http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/28/midi_merry_unbirthday/

Midi has been good to me.
 
I'm surprised it's stayed pretty much the same standard all this time.
 
It should have gone 3d by now, with numbers going from 0-4095 instead of 0-127 still.
 
It shows the amount of thought and consideration that went into the original spec for it to have got this far without drastic alterations.  It looked pretty much like it was about to die the death at the turn of the century but the advent of the modern DAW as we now know it revived it.  It looked like everything was going to go direct audio to disk around that time.
 
Love it or hate it, it still must be considered as one of the biggest and most influential advances in music technology since the piano itself.
 
Still hugely relevant today yet you could run it usefully on a 64k computer at its outset.  That is some pretty clever stuff to have come up with. 

Hippo Birdie to Midi.  I'd say the first production synth was a good a date as any.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20425376

Midi:  I think Roland was onto the concept of the music instrument digital interface first with a similar connector which later changed in 1983 to a 5 pin Midi port although limited to just note on/off, but of course later releases (keyboards) added more midi capabilities such as; velocity, pitch and modulation.  

Others companies such as; Korg also released a midi keyboard in 1982-1983, so I guess they all took off about the same time. 

Anyway, I've been using midi keyboards since then with the first being a Korg Poly 61m, later I got a Roland TR-909, Yamaha DX7 and later a Korg M1. Nowadays I have just one keyboard and mostly use a PC/DAW; SONAR, ITB VI VSTi. 

Yes, MIDI has been incredibly stable for a very long time.  

I would still rather use honest-to-goodness MIDI on a DIN connector than on USB.  I just prefer to use a dedicated interface than one that may have other traffic on it.  

Jonbouy


Hippo Birdie to Midi.  I'd say the first production synth was a good a date as any.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20425376

I'm NOT making one of my picture songs for MIDI.

Hi,

There is only one problem ... when you go to your local music store (or the Coffee Houses on Wednesdays -- only!) and you ask for someone to help you with the midi-keyboard, and some of the more advanced features that most software has ... no one knows a thing.

And, of course, asking anyone, here in the Coffee House, is like cold coffee!

Yuuukkkk!!!!

The concept and the engineering behind it is probably the single most important musical achievement in the 20th century ... the ability to mold/blend the music with the technology ... unffortunately the most technology that some musicians have is ... plug here or there ... or count to 4 repeatedly ... or ..... (... and they are so defensive about that!)

Sometimes I count to 5. Avante-garde or what?