The DX7 embraced the MIDI port in a big way
One legacy of the 1980s is MIDI – Musical Instrument Digital Interface – which gives us a way to send notes, synchronise, and send other information between hardware (initially), and of course these days, software as well, communicating between two machines or over a larger network. MIDI is what makes it so easy to get your USB MIDI keyboard to play software synths in Cubase or Logic, or to get MIDI pads to trigger drum kits, or to automate the loading of presets or control changes. MIDI was originally specified by Dave Smith and Chet Wood of Sequential Circuits in 1981, and it’s good to see that Sequential Circuits are still active, recently being taken under the Focusrite umbrella. MIDI is ‘portable’ between different platforms, and fully backwards compatible – interacting with anything from CV-based classic hardware, to vintage drum machines with MIDI DIN ports, to iPhones with lightning cables, to the latest wireless MPE systems. MIDI doesn’t carry any sound, or audio information at all, and that’s why you would need to deal with both MIDI and audio ports separately (although some modern devices carry both MIDI and audio over USB, and they’ll appear in your software as separate inputs going to separate track types – we truly appreciate the convenience of this). At the dayto-day level, MIDI should be user friendly, and more-or-less invisible to use, but if the situation demands it, advanced users can still dig deep into the world of MIDI implementation charts with their NRPNs, MSBs, and LSBs. Most of us won’t ever need that detail, but it’s good to know it’s there, and respect is due to companies that provide detailed documentation. Whenever you use a bit of old MIDI hardware that uses DIN plugs, you’re back there using 80s technology.
A drum machine like the Roland R8 is a great example, a vintage machine that still works, has very late 80s sounds, and is equipped with MIDI In/Out/Thru ports, for optimal inclusion in any system. MIDI still works as well as ever, and even if you do all your music in the computer, you’ll still need to know a bit about it. In this walkthrough we’ll highlight some essential MIDI things to know, focusing on Ableton Live, so you can create with one foot in the past, one in the present, and, er, the third in the future!
>>Step by step 3. Essential MIDI know-how