[sdiy] MIDI isn't musical : Flame bait?

[Ian Fritz]

At 09:13 PM 1/13/2002, harry wrote:

>The six channels are required because each individual string has independant
>pitch bend... and sometimes complex bends (more than one string, more than
>one bend amount) are done simultaneously.
>
>Each string could have independant vibrato...

I see what you're saying. MIDI pitchbend is monophonic/per channel. OTOH 
...  why couldn't one have a system where 6 independent CC controllers 
define independent pitchbend for each note. This, of course, would be a new 
parameter set and you would have to build a special synth to support it, 
but why not?

| Agreed. The problems are more with the synths and the controller. OTOH if you
>look at the info generated by all six guitar strings as one midi stream... 
>there
>is a big
>timing issue. A guitarist can strum, pluck, hammer on, pull off... many 
>ways to
>have
>strings sound simulataneously, or nearly so.

Still ... MIDI can send 1000 commands a second. It just seems to me that 
that's enough controller information to define as complex a changing sound 
as the ear can resolve.  That's control changes well into the audio range.

>If you compose or produce music via sequencing or computer recording... 
>you need
>the playback power.  I would want to have (perhaps) an organ sound with rotary
>speaker controlled by a MIDI CC message... A horn part with ptichbend... Drums
>with NO MIDI CC's... but with absolutle good timing... its easy to tell when a
>drum
>is played out of time (like every time a real drummer touches them  ;^P )
>This adds up to a lot of MIDI channels.  I used a system with six midi output
>ports for my CD (a total of 96 channels)... I didn't use every channel of
>course...
>
>Processing time is important... You do not want the drums to read the 
>pitchbend
>of some other instrument. Sure they only read the header, but they must figure
>out that each message is NOT for them... etc.
>
>By the time the computer gets around to the last channels, a lot of time 
>can be
>wasted. Usually you can skew the tracks (in time) to compensate for delays...
>Live it would not be good (otoh live you would not do so many channels at 
>once)

Sure -- MIDI is certainly limited when it comes to playing many 
instruments. No question about that one. It seems to me that getting around 
that limit calls for a factor of 100 or so increase in speed. At that point 
a parallel interface might be better, no?

   Ian