Controlling analog synths with computers (fwd)

[John Speth]

Amen to Gene's comments: MIDI parsing thing is not as simple as it first
appears.  At least for a full featured implementation.  I think there are many
nuances and even some common misinterpretations of the MIDI spec that makes it
even trickier.  

I wrote such a MIDI parser in C for a MIDI-to-Prophet controller for my
el-cheapo 16 Mhz 286 machine which has no problem keeping up.  But the code
quickly turned into something I wasn't very proud of (spaghetti code but it
worked!).  In hindsight, I would have put alot more effort up front into a real
sleek event dispatcher (kinda like a Windows 3.1 style thing).  Then the actual
parsing code would have been alot simpler.  Better yet, a multitasking kernel
would be best.  Instead I chose a dumb loop that waits for a byte then enters
this big huge switch statement.  It was all downhill from there. Enuf said!

JJS