PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic BiaB 2012 revolutionizes midi...

PWarren - I enjoyed the clip. Definitely Hendrix-ish.

As many people here know, I'm a big MIDI fan.

MIDI only sounds as good as

• The MIDI sound module and/or particular voice you are using (as we all know, MIDI has no sound, but synthesizers do)
• The skill of the player or programmer who creates the MIDI file (or style)

Chart topping CD's and entire motion picture soundtracks have been produced with MIDI synthesizers. Virtually every modern synth has MIDI as it's core. I've even seen MIDI based synthesizers in international touring symphony orchestras.

MIDI is far from dead. It is alive in virtually every professional recording studio in the country. It is in movies, on stages, and in small lounges everywhere.

At this moment in the evolution of music, MIDI still offers thousands of times more editing power than pre-recorded loops do. Listen to This Clip or This One keeping in mind (1) they were recorded in a live gig using an old Archos Juke Box through its internal microphone and (2) ripped at 56k so the sound quality isn't nearly as good as it is live. But even with the lowered sonic quality, they still sound like sax and guitar solos. Other than the bit of vocals, they are 100% MIDI, and the solos are 100% my notes, not someone else's.

I posted the guitar solo on a Guitar Player's forum as an example of my playing. I got dozens of comments on how well I played guitar, one even told me it was "Jeff Beck-ish" (to me the ultimate compliment). After a few pages of 100% positive comments, I confessed I was really playing wind synthesizer. Pages of comments followed telling me how real it sounded, and only one person said in retrospect there was something about the vibrato that sounded a little funny to him. It doesn't get any more real than that!

The lead instruments (synth sax/synth guitar) are my improvisations playing a wind MIDI controller through a Yamaha VL70m MIDI tone module and over the chord progressions to copyrighted songs. The backgrounds are edited BiaB MIDI files (the sax clip uses a PG style the guitar clip uses one of mine). Since you cannot copyright a chord progression, and since the improvised melody is my own creation, I am not violating anybody else's copyrights. If there is a small fragment of the original song as the lead-in or exit of the solo, it is short enough to be considered OK under the fair use laws.

These solos would have been impossible using loops.

MIDI isn't dead, in fact, it hasn't even reached its full potential yet.

When I want to listen to someone else's music, I put a CD in the player. When I want to play music I prefer to play my own notes, not someone else's. For that I use my MIDI synths/controllers/tools, sax, guitar, and/or flute.

Insights and incites by Notes