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Kevin Peacock
It has been a while since my last entry but, for good reason. Today we talk MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and yes that’s a mouth full. The funny thing about MIDI is even though it says “musical instrument” it has nothing to do with sound. Let me explain, think of MIDI as a movie director giving the instructions to the actors. That’s right MIDI is simple that “Instructions” or data that tell instruments or effects what to do. A lot of young or new producers in this day and age with computers being the brains of production, don’t realize there go to plugin are being manipulated through MIDI.
My mentor and I looked into one of the most popular MIDI editors found in literally all DAW’s, piano roll. Long story short, when recording a virtual instrument and you find a note or two slightly off beat you can simply move the individual notes that offend you around. Since MIDI isn’t audio it allows you to easily change the instruments while still retaining the notes played giving you the advantage of auditioning different sounds without committing. MIDI isn’t just limited to instruments, you can also manipulate effects.
MIDI is fully programmable with the most basic default functions being volume, pan, and triggering sounds. More advanced functions but are not limited to transport control, A D S R, ETC. Without midi it would be very difficult to make so many different machines and interfaces sync together and in a world with so many pieces of gear and data combined you need everything to talk to each other at the same time.
