Mellotronists

I distinctly recall that MIDI was supposed to have constant improvements and 
yet it seems to have painted itself into a corner so that companies could 
offer backward compatibility.  Another short-sighted move.



>   >
>   > MIDI has been utilized to compose and produce a boat load of real
>   > music.  Hans Zimmer has produced soundtracks which are primarily
>   > digital sampler / midi.  He has won Academy awards for about 12
>   > of them.  Zimmer's main sampler is Tascam's GigaStudio.
>
> Interesting example, certainly.
>
> I can't say I know his work; I don't watch many movies.  But I was
> speaking of a musical instrument performance while the awards for
> Zimmer's soundtracks are more about composition, arrangement, scoring,
> orchestration, the contribution to the movie, the movie itself, and
> these days, politics.  And I don't know if Zimmer's work with
> GigaStudio actually uses much MIDI; I mean, I understand that
> GigaStudio uses MIDI style settings, but the connection from the score
> representation to the audio rendering has got to be straight software.
> And I'm sure he's got all sorts of tools he's developed.
>
> My point is that MIDI is a very primitive and severely limited
> protocol, with timing limitations built into the definition, with very
> modest goals and designed for ease of implementation in 1982
> technology.  And that MIDI cannot represent the subtleties of a
> player's personal style and cannot come anywhere near representing
> some of our most cherished musical performances.
>
> And unfortunately MIDI has been adopted as a vital link in the chain,
> the pipeline between keyboard and synth engine, for just about all
> digital keyboards.
>
> So I (and remember I'm supposed to be the snobby fascist luddite twat
> in this conversation) am saying the adoption of MIDI is a not a good
> thing for a musical instrument.  We should use the technology to
> leverage creativity and personal expression, not regiment everything
> into a byte stream.  We should be using a diversity of technologies,
> and enjoy the features and quirks of each, and not be forcing
> everything into a microprocessor, advanced as it may be.
>
>  -- Don
>
> -- 
> Don Tillman
> Palo Alto, California
> don@...
> http://www.till.com
>
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