Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Happy 30th Birthday MIDI


Did you know that it was 30 years ago that MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was born. You could say one of the first types of open source applications that revolutionised how music was made and paved the way to modern music production, sampling and the whole dance music scene.

The idea behind midi and the reason for its success was that it would be a universal standard and allow any device to speak to another thus allowing keyboards and modules form companies who would otherwise be in direct competition to each other.

No longer did everything have to played live but could instead be sequenced and played back. Early home computers such as Atari and Commodore supported MIDI and very soon were not only used in huge recording studios but also gave rise to the now common home studio setup.