Alan Parsons, Tom Oberheim, Dave Smith, Jordan Rudess, George Duke and Craig Anderton

you know you might get banned for this now right?

This is one of the most important vids I have seen. Anyone interested in MIDI should watch this.  Thank you Danny. 

Excellent!

banned ? doubt it... it's not the usual stuff folk post trying to plug a song that belongs in the songs forum ;-)

unless of course ya doing a sideline in dvd convertors / fake trainers aka sneakers

loving how at least one time they aren't naming certain things that have issues .. wouldn't have anything to do with them endorsing em or being a vip customer ? lol

Thank You childanny!,myself being just a guitar player,who has only ever used a controller with soft synths in Sonar[and 3rd party stuff] This was hugely interesting,and something  I probably would not have seen had you not posted it,truly cool!
Regards
Bob
PS  Although 1 1/2 hrs,and not thinking I'd get through to the end,I surely did,thanks again!

Allan is coming to Nashville this month. I was so tempted to pay the money and sit in with him, but it's like $1500.

chilldanny

Did you watch it?

Watch it? I was there. And so was Old55 (Jan)  to my left.


Anderton even tried to take my free demo copy of SONAR producer from me (which I picked up for a friend):

chilldanny


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFIZc7IMzyA

The past, present & future of MIDI, this vid may have already been posted here.
Fair enough, not Sonar related as such, and posted in the wrong forum.
But hey, I'm feeling dangerous ;)

Didi someone on there mention hovercats?
 

 
 

I got to meet Bapu. I always love meeting forum people and finding out that they're real!

What happened after the panel discussion was also interesting, an impromptu "roundtable discussion" with Alan, Stanley Clarke, George Duke, Brian Hardgroove, Lenny White, and me. I captured it on video and will post it on Harmony Central's YouTube after I've edited it.

BTW where can I get a hovercat?

"I got to meet Bapu. I always love meeting forum people and finding out that they're real!"


I'm not.

This is a great panel discussion and well worth watching for sure. I found everyone on the panel interesting. I had a set-up back in 1980 before midi was invented and was trying then to get multiple instruments to play from some sort of sequencer. I was wanting to combine different machines from different makers as they did have a different sound from each other. Getting different brands working together was tricky for sure. Multi track tape was it for a while there.

I had the Oberheim System for a while and all the stuff Tom talked about was true. Earth loops issues and also just getting it all to work properly! . Especially when connecting different CV and gate signals around the place. Korg had their own standard here. I could get the DSX sequencer from the system talking to other machines though so it was sort of the way there. Midi changed all that though.

When asked what some of the problems of midi were people did go quiet a bit there but what should have  been said was the timing issues of talking to multiple instruments down one midi port. If you wanted 16 instruments to all hit the same beat the potential for the worst case machine being about 16 ms late is possible. But this is easily overcome by using multiple midi ports and putting one or two machines on one port only. Midi is pretty fast and the internal latency for a synth to make a sound comes into play as well. The fact that the three packets of data can be sent in about 1 ms is very good latency. I also think there are plenty of CC codes to take care of a lot of things too now and into the future. I love the way modern computers and sequencers can advance or delay midi track timing to allow for all of this. Also I have limited my hardware set-up to only 8 powerful machines and they can have their own midi port each so timing can be very tight when it needs to be.

I did not agree about modern virtual machines not sounding as good as their original designs. That is incorrect. They do and they can sound very much like the original machines but go way further. Control surfaces can access lots of functions now just as well as they did earlier with knobs everywhere.

Great extra perspectives too from Jordan, George and Alan. Parsons is someone who would have used midi right from the start and still is. I am like that myself. It still forms the basis of my whole external hardware setup and does so still so easily right now. It connects three computers together so painlessly too and it all works so well. 

Velocity is something that midi added. Before that most analog synths did not have it and we had to great lengths to program it in. Touch sensitivity just was not in the playing domain for many years and all of sudden it was and just so good to have it. SPP pointer made it possible to reliably lock up to an 8 track for example and track live players over midi sequencers. I made great use of it for years. And later timecode came in and it was more flexible. Tempos could be altered afterwards.

It is wonderful that midi is still around and as Dave put it modern machines or computers can still connect to either a new hardware analog release or a much older technologies without issues using it. 

Yes, Thanks for posting! Great video.

Thanks Peter for bringing some of those things up they are very important. General midi added something very special and powerful into the bargain. Midi loops all great and how it has impacted on people. I taught computer music to juveniles in a prison for a while and it was wonderful to see them discover computers and software and get so creative with that. Midi played a big part in what we did there. Some of those guys discovered it in jail, got out and have succeeded doing composing and using the skills they learned while in jail. Some did not know they had any talent until we got some midi sequences going and got them rapping and singing etc..It opened up a whole world to them. And to me as well. 

I loved watching that video. I have owned some Oberheim stuff and it was beautiful to say the least. I have had a deep relationship with Oberheim gear.  (It's great now, still got the Oberheim sound without all the fuss!!) It was fantastic to see Tom in real life. I loved and owned Prophets too, seeing Dave Smith was very cool. I thought Jordan was very articulate and brought some very interesting points into the discussion. George Duke too from such a great players perspective. And Craig made some great points. I have been reading Craig's stuff right back since that first book on midi. It has certainly helped me understand and teach the subject too on a wide variety of levels.

I watched it in one sitting. Wished I was there to ask some questions.