I believe that MIDI is the most remarkable and significant development in the entire field of electronic music technology. With MIDI, musicians are able to encode a very wide range of expressive musical gestures using keyboards, alternate controllers, and computers, and then apply these gestures to an almost unlimited range of electronic tone generators. The encoding scheme specified by the original MIDI developers enables rich complex music to be transmitted, recorded, and processed as precise, rapidly-varying information that takes full advantage of contemporary computer technology.

I also believe that MIDI, as a world-wide technical standard, stands as an amazing example of international cooperation among businesses, technicians, and musicians. There are very few examples that demonstrate such cooperation. For instance, the software for my computer will not run on my wife's computer, and my engineering design files will not work with my fellow engineer's software. Compared with the confusion and inefficiency in the world of personal computers, the world of MIDI enables everybody's equipment to work together. I believe that this is appropriate for a musical standard. Just as music itself is a universal language that transcends national and cultural borders, MIDI is a shining example of what can be accomplished when people work together.
 

It is hard to believe that MIDI is 20 years already. And, it is still version 1.0! I still remember working with Roland, Korg, Yamaha, and Kawai to develop the original specification back in 1982; it was a very good collaboration between companies in both countries in the days before email. It was a thrill to first connect the Prophet 600 with the Roland JX-3P at the January 1983 NAMM show, and have it work perfectly.

MIDI is used every day, in every professional studio in the world, in home studios, on the stage, and it is in virtually every computer made today. Soon it will be in every cell phone. It is amazing to me how well it has adapted to new technologies over the years.

The future of MIDI is more difficult to predict, since it will take a lot of organization and teamwork to develop a new version. With so many companies involved, it will be a very slow process. But, MIDI seems to continue to cover 99% of applications in it's 1.0 form. And, in the computer environment, MIDI is "virtual", so there are no speed limitations anyway.

Thank you to the AMEI/MMA for their continuing work on MIDI! This is a very important job, and I look forward to another successful 20 years of MIDI!