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

[Ian Fritz]

At 08:05 PM 1/15/2002, jdm at synthcom.com wrote:
>At 03:41 PM 1/15/2002, Don Tillman wrote:
>
> >A 1/4-second slide over slide over 4 octaves of white notes (think
> >Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis here) is an easy 128 notes per second.
> > <SNIP>
> >MIDI is about 1 mSec per note.
>
>.64 msec in most cases, as I've stated before.  That's 1562 notes per
>second.  When you play notes at that rate, your ears can't distinguish
>between individual notes, plain and simple.  Europa's arpeggiator sounds
>like an LFO doing pitch modulation at the higher clock rates.  Who the hell
>plays THAT fast?
>
>JDM

Yes, that agrees with some of the studies I've been reading about. Test on 
timing simultaneity, for example, show that the best that the most gifted 
people can resolve is around 10 ms.  People here who claim being able to 
resolve 1 - 2 ms don't appear credible according to these results. Also the 
fastest most people can tap a finger is about 9 Hz.  The fastest recorded 
tapping rate is 12 Hz. So banging out alternating chords at that rate (24Hz 
chord rate) would be at the absolute limit of the fastest human being on 
earth. I agree that MIDI will fail at these rates, but that is consistent 
with what I said originally, that MIDI was designed to handle highly 
virtuostic piano playing. And it has plenty of scope for musicality.

   Ian