Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. PA there and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and today I'm going to
Speaker 1: tackle a topic suggested by listener Jesse, So shout out
Speaker 1: to Jesse. Jesse wanted to know more about MIDDI. What
Speaker 1: is middy, how does it work? Why is it nearly
Speaker 1: synonymous with computer music? And is it actually a type
Speaker 1: of music in of itself. I'm going to tackle that
Speaker 1: last question first, because that was just an easy setup.
Speaker 1: While some people use MIDDY as shorthand for computer music,
Speaker 1: the two are not exactly the same thing. MIDDI stands
Speaker 1: for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and it's a protocol, a
Speaker 1: set of rules that allows a synthesizer or MIDI controller
Speaker 1: to send data to a computer or other synthesizers in
Speaker 1: a meaningful way. And in fact, no sound is sent
Speaker 1: through MINI at all, which might seem a little strange.
Speaker 1: To understand MINY and how it works, it first behooves
Speaker 1: us to go into a little history on synthesizers in general,
Speaker 1: starting with analog synthesizers. Now an analog synthesizer is an
Speaker 1: electronic musical instrument that makes use of various components to
Speaker 1: produce and shape sound. These components can be modular. In fact,
Speaker 1: the earliest analog synthesizers were entirely modular. You have to
Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of different components and patch them
Speaker 1: together with cables. This is what we call patches in
Speaker 1: order to make any sort of meaningful sound at all,
Speaker 1: and certain modules are in charge of creating certain effects
Speaker 1: or sounds. Modules can include stuff like oscillators, filters, and
Speaker 1: voltage control amplifiers. Typically, a synthesizer has at minimum three
Speaker 1: basic modules. The first is an oscillator. The oscillator's job
Speaker 1: is to create a base tone. This tone is what
Speaker 1: the rest of the modules can shape to create the
Speaker 1: different pitches and effects that change the shape of the sound.
Speaker 1: And oscillator causes energy to move between two states at
Speaker 1: a particular frequency. Now this is easiest to imagine. I
Speaker 1: think with a physical oscillator like a pendulum. If you
Speaker 1: push a pendulum, it will begin to swing or oscillate,
Speaker 1: and one full swing is one full oscillation. At the
Speaker 1: height of its swing, all of the energy in the
Speaker 1: system is potential energy. Right, it's not moving. It's at
Speaker 1: its highest point that energy converts into kinetic energy as
Speaker 1: gravity takes hold in the pendulum swings downward. This swinging
Speaker 1: is the oscillation. But oscillators will eventually run out of
Speaker 1: energy due to loss in the system. This is that
Speaker 1: law of thermodynamics. In this physical example, friction cuts down
Speaker 1: on the amount of energy within the system. It actually
Speaker 1: means the you're losing energy out of the system due
Speaker 1: to heat in circuits. Oscillators lose energy due to electrical resistance,
Speaker 1: so it's very similar. The point being that unless you
Speaker 1: continue to pour energy back into the system, it will
Speaker 1: eventually run down because it will lose enough energy so
Speaker 1: it doesn't perpetuate itself anymore. Now, again, to the physics
Speaker 1: of oscillators would take up a bit more time, so
Speaker 1: let's just leave it at the idea that there is
Speaker 1: a component within an analog synthesizer that generates a steady
Speaker 1: frequency that serves as the baseline for all other modules
Speaker 1: in the synthesizer. The second component in a typical synthesizer
Speaker 1: is the mechanism for controlling the oscillator, which is usually
Speaker 1: a keyboard similar to one on a piano, you could
Speaker 1: use other means to change the wave form, though, for example,
Speaker 1: Derriman's use fluctuations in the electromagnetic field to affect the
Speaker 1: baseline waveform. Though precise complete control of the signal isn't
Speaker 1: really possible with such an instrument, even under the control
Speaker 1: of a skilled player. The keyboard or pitch wheel or
Speaker 1: whatever can set the oscillators frequency will affect the pitch.
Speaker 1: The frequency of a sound and how we perceive that
Speaker 1: sound are directly related. Lower frequencies produce lower pitch sounds.
Speaker 1: Human hearing ranges from about twenty hurts or twenty cycles
Speaker 1: of a sound wave per second, up to twenty thousand hurts.
Speaker 1: As we get older, like me, those upper ranges start
Speaker 1: to get harder for us to perceive. This is the
Speaker 1: principle behind some anti youth, anti loitering strategy supposedly employed
Speaker 1: by certain convenience store owners, which have reportedly resorted to
Speaker 1: playing very high pitch sounds that adults can't really hear
Speaker 1: because they've lost that ability, they've lost that range of hearing.
Speaker 1: But those lousy kids in that mangi mutt can totally
Speaker 1: hear it, and it irritates the heck out of them
Speaker 1: so they don't stick a range your store for too long.
Speaker 1: The third component found in typical synthesizers would be the
Speaker 1: filters and effects you can apply to the sounds waveform
Speaker 1: to change the nature of the sound the feel of it.
Speaker 1: These filters let you select which elements of the frequency
Speaker 1: can pass through to an amplifier so that it can
Speaker 1: hit a speaker and be heard by gate Keeping elements
Speaker 1: of frequencies, you can change that shape or nature of
Speaker 1: a sound, which is why you can have a synthesizer
Speaker 1: take on many different sounds even though it's starting with
Speaker 1: the same basic wave form. Beyond frequency or pitch and
Speaker 1: amplitude or volume, you can also manipulate the change in
Speaker 1: volume over the lifespan of a sound. So if you
Speaker 1: press down on a piano key quickly and firmly, you'll
Speaker 1: notice that the sound is initially loud and then fades off,
Speaker 1: and when you let up off the piano key, it
Speaker 1: will eventually stop. If you mess with the sustained pedals,
Speaker 1: you can push down that same key with the same
Speaker 1: force and hear it play out a little differently. And
Speaker 1: we describe this process with synthesizers by dividing it up
Speaker 1: into phases, and they're called attack, decay, sustain and release,
Speaker 1: or a D s R. The attack describes the time
Speaker 1: it takes from the press of a key or the
Speaker 1: null sound zero volume to reach the peak of that
Speaker 1: keys volume. The decay is the time it takes to
Speaker 1: go from the peak of the volume to a designated
Speaker 1: sustain level. The sustain is the volume of sound that
Speaker 1: should play until the respective key is released by the player.
Speaker 1: The release time is the amount of time it takes
Speaker 1: for the sustained volume to decay to null again. The
Speaker 1: various effects on synthesizers can change these elements, creating louder
Speaker 1: or softer sustains. You can even have a sustain that
Speaker 1: gets louder than the attack if you wanted to, and
Speaker 1: you could have longer or shorter decay times and tons
Speaker 1: more effects. It helps create a more dynamic experience with
Speaker 1: a synthesized instrument. After the synthesizer manipulates the basic wave
Speaker 1: form based on the keys pressed or however you're controlling
Speaker 1: the pitch and the various filters or effects that are
Speaker 1: in play, it sends the electrical signal to an amplifier.
Speaker 1: The amplifier's job is to control the volume the played sound,
Speaker 1: typically by passing it through a series of what are
Speaker 1: called envelope controls. That goes back to that a D
Speaker 1: s R. I was talking about. Envelope controls are essentially
Speaker 1: tables of data points that describe the nature of the
Speaker 1: sound generated when a key is pressed. Early synthesizers used
Speaker 1: actual physically distinct modules to control all this, like I
Speaker 1: said before, and you would hook all these modules up
Speaker 1: to a keyboard with various patch wires, and you would
Speaker 1: manipulate various switches and knobs to coax the sound you
Speaker 1: wanted out of the synthesizer. And if you didn't get
Speaker 1: the sound you wanted, you might have to add additional
Speaker 1: components to change things up. Now, the history of synthesizers
Speaker 1: is somewhat debatable, and that's because people disagree over what
Speaker 1: actually counts as a synthesizer. Some say that the tell
Speaker 1: harmonium should count. The tell harmonium, also known as the
Speaker 1: dynamo phone, which I swear sounds like something Homer Simpson
Speaker 1: would say, was invented by Thaddeus Hill in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: It was an elect trick organ that could send music
Speaker 1: electronically across telephone networks. Now, his goal was to create
Speaker 1: an instrument capable of creating perfect tones consistently. Physical musical
Speaker 1: instruments need to be tuned, and they can change their
Speaker 1: tones based upon variables like temperature and humidity, not to
Speaker 1: mention the skill of the person playing, But the tell
Speaker 1: Harmonium would harness electricity to create pitch perfect tones over
Speaker 1: and over again, or so is the idea. But the
Speaker 1: tell Harmonium didn't allow the player to put precise controls
Speaker 1: on the quality of a sound, something that some argue
Speaker 1: should be a basic trait of synthesizers. So they say, well,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't count. The Thereman, which came out in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: also fails in this regard. French inventors Eduard Couplau and
Speaker 1: Armand give Lais created the piano with electronic components in
Speaker 1: that comes closer to the definition many except as cannon
Speaker 1: for synthesizers. The first device to actually use the word
Speaker 1: synthesizer appears to have been the r C A Electronic
Speaker 1: music Synthesizer Mark one, which debuted in nineteen fifty six
Speaker 1: and used tuning forks to generate tones It read music
Speaker 1: from a strip of paper tape that had holes punched
Speaker 1: into it, so it's sort of like a player piano.
Speaker 1: But if we're talking modern synthesizers, we got to talk
Speaker 1: about Robert Moge, the genius behind the Mogue synthesizer. I've
Speaker 1: done a full episode about Mogue in the past, so
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna dwell on it too much here. I'll
Speaker 1: just add that he created the first commercial synthesizer by
Speaker 1: modern standards in nineteen sixty four, and it was the
Speaker 1: Moges nine series Modular Systems. One big limitation in most
Speaker 1: analog synthesizers is in the number of notes it can
Speaker 1: play simultaneously. Many analog synthesizers are monophonic, meaning they can
Speaker 1: only produce one tone at a time. If you held
Speaker 1: down two keys, you would not get two tones. If
Speaker 1: you want to create a poly phonic sound the way
Speaker 1: you could with say a piano, you'd have to either
Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of musicians together, each playing one
Speaker 1: section of a polyphonic piece on their own mode synthesizer,
Speaker 1: whichever analog synthesizer they're using, all in time with one another,
Speaker 1: or you'd have to record multiple tracks to fill in
Speaker 1: the tones, so each track would represent a different monophonic melody,
Speaker 1: and played together you would get the polyphonic effect. Eventually,
Speaker 1: some analog synthesizers supported polyphonic tones at a limited level,
Speaker 1: for example four notes played simultaneously, and they tended to
Speaker 1: be incredibly expensive. As for digital synthesizers, which are at
Speaker 1: their hearts computers working with bits as a good old
Speaker 1: zeros and ones of machine language, those trace their history
Speaker 1: back to research in the late fifties, but commercial digital
Speaker 1: synthesizers really got their start in the nineteen eighties next
Speaker 1: craze New Wave. Like analog sent the sizers, they generate
Speaker 1: or modulate waveforms to create sounds. The process from a
Speaker 1: very high level is similar, but the details are different,
Speaker 1: and digital synthesizers can do some things that analog synthesizers
Speaker 1: either cannot do or it cannot do very well. For example,
Speaker 1: one analog synthesizer might be monophonic or have limited polyphonic capabilities.
Speaker 1: A basic digital synthesizer could have a polyphony if you like,
Speaker 1: of sixty four notes being played simultaneously, although I should
Speaker 1: add that that depends also on how many voices you're
Speaker 1: playing on this synthesizer. With each voice, you reduce the
Speaker 1: number of notes that can be played simultaneously, because each
Speaker 1: voice gets a certain number of notes dedicated to it.
Speaker 1: That being said, there's no guarantee that a digital synthesizer
Speaker 1: will sound better than an analog one. It could or
Speaker 1: it might not. It all depends upon build quality of
Speaker 1: the two synthesizers. Sound quality relies on more than just
Speaker 1: the number of options you have when you're shaping sound.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's the basic info on synthesizers. Now
Speaker 1: let's talk about many. In the early nineteen eighties, a
Speaker 1: man named Dave Smith saw the need for a universal
Speaker 1: standard that would allow synthesizers to send data to other
Speaker 1: instruments or to computers. This would give musicians unprecedented options
Speaker 1: when making music, including new ways to manipulate sound. Synthesizers
Speaker 1: were versatile, but no two models were exactly alike, particularly
Speaker 1: from different manufacturers. One model might have a really cool
Speaker 1: feature that other synthesizers lacked, but fall short on a
Speaker 1: completely different feature. A universal protocol could let a musician
Speaker 1: chain together multiple instruments or perform additional processes on sound
Speaker 1: at the computer level. Related to this problem, is one
Speaker 1: of competing proprietary approaches to musical interfaces. Without a standard,
Speaker 1: each synthesizer manufacturer would be compelled to produce its own
Speaker 1: interface with other synthesizers and with computers. In fact, such
Speaker 1: standards did exist, they weren't there weren't really standards, They
Speaker 1: were proprietary approaches that were unique to specific manufacturers like Rowland,
Speaker 1: for example, or Yamaha. Then you would have a bunch
Speaker 1: of competing technologies on the market that more likely than not,
Speaker 1: would be impossible to chain together, so you'd be locked
Speaker 1: into one ecosystem. You would have to be all in
Speaker 1: on Rowland, or all in on Mogue, or all in
Speaker 1: on Yamaha. You couldn't mix and match because they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to talk to each other. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like the early days of computing before arpanet came along
Speaker 1: and you had a set of protocols that would let
Speaker 1: computers talk to each other. Same basic problem existed at
Speaker 1: at the early nineteen eighties. It was a huge mess
Speaker 1: for musicians and producers, So a universal standard would set
Speaker 1: a level playing field, give musicians and producers the greatest
Speaker 1: number of options when creating music and avoid fragmentation of
Speaker 1: the market. Dave Smith first proposed such a standard in
Speaker 1: nine one at a meeting of the Audio Engineering Society,
Speaker 1: and he called his first approach the Universal Synthesizer Interface.
Speaker 1: Smith recognized that while manufacturers were able to create systems
Speaker 1: that would allow you to control multiple synthesizers made by
Speaker 1: that manufacturer, there was still no standard that would allow
Speaker 1: for interoperability, and manufacturers were concerned that this issue was
Speaker 1: costing them customers by creating this frustrating environment. Two years later,
Speaker 1: he would release the first version of the MIDI protocols.
Speaker 1: This three, he didn't develop the protocol all by himself.
Speaker 1: Major synthesizer companies like Roland, Yamaha, and several others were
Speaker 1: all involved in designing the set of rules and standards.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty remarkable display of competitors working together
Speaker 1: to create a technology that would benefit the entire industry,
Speaker 1: not just one company within it. The designers decided that
Speaker 1: MIDI would send information as a list of events or
Speaker 1: messages to instruct a device how to make a certain
Speaker 1: type of sound. Now, again, this wasn't a music file
Speaker 1: or any other form of music, but rather direct is
Speaker 1: the recipient would follow to generate the appropriate sound. I'll
Speaker 1: talk about some of the typical MINI messages in the
Speaker 1: next section, but first let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Here are a few basic messages the
Speaker 1: Mini protocol defined note on. This is a message that
Speaker 1: indicates a note has been initiated, which is pretty self
Speaker 1: explanatory by the name. So on a keyboard, this would
Speaker 1: be when a key has been pressed, but other instruments
Speaker 1: can also have mini ports on them, so it could
Speaker 1: also mean a guitar string is strummed or a clarinet
Speaker 1: has produced a note. The instructions tell the device receiving
Speaker 1: this data which note has been played and the velocity
Speaker 1: of the note. Velocity equals how hard the note was played,
Speaker 1: so with a piano key it relates to volume. For example,
Speaker 1: if you press the key faster, it indicates a harder strike,
Speaker 1: which means that the note should be louder. Not every
Speaker 1: MIDI keyboard is capable of actually recording that information, but
Speaker 1: a lot of them are. They have that velocity sensitive keys,
Speaker 1: so you can actually record that info. Note off is
Speaker 1: a similar message. It tells when the receiving device uh
Speaker 1: that a played note has ended, so it might be
Speaker 1: when you have released a key, or when vibrations stop
Speaker 1: along a string, and that message says, all right, at
Speaker 1: this point, stop playing a note because there's no longer
Speaker 1: a thing that's generating that sound. Polyphonic key pressure is
Speaker 1: another instruction that tells the receiving device how hard a
Speaker 1: key was pressed once it bottoms out in its lowest position.
Speaker 1: Some keyboards use this to add effects to notes, such
Speaker 1: as vibrato. The bar brato. By the way, that's a
Speaker 1: rapid variation in pitch, So you add a quick oscillation
Speaker 1: and pitch to create vibrato. It adds a richness to sound. Also,
Speaker 1: singers use it to cover up the fact that they
Speaker 1: can't hit a note. That's a little shade throwing right there. Also,
Speaker 1: I do this too. So. Control change is a message
Speaker 1: that indicates that some sort of controller has been activated
Speaker 1: to affect the quality of a sound. Controllers can take
Speaker 1: many forms. You could have pedals, you could have knobs.
Speaker 1: Then control change message contains information that indicates which controller
Speaker 1: was used and the signs of value from zero to one,
Speaker 1: seven or one to eight, depending upon the implementation. To
Speaker 1: describe the magnitude of this change, The pitch wheel change
Speaker 1: message records instances of pitch wheel use. That's not useful
Speaker 1: at all, is it. A pitch wheel is a control
Speaker 1: that allows a musician to affect the pitch of a
Speaker 1: played note, and they can control it dynamically. This creates
Speaker 1: the effect of bending a musical note. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard musical piece where a note is played and
Speaker 1: then starts to shift to a different pitch without a
Speaker 1: new note being played, that's kind of what a pitch
Speaker 1: wheel is able to do. And then there are system
Speaker 1: ex collusive or six X messages. This allows for custom
Speaker 1: patches and effects. Manufacturers could use these messages to allow
Speaker 1: a mini controller to take advantage of unique features of
Speaker 1: their instruments. For example, so let's say you're a manufacturer
Speaker 1: and you've got a synthesizer that has a new type
Speaker 1: of effect, and no other synthesizers have this. It's proprietary.
Speaker 1: You've got this cool effect that no one else has
Speaker 1: been able to replicate. The sis X feature would allow
Speaker 1: you to designate a method for a mini controller to
Speaker 1: engage that feature without sharing it to everybody else. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: you'd have a keyboard that has a really cool ability,
Speaker 1: but you never be able to use it through a
Speaker 1: MIDI controller because there'd be no way to designate that command. Right,
Speaker 1: you have your own proprietary effect. If you don't create
Speaker 1: a command for it in MIDI, then the controller won't
Speaker 1: have any instructions that can send to the synthesizer to
Speaker 1: replicate it. Now, you could still get the effect by
Speaker 1: working with the synthesizer directly, but you want be able
Speaker 1: to send those MIDI instructions to any other device because
Speaker 1: there wouldn't there wouldn't be language to take care of
Speaker 1: that particular instance. Sis X messages allowed for these exceptions,
Speaker 1: these custom patches. A MIDI file has the extension m
Speaker 1: I D or mid. If you could read these files
Speaker 1: in natural language, like if you were able to translate
Speaker 1: this as a set of instructions, they would seem like
Speaker 1: really detailed instructions on how to play a certain piece
Speaker 1: of music, not just what the notes are, but how
Speaker 1: to play those notes. It would be similar to reading
Speaker 1: sheet music, but only if the sheet music contained all
Speaker 1: sorts of minutia about the performance of the piece. And
Speaker 1: it's not just how that one piece should be performed,
Speaker 1: it's how that piece actually was performed once upon a time,
Speaker 1: So it means you're not just transcribing music. You are
Speaker 1: actually re creating a performance of a musical piece. And
Speaker 1: you could actually create a mid file by playing a
Speaker 1: MIDI enabled musical instrument connected to a computer. It it's
Speaker 1: actually sequencing your playing as you play it, so you
Speaker 1: are creating a precise record on how to play the
Speaker 1: same piece of music the exact same way in the future.
Speaker 1: So again, it's not a recording, it's a set of
Speaker 1: instructions saying, if you want to play what I just
Speaker 1: played the way I played it, follow these instructions exactly,
Speaker 1: and it will be as if I were playing it
Speaker 1: all over again, which is pretty cool all by itself.
Speaker 1: But an additional benefit of the MIDI system is that
Speaker 1: you can modify those instructions in different ways without affecting everything. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you record a piece of music in
Speaker 1: some sort of conventional format and you then play it
Speaker 1: at a faster speed, you're going to increase the pitch.
Speaker 1: If I recorded a performance onto a physical medium like
Speaker 1: a vinyl record, and then I played the record back
Speaker 1: at a speed that was one and a half times
Speaker 1: faster than what a normal playback would be. But with midfiles,
Speaker 1: you can increase the speed of a playback without effecting
Speaker 1: the pitch. You aren't speeding up a recording of a performance,
Speaker 1: but rather decreasing the amount of time between instructions, and
Speaker 1: so you can change the temple of music easily without
Speaker 1: also changing the pitch of the recording. Or if you
Speaker 1: want to change the pitch, you could do that too.
Speaker 1: You could take the instructions and apply a new instruction
Speaker 1: to shift the playback into a different key of music.
Speaker 1: The tempo would be the same, but the key would
Speaker 1: be completely different. You could take music that was programmed
Speaker 1: in a major key and you can flip it to
Speaker 1: a minor key. Or you could take a song and
Speaker 1: shift the pitch down or up to better suit someone's voice.
Speaker 1: If you've ever gone to karaoke and the karaoke machine
Speaker 1: had an option to change the pitch to pitch something
Speaker 1: up or down so it's closer to your vocal range,
Speaker 1: you've experienced this. The karaoke machine was using mini files
Speaker 1: to recreate a song, and then you can dynamically tell it, Hey,
Speaker 1: I need this pitched up or pitched down so I
Speaker 1: can actually rock out with Hit me with your best
Speaker 1: shot and make sure it's in my vocal range. Another
Speaker 1: big benefit of the mid file format is file size.
Speaker 1: Because there's no recorded media in the file, the file
Speaker 1: sizes are relatively small, so a minute of compressed audio
Speaker 1: like an MP three might end up being about ten
Speaker 1: megabytes of data data. But if you take a MIDI
Speaker 1: file and it represents the exact same amount of sound,
Speaker 1: it's a minute worth of sound. Although again remember there's
Speaker 1: no recorded sound in a MIDI file just represents that
Speaker 1: that would only take up ten kilobytes of space, so
Speaker 1: much smaller file sizes and a lot of data gets
Speaker 1: packed into those small files. The MIDI protocol supports a
Speaker 1: total of one notes, ranging from the C five five
Speaker 1: octaves below middle C all the way up to the
Speaker 1: G ten octaves above middle C up to sixteen. Separate
Speaker 1: devices can be controlled through a single chain or more
Speaker 1: if you want multiple devices to produce the same response.
Speaker 1: So for example, if you want both a piano and
Speaker 1: a claren at to play back the same melody line
Speaker 1: and a piece of music, they could each follow the
Speaker 1: exact same set of instructions and they would count as
Speaker 1: just one channel of data rather than two channels of data.
Speaker 1: You would just put those in serial with each other,
Speaker 1: and you could still divide up the rest of the
Speaker 1: channels among other instruments. In addition to this, you can
Speaker 1: have up to a D eight voice or effect settings
Speaker 1: called programs. These are the various modifiers that can change
Speaker 1: the shape of the sound in various ways to keep
Speaker 1: everything synchronized across multiple instruments. Not to mention other elements
Speaker 1: that I'll talk about later, MIDI has support for built
Speaker 1: in clock pulses. The clock pulses make sure that each
Speaker 1: component in the overall system is on the same starting point.
Speaker 1: If the MIDI standard didn't have this, there'd be no
Speaker 1: way to synchronize a controller, to manipulate multiple devices and
Speaker 1: have them work in harmony with each other. They would
Speaker 1: all start to get off time with each other and
Speaker 1: you would end up with a huge mess. So you
Speaker 1: have to have this clock pulse feature to make sure
Speaker 1: every single instrument in the system is sync with each other.
Speaker 1: The way you generate a MIDI file is using either
Speaker 1: a MIDI enabled synthesizer which doesn't have to be a keyboard,
Speaker 1: but more frequently than not it is a keyboard, or
Speaker 1: a MIDI controller. So what's the difference. Well, synthesizers can
Speaker 1: create sound while they simultantaneously generate MIDI data. They have
Speaker 1: a sound generator built into the device, they become workstations.
Speaker 1: A MIDI controller only generates the data. So many MIDI
Speaker 1: controllers look like musical keyboards, but they do not generate
Speaker 1: any music when you play them, uh on their own.
Speaker 1: So you're not like tickling the keys and hearing music
Speaker 1: back unless you've already hooked it up to a computer
Speaker 1: and the computers sound card is able to generate the
Speaker 1: music in real time back to you. So what's the
Speaker 1: whole point. Well, imagine that you have your MIDI controller
Speaker 1: keyboard in front of you, and you've used cables to
Speaker 1: connect to your controller to several other devices such as
Speaker 1: a MIDI enabled drum machine, MIDI enabled synthesizer, and electronic clarinet.
Speaker 1: You've mapped your MIDI controller keyboard keys to each of
Speaker 1: those connected components, so that when you play one section
Speaker 1: of the keyboard, you're controlling one of them. Like let's
Speaker 1: say that you've got sixty four keys, and the bottom
Speaker 1: few you've got maybe the Bobs sixteen that controls the
Speaker 1: drum pad, and then the other two sections control the
Speaker 1: the synthesizer, and the top section controls the electronic clarinet.
Speaker 1: That would be one way of doing this. So while
Speaker 1: the controller itself doesn't generate sound, the instructions that sends
Speaker 1: to each of those components makes those components make the sound.
Speaker 1: So you really just have a control system. It's really
Speaker 1: no different from like a joystick or a mouse. It's
Speaker 1: an input device and your output devices happen to be
Speaker 1: these other components. So think of it in that sense.
Speaker 1: When you think of MIDI controllers and synthesizers as very
Speaker 1: specialized computers, it starts to be a little easier to understand.
Speaker 1: So you've just increased the number of instruments you can
Speaker 1: simultaneously control using a single MIDI controller connected to them.
Speaker 1: You could also use one of these silent controllers to
Speaker 1: create a MIDI file on a computer, but unless you
Speaker 1: were playing that music back on the computer, would be
Speaker 1: really hard to hear how it was turning out. It
Speaker 1: would be difficult to see if in fact what you
Speaker 1: were doing was what you wanted. So most MIDI sequencers,
Speaker 1: which are what we call the programs that translate the
Speaker 1: actions you take into the mathematical data that is a
Speaker 1: MIDI file. Uh, most of them have playback so that
Speaker 1: you can actually hear what's happening while you're playing. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it would be really difficult to figure out if you
Speaker 1: were doing things correctly. And as I say, the process
Speaker 1: is called sequencing. So the sequencer is the tool that
Speaker 1: records all those messages, the messages that are in the
Speaker 1: they're in eight bits per message, so eight bits is
Speaker 1: a bite. Each message is made up of a bite,
Speaker 1: and the sequencer maps those instructions out against a timeline.
Speaker 1: It records when a note is played and at what velocity,
Speaker 1: what strength, as well as any effects that were on
Speaker 1: the note at that time of it being played. And
Speaker 1: sequencers can be standalone programs. They can be built directly
Speaker 1: into musical instruments. They can also be independent pieces of hardware.
Speaker 1: So you could have a sequencer that is its own
Speaker 1: individual electronic unit and you plug into it, or a
Speaker 1: sequencer could be built into a synthesizer, or a sequencer
Speaker 1: could be a piece of software running on a computer.
Speaker 1: You have lots of different options. So let's say you've
Speaker 1: got a MIDI enabled synthesizer and you want to record
Speaker 1: to a mid file. What else do you need? Well,
Speaker 1: if it's a keyboard that also has a MIDI sequencer
Speaker 1: in it, then you have a workstation. You've got everything
Speaker 1: you need right there. You could just record it to
Speaker 1: the device. If it's not if it's a synthesizer that
Speaker 1: has a mini output but does not have a mini
Speaker 1: sequencer itself, you could get a hardware sequence. Those tend
Speaker 1: to be a little expensive, but you get what you
Speaker 1: pay for. You can find low cost software sequencers on
Speaker 1: a computer, and then you could hook up your synthesizer
Speaker 1: via cable to the computer, depending upon how old we're talking,
Speaker 1: Like if you're using an ancient synthesizer and an ancient computer,
Speaker 1: you'll be using a specific MIDI cable for that. These
Speaker 1: days we mostly use USB. I'll tell you more about
Speaker 1: cables in just a minute. And you can look at
Speaker 1: all sorts of options in between, so expensive hardware, cheap software,
Speaker 1: and then there's a whole bunch of different stuff and
Speaker 1: in between also keyboards that have the MIDI sequencers built
Speaker 1: into them. Those can range from being fairly reasonably priced
Speaker 1: to really expensive. If you want something that is top
Speaker 1: of the line, We're talking hundreds of dollars in those cases.
Speaker 1: But that's the kind of stuff that professionals will use
Speaker 1: if they are arranging music and they're trying to record stuff.
Speaker 1: Some older MIDI keyboards could push MIDI data out through
Speaker 1: a port, but wouldn't play sound while doing so, so
Speaker 1: instead you'd have to listen to the music as it
Speaker 1: plays on your computers. Sound card sound cards used to
Speaker 1: be a much bigger deal back in the nineties, back
Speaker 1: when putting together a computer could become an enormous headache
Speaker 1: because you had lots of choices in graphics cards, sound cards, CPUs.
Speaker 1: Not all of them were compatible with each other, so
Speaker 1: sometimes you would find that the build you had selected
Speaker 1: didn't actually work because there were incompatibilities between the various components.
Speaker 1: It was a nightmare. But those days are mostly behind us.
Speaker 1: These days, it's a lot easier to build a machine,
Speaker 1: and it's the need for a discrete sound card has
Speaker 1: decreased because computers can handle a lot of this using
Speaker 1: their standard hardware these days, but back in the nineties
Speaker 1: you needed very specific types of hardware. Rowland made an
Speaker 1: amazing sound card. I had a uh the sound the
Speaker 1: sound Blaster sound card, but there were tons of different
Speaker 1: sound cards that came out in that time period. UM
Speaker 1: good old creative labs Man, so these days not so
Speaker 1: much a big deal. But back in those days, those
Speaker 1: sound cards had ports on them where you could plug
Speaker 1: in a MIDI cable. The connectors were these, uh appropriately
Speaker 1: enough called MIDI cables. They were a five prong DN
Speaker 1: connector d I N connector. So what does d I
Speaker 1: N stand for. HYAN stands for Deutsch Institute for Norman.
Speaker 1: Of course, that, by the way, as a national standards
Speaker 1: organization in Germany and the one that defined this particular
Speaker 1: standard for connectors. And there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: orientations for d I N connectors, not just the MIDI style.
Speaker 1: Their tons different variations, including different layouts for five pin connectors,
Speaker 1: but standard MIDI cables all have the same orientation because
Speaker 1: it's a standard. These cables didn't send variable voltage signals.
Speaker 1: So the old analog synthesizers, the way they generated music
Speaker 1: was all through varying voltage. That was kind of the
Speaker 1: secret sauce if you want to get down to the
Speaker 1: basic level of what's happening from an electronic standpoint, it's
Speaker 1: all about varying voltage to get different effects and create
Speaker 1: different sounds. But that's not how many synthesizers communicate. All
Speaker 1: the information that mini synthesizers send is in binary that's
Speaker 1: a zero or a one. With such a basic system,
Speaker 1: you don't have to vary voltage. You just have to
Speaker 1: have either voltage applied, which would be like a one,
Speaker 1: or no voltage applied, which would be a zero. Mini messages,
Speaker 1: like I said, are in the form of bytes or
Speaker 1: eight bits. Coding with Mini tends to be done in
Speaker 1: hexadecimal format, which represents nibbles, and nibble is half of
Speaker 1: a byte, so it's four bits. So with every four
Speaker 1: bits you can use that to create a hexadecimal figure.
Speaker 1: Hexadecimal is um base sixteen. I mentioned it in a
Speaker 1: previous podcast, and the way you express base sixteen is
Speaker 1: after you get past the number ten, you typically start
Speaker 1: using letters like abc, etcetera. Uh So hexadecimal makes it
Speaker 1: easier to understand what each of those nibbles happens to be.
Speaker 1: It's easier to understand that compared to just looking at
Speaker 1: zeros or ones um As it turns out, eventually you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to worry about even working in hexadecimal because
Speaker 1: you would get MIDI editing software that would have a
Speaker 1: graphic user interface or COUEY, so you no longer had
Speaker 1: to worry about even looking at just lists of hexadecimal figures,
Speaker 1: which would cause me to get a really severe headache
Speaker 1: and cry. So I'm glad that that's not a thing anymore.
Speaker 1: The MIDI protocol supports bit data rates of up to
Speaker 1: thirty one two d fifty bits per second. Information on
Speaker 1: a MIDI cable is strictly one way only, so if
Speaker 1: you I to have two way communication between various components,
Speaker 1: you would have to have two cables. Media equipment from
Speaker 1: this early era tends to have multiple ports with labels
Speaker 1: like in, out, and through. Now those labels tell you
Speaker 1: which direction information will flow from that port through a
Speaker 1: MIDI cable, So out means that data will move out
Speaker 1: from that port. If you connect a cable to that port,
Speaker 1: information will go out over that cable, and then you
Speaker 1: would connect the other end of that cable into the
Speaker 1: inport of some other MIDI component. So let's say I've
Speaker 1: got a controller and I want to hook it up
Speaker 1: to a drum pad my controller, I would hook the
Speaker 1: cable to the outport, and in the drum pad, I
Speaker 1: would connect that to the import. That way, all the
Speaker 1: instructions I play on the controller will go out and
Speaker 1: into the drum pad. The through port, by the way,
Speaker 1: duplicates anything that's coming in through the in port. And
Speaker 1: the reason for that is if you want two hook
Speaker 1: up a bunch of components in sequence, and you want
Speaker 1: all of them to follow the exact same set of instructions,
Speaker 1: then you hook up your MIDI controller to the outport,
Speaker 1: put it into the first device in its import, then
Speaker 1: hook up a second cable to that devices through port
Speaker 1: into a second devices import, and then both device one
Speaker 1: and two will follow the same set of instructions because
Speaker 1: the second device is copying the same set of instructions
Speaker 1: that the first one is getting from your controller. And
Speaker 1: not every device out there a mini enabled device has
Speaker 1: all of these ports, some of them only have imports,
Speaker 1: some of them only have outports. It just depends upon
Speaker 1: what the device is and how expensive it is, because
Speaker 1: the more features you add to these gadgets typically the
Speaker 1: more expensive they get, so because you're adding extra components
Speaker 1: into the electronic device. These days, as you may encounter
Speaker 1: MIDI controllers and synthesizers that use USB or Universal Serial
Speaker 1: Bus connectors instead of those standard MIDI cables. Those MIDI
Speaker 1: cables are are more or less a thing of the
Speaker 1: past unless you're using antiquated equipment these days, and that's
Speaker 1: because many of these devices have an integrated MIDI interface
Speaker 1: that can accept the digital information directly without the need
Speaker 1: for that special cable. The information itself remains the same,
Speaker 1: only the the delivery of the information has changed, so
Speaker 1: the type of data hasn't changed at all, it's just
Speaker 1: the way it gets from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: The quality of a MIDI playback depends heavily upon the
Speaker 1: equipment you're using to play the file, So if you
Speaker 1: have a super sweet MIDI enabled keyboard, the quality should
Speaker 1: be pretty darn good. If you're using a cheap piece
Speaker 1: of technology with a weedy sound processing capability, it might
Speaker 1: be less impressive. So for a long time, the m
Speaker 1: I D mid file format was the preferred one for
Speaker 1: cell phone ring tones. The files took up a small
Speaker 1: amount of space and could allow a phone to play
Speaker 1: all sorts of songs, including popular ones everyone knows, and
Speaker 1: not just a dozen or so default ring tones that
Speaker 1: seemed to come with every phone. These days, storage space
Speaker 1: on phones is not as big a concern, and a
Speaker 1: lot of ringtones use other file formats, including MP three files.
Speaker 1: So Mini is not as big a deal on phones anymore,
Speaker 1: but it still has its place where Well I'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that in a second, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Why did the Mini protocols become a standard. Well, remember
Speaker 1: that Dave Smith created the first protocol in three and
Speaker 1: at that time computers and related equipment had a limited
Speaker 1: ability to handle data transfers, so this was an era
Speaker 1: before broadband and high speed data transfer cables. The Mini
Speaker 1: protocols allowed musicians to create detailed instructions on how a
Speaker 1: performance should be played and send it in manageable chunks
Speaker 1: of data, either to a computer or to other musical instruments.
Speaker 1: It was an elegant solution for a particularly tricky problem.
Speaker 1: The Atari ST, which debuted in February, featured a built
Speaker 1: in MIDI port and supported mini sequencer software, bringing the
Speaker 1: ability to record music into the home studio. This was
Speaker 1: a huge shift from the norm where you'd have to
Speaker 1: rely upon a professional recording space to lay down tracks. Now,
Speaker 1: with the right MIDI controllers and atri e st, you
Speaker 1: could create your own musical masterpiece, and other computers followed suit,
Speaker 1: and plenty of sound card manufacturers included support for mini connections.
Speaker 1: In addition, many allowed people to record on multiple channels,
Speaker 1: and then, because the data was all digital, you can
Speaker 1: mess with it after you recorded it, so you could
Speaker 1: not only tweak instructions to play back at a different
Speaker 1: pitch or a different tempo. You could also copy and
Speaker 1: paste sections, making a short drum track repeat the entire
Speaker 1: length of a piece of music, for example, or you
Speaker 1: could grab a section of music and shift it to
Speaker 1: a different place along the overall piece. You can mix
Speaker 1: up a track, You can mash it with other mini
Speaker 1: tracks and come up with all sorts of interesting effects.
Speaker 1: Using a software based synthesizer, also known as a soft scent,
Speaker 1: you can create virtual instruments. These software packages tend to
Speaker 1: have massive options in them, allowing you to replicate the
Speaker 1: sound of specific instruments just by selecting a few options.
Speaker 1: Using such a synthesizer, you could choose to play back
Speaker 1: a guitar riff on a synthesized nineteen four Fender stratocaster
Speaker 1: or a nineteen fifty eight Gibson E S three thirty
Speaker 1: five or even a Cordoba C three M classical guitar,
Speaker 1: or let's say you want the keyboard part played on
Speaker 1: a classic Moge synthesizer, complete with all the faders and knobs.
Speaker 1: A good soft Scent package will contain emulators for hundreds
Speaker 1: of different instruments, complete with all the options they came with.
Speaker 1: Plus they frequently will offer up additional features that can
Speaker 1: be applied to the sound beyond what the instruments would support. Natively,
Speaker 1: the MIDI standard has had several revisions since its introduction.
Speaker 1: They tend to be backwards compatible with earlier versions, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily interoperable with each other. Think of them as
Speaker 1: branching pathways. For example, Roland created Roland's General Standard or
Speaker 1: Roland GS to add in additional instruments and features not
Speaker 1: supported by the original MIDI protocol. Yamaha did something similar
Speaker 1: with the Yamaha's Extended General MIDI or x G. Both
Speaker 1: were compatible with the first generation of MIDI protocols, but
Speaker 1: they were not compatible with each other, and so there
Speaker 1: was a bit of splintering and what was meant to
Speaker 1: be a universal standard. Other refinements to the standard allow
Speaker 1: for things such as tying MIDI files to show controls
Speaker 1: like lighting or motion controls. You could create a sequence
Speaker 1: of lighting cueues tightly coupled with sound cues, this way
Speaker 1: automating the entire sequence. These sort of features are useful
Speaker 1: and everything from theatrical presentations to crazy parties. I imagine
Speaker 1: never get invited to crazy parties, but I've been to
Speaker 1: a lot of musicals. Other specifications allowed users to incorporate
Speaker 1: downloadable sounds into MIDI sequences or use alternate tunings for
Speaker 1: synthesized instruments. Now normally, these refinements were the result of
Speaker 1: collaborative efforts among various synthesizer manufacturers, so the MIDI standard
Speaker 1: is continuing to evolve today. People are still working on
Speaker 1: adding in features, and by people I mean mostly various
Speaker 1: companies that are interested parties in continuing the MIDI protocols.
Speaker 1: So again it's seeing people that are typically competitors get
Speaker 1: together to create a standard that works across multiple pieces
Speaker 1: of hardware and that benefits the end user the most.
Speaker 1: It has really changed the world of music production. Back
Speaker 1: in the old days, you had to try and get
Speaker 1: big enough so that some studio will take a chance
Speaker 1: on you and allow you time inside a actual recording
Speaker 1: studio to lay down some tracks, or you would have
Speaker 1: to pay an exorbitant amount of money in order to
Speaker 1: do so. Now, with a small, relatively small investment up front,
Speaker 1: you can make a recording studio of your own and
Speaker 1: lay down all sorts of tracks. Now you are limited
Speaker 1: in what your track is ultimately going to sound like
Speaker 1: based upon the type of playback equipment you can afford.
Speaker 1: The better the equipment, the better your your MIDI file
Speaker 1: will sound when it's played back. Otherwise, if you're playing
Speaker 1: it back on something that's fairly primitive, it's gonna sound
Speaker 1: like it came out of a cheap imitation instrument, not
Speaker 1: a really well synthesized instrument. Now, if that's the effect
Speaker 1: you're going for, it's not a big deal. Like if
Speaker 1: want to have sort of a retro kind of kitchy
Speaker 1: simulated sound, that's not that's not a big problem. But
Speaker 1: if you want something that sounds like, hey, that sounds
Speaker 1: like that's a real cello, then you want to shell
Speaker 1: out the big bucks. I can actually still pick out
Speaker 1: fake stringed instruments on even high profile uh types of
Speaker 1: of soundtracks and scores and movies in particular, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you Pirates of the Caribbean and your synthesized string sections.
Speaker 1: I hear it, but it's really really good, much better
Speaker 1: than it used to be. So the MIDI format has
Speaker 1: been incredible because again, it was such an elegant solution,
Speaker 1: creating instructions on how to recreate a performance rather than
Speaker 1: recording an existing performance and then being able to tweak
Speaker 1: that performance in any way you want, so that you
Speaker 1: can make it better than the original playthrough was, or
Speaker 1: at least different. It's really interesting to me. So I
Speaker 1: want to thank Jesse for the suggestion. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be doing a lot of episodes based off
Speaker 1: listeners suggestions over the next few weeks, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: do some more about music in the next couple of episodes.
Speaker 1: Think of it as a mini music arc of tech
Speaker 1: stuff episodes, because I kind of wanted a group together
Speaker 1: thematically linked topics. So we'll talk more about music in
Speaker 1: the next episode. But that's all for Midy for today.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for future episodes, maybe you want
Speaker 1: to get your suggestion in, like Jesse did, send me
Speaker 1: an email. The address for the show is text Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at
Speaker 1: both of those is tech stuff h s W. Remember
Speaker 1: we have an Instagram account and you can follow us
Speaker 1: on there and see all sorts of cool behind the
Speaker 1: scenes photos plus relevant information that relates back to technology
Speaker 1: in general and this show in particular. And on Wednesdays
Speaker 1: and Fridays, I stream my recording sessions live on twitch
Speaker 1: dot tv slash tech stuff. I would be happy to
Speaker 1: have you join us. We have a chat room in there.
Speaker 1: You can join in there and chat with me and
Speaker 1: talk about how I mispronounced words and make fun of me,
Speaker 1: or you can, you know, give me encouraging words too.
Speaker 1: I don't just take abuse. I also I also like
Speaker 1: it when people are nice to me. And I hope
Speaker 1: that you will join us there and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. YEA for moral this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is that how staff works dot com.