. I am trying to put music from real instruments onto my computer and mix them, and I have yet to find a program to do that.

Huh???

As others have pointed out, you don't need to use the MIDI features in SONAR (if that's the program you're referring to). SONAR has a full featured audio recording engine. Use that if you don't understand how to make MIDI sound good. (And GOOD it can definitely sound!)

In general, it seems foolish to throw out a tool simply because you don't know how to use it. MIDI has been around for over 20 years now. If it "sucked", don't you think people would have stopped using it or found a replacement by now?

Ted

[The Seifer]

I think SplOOF might me a dumbass

[AGCurry]

I never use MIDI as part of a finished product, but it's a GREAT tool for composing, arranging, and getting a recording project started.

[teknomike]

Don't think Mr. Spliff is going to reply to this thread anytime soon. The frigging thing is over 5 years old !!!!

Practically back from the inception of the damn board ...

[bennychico11]

Originally Posted by teknomike

Don't think Mr. Spliff is going to reply to this thread anytime soon. The frigging thing is over 5 years old !!!!

Practically back from the inception of the damn board ...

hahahah...i didn't even notice that. who the hell ressurected this forum? someone with too much time on their hands to search that far back

[mawtangent]

I've heard it said that once something gets on the internet that it never dies...This thread poves it!

[Radian]

Hi all,
I'm certainly not trying to compete MIDI and WAV here. They are different and both seem to be two very important tools for music creation. I'd like to start experimenting more with MIDI for some synth and drums tracks. I was wondering if you could suggest a program that uses both MIDI and WAV with all of the advantages that CoolEdit has. I've been recommended Cubase. I took a look at it and it looked confusing on first glance. I'd like to find a program to combine MIDI with WAV, but still have the capabilites that I have with CoolEdit for the WAV portion. Does such a program exist? or do programs tend to lean towards one or the other (MIDI or WAV).

If someone could tell me about a few programs, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm familiar with CoolEdit for my WAV's and I think it's great. However, if I can use some clean MIDI sounds for my drums, synth, etc along with my WAV pieces, that would be the best of both worlds.

[bbop73]

Originally Posted by Spliff

I am trying to put music from real instruments onto my computer and mix them, and I have yet to find a program to do that.

Uhh..is that not what samplers are for? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I record "real" drum/percussion samples while triggered via midi through a controller/keyboard.