so whats the big deal about midi anyway?

  • Thread starter Thread starter distortedrumble
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distortedrumble

distortedrumble

all up in yo grill!
i'm not saying that in an insulting tone...its just that i've heard from people that its complicated and not worth messing with if you have 1/4 or rca imputs that'll do the same thing in recording...it only seems that keyboards are what go through midi to recording software and all other uses of midi requiring instruments is mainly for patches and reconfiguring
 
*shrug* Who ever said it was a "big deal"...???

It's a protocol useful to control other devices -- it is not audio. From a control perspective, it's extremely useful. It's a tool that has many uses.
 
distortedrumble said:
i'm not saying that in an insulting tone...its just that i've heard from people that its complicated and not worth messing with if you have 1/4 or rca imputs that'll do the same thing in recording...it only seems that keyboards are what go through midi to recording software and all other uses of midi requiring instruments is mainly for patches and reconfiguring
Click to expand...

It's a great tool, which you will discover once you've added a synthesizer, keyboard, and/or sound module to your set-up.

Imagine your synthesizer is set up with a piano patch and while playing you come up with some awesome riff or chord structure. If you had a midi cable connected from your synth to your recording computer, the computer would record which keys you hit, how long you held each key down, how hard you hit the key, etc. All this would be recorded in a midi track on your computer.

Now imagine the next day you wanted to see how that same riff or chord structure sounded when played by an orchestra or an organ or a flute, or...whatever. Simply select the new instrument you would like to hear and then go to your computer and play the midi track. All that information gets sent to the synthesizer and comes out this time as an orchestra instead of a piano, etc.

Imagine your performance was perfect except you hit a few sour notes or your timing was off ina few places. Using your computer, edit the midi track to correct the notes, fix the timing, etc. It's incredibly easy.
 
MIDI's also the only way you'll be able to play a soft synth...
 
What is it about midi that makes people finding it so hard to get?
 
I think distortedrumble thinks that the only way to record MIDI is with a keyboard or other piece of MIDI hardware. If I am worong please correct me.

I have only used the internal MIDI, Edirol. etc. and find it a great thing, considering I can't get an orchestra or even a 4 piece band in my basement without causing a minor riot. As it is I get flack from the Mrs. because my guitar(acoustic mind you) is too loud.

I plug in the notes on the staff and the program plays away. I can fix a bad note, rearrange sections, choose new sounds.

What's not to like??
 
who ever told you that you can do what you can with MIDI using 1/4" or RCA cables doesn't know what they are talking about with MIDI.

If you are just using a computer to create music you really don't need MIDI (but you can use it as mentioned above) the great thing about MIDI is that you can connect more than one piece of equiptment.

You can use it so that you computer can control an external sampler or drum machine or an effects module. or all three at the same time.

MIDI doesn't send audio information. it sends note info (example: press A# for 1 second) tempo info and start stop info. you can use this to sync a piece of hardware that has it's own sequencer to another sequencer. (like a korg electribe [slave] synced to an Akai MPC [master]) when you hit play on the master the slave starts too, and they paly yegether with the tempo remaining exactally the same.

another use is with a sound module you can play one keyboard and have sound come out of a sound module (when they are connected via MIDI). if you plug a different sound module and play the same sound you will get a different sound (same song different sound like playing the same soung on an electric guitar and on a piano)

doesn't sound too useful untill you realize that with a sequencer you can play many different sequences at the same time. set up to go out on mulitipul channels. with each device set to recieve on a different channel you can have many different instraments playing at the same time.
 
midi is to audio as a word processor is to a book.....it allows you to make endless edits and undo them at will, control all sorts of paramaters of your midi instruments ect....'course if you have no midi instruments then yes it's usless to you *as of right now* but it truely is one of the best things to happen to music in the past 30 years. if you're jammin' away with your band and you guys have no electronic instruments *synths, samplers, drum machines, digital effects processors, ect.* then you won't have much use for midi, but if you're a bedroom composer with a keyboard and a computer, midi is like a gift from God himself.

peace

wyd
 
gotcha!

thanks for the info....it will be very useful
 
Plus, if you have band you'll problably record real drums, but if you're a home musician with small budget and not much space in your room like many of us, you'll see how useful MIDI is for drum recording (and all the stuff mentioned above).
 
There is a joke, that explains it very well:

- Dad, what is "music notation"?
- Well, son, its kinda like MIDI file, only on paper.
 
If you don't consider a revolution a big deal, then MIDI isn't a big deal.

:cool:
 
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