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SUMMER NAMM 2018 WRAP UP
Boone
MIDI News
Although arguably the smaller NAMM event of the two for MIDI related products, there's certainly no shortage of things to discover at Summer NAMM and this year was no exception. With stimulating keynotes on the future of music technology, courtesy of the MIDI Association Advisory Board's very own Craig Anderton, the latest in next year's product li...
TeleMIDI-logo-sml Telemidi - Creating music over the Internet in real-time
Telemidi - Creating music over The Internet in real-time
Matt
MIDI Software
What is Telemidi? A system of connecting two DAW environments over the internet, to achieve real-time musical `jamming'.The product of Masters research by Matt Bray. "...a musician's behaviour at one location will be occurring at the other location in a near synchronous manner, and vice versa, thus allowing for a `jam' like atmosphere to ...
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The Glitch Mob's Blade 2.0-The world's most complex MIDI controller?
The MIDI Association
MIDI Stories
The Glitch Mob has started touring with what may be one of the most complicated MIDI controllers every built.  The Blade 2 .0 was designed by Martin Phillips also who has done work for Deadmau5, Kanye and Daft Punk. Dell partnered with the Glitch Mob to provide Dell Alienware 15s computers that run Intel Core i7-7820HK quad-core processors. Th...
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MPE MIDI Live! Chat Podcast
The MIDI Association
Alternate Controllers
On May 26, we held the very first  MIDI Live! chat with a panel of MPE specialists.  We recorded the session and it is presented here as a podcast.  Listeners were not only able to send in questions via text but were able to actually join the discussion and interact directly with the panelists. Roger Linn demoed his Linnstr...
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Mixtela- A MIDI Stylophone Business Card, Music Box, and 5 Pin DIN Synth
The MIDI Association
MIDI Hardware
MIDI Stylophone Business Card Last Sunday we were looking at bookmarks we had made while searching the Internet for blog topics.  We had booked marked Mixtela.com a few months ago because of all the cool MIDI DIY projects.  But then we found WaitingForFriday's website and decided to do an article on the MIDI Stylophone...
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How to make a MIDI compatible Stylophone
The MIDI Association
MIDI Hardware
The Original Dubreq Stylophone The Dubreq Stylophone was invented in 1968 by Brian Jarvis.  It was originally designed as a toy, but the fact that it was portable and easy to play and it's distinctive synth sound soon made it popular with some of the most iconic musicians of the late 60's. David Bowie used it on the track 'Space Oddity' a...
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May 31-And the Tips Keep Coming!
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
We hope you enjoyed these daily tips during MIDI Month—but that's not the end of it, because there will be plenty more tips to come when you join the The MIDI Association. TMA is an all-volunteer organization that believes in TMA's mission: to nurture an inclusive global community of people who create music and art with MIDI. Our strength is our co...
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MIDI Tool Integrates Real and Virtual Synths
Carl
MIDI News
The Live Performance Challenge ​ The challenge for me as a performing musician has always been not being able to readily access desired sounds and sound layers during a live performance in an effective way. The tools given to us on modern stage keyboards are difficult to manage on the live stage, and even if you take the time and make the effort to...
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May 30-Hands-On Fader Control
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
In the tip for May 22, we covered how to control effects and virtual instrument parameters with a footpedal hooked into a synthesizer or other controller. But what if you don't have a synthesizer or other controller...and would rather use a 100 mm fader than a footpedal? No problem, if you're willing to do a little soldering. Take a 1/4" phone jack...
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May 29-Rendering MIDI to Audio
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
MIDI has lasted over 30 years, so the MIDI data you entered in a sequencer back in the 80s can still drive today's virtual instruments (which is pretty amazing, come to think about it). However virtual instruments, computers, and operating systems don't have, shall we say, quite the same kind of longevity. You'll be reminded of this when Steven Spi...
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May 28-Manual Vibrato for Keyboards
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
The way most keyboard players add vibrato is to turn up the mod wheel, and inject some LFO to change the oscillator pitch periodically. That's fine, but consider guitar players—they add vibrato by moving their fingers on strings, which gives a more human quality than using an LFO. So, try your hand (get it?) at doing vibrato with your fingers inste...
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May 27-Polyrhythmic MIDI Echoes
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
There's more to life than audio echo—like MIDI echo. Although the concept of MIDI echo has been around for years, early virtual instruments often didn't have enough voices to play back new echoes without stealing voices from previous echoes. With today's powerful computers and instruments, this is less of a problem so let's re-visit MIDI echo. It's...
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May 26-Why ReWire Is Very Cool
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
ReWire is a software protocol that allows two (or sometimes more) software applications to work together as one integrated program. For example, suppose you wish your DAW of choice had Propellerhead Reason's roster of way cool virtual instruments, but you don't want to learn a different DAW. No problem: use ReWire with your DAW, and get Reason into...
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May 25-“Proofing” MIDI Sequences
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
Sometimes you hit notes you don't want to hit, particularly if you're playing MIDI guitar or some other alternate controller (although this tip is most relevant to MIDI guitar, even with keyboards you may end up brushing against some keys accidentally and creating notes you don't want). Here are some ways to clean up your data stream. Delete pressu...
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May 24-Tempo Track Tweaks
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
In the days before click tracks, tempos varied because musicians are humans, not crystal-controlled clocks. However, these changes were far from random. While researching an article for Sweetwater's inSync web publication, I analyzed the tempo changes for several hits from the past that didn't use a click track and noticed a common element of most ...
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May 23-Don’t Get Tripped Up by Local Control
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
Sometimes you don't need an external, dedicated MIDI controller—the one on your favorite synth may be all you need, and the synth even has built-in sounds. The keyboard usually feeds data to the synth's MIDI out, but also to its internal sounds (called "local control.") But if your sequencer echoes its interface's MIDI in to the interface's MIDI ou...
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May 22-Parameter Control with Footpedals
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
Some virtual instrument and effects parameters just cry out for footpedal control—too bad you don't have a pedal that outputs MIDI data…or do you? If you have a keyboard synthesizer or controller, it will probably have an expression pedal jack. The standard MIDI controller for expression is controller #11, and unless your keyboard or controller is ...
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May 21-Leading and Lagging the Beat for Feel
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
You can "humanize" sequences that have been quantized too rigidly by tweaking the start times for individual notes or phrases. Ignore any menu item called "humanization," because this usually just adds randomness—that's not what makes timing human (unless the human in question had too much to drink). Instead, alter note timings manually or use a "s...
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May 20- All Rexed Up
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
REX files chop digital audio into "slices," each of which is associated with a MIDI note. Playing a MIDI note triggers its associated slice, which is why REX files can follow tempo variations—slices can trigger at a faster or slower rate as you speed up or slow down a MIDI sequence. However, what really makes this fun is that you can also re-arrang...
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Complimentary Summer NAMM registration for TMA members!
The MIDI Association
MIDI News
​Complimentary Summer NAMM registration for TMA members!Thanks to NAMM (the National Association of Music Merchants), we have complimentary registration through June 13 for MIDI Association members to the Summer NAMM show which happens this year in Nashville from June 28-30.  Summer NAMM is open to all NAMM members as well as professionals and...
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May 19-Programming Synths for MIDI Guitar
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
Part of making MIDI guitar feel "right" when triggering synths has nothing to do with the guitar and its tracking, but with editing the synth presets so that they're guitar-friendly instead of being optimized with keyboards in mind. Separate channels. The guitar will most likely send data from each string over a different channel. So, use synths in...
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May 18-Processing Audio with MIDI Control
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
Some MIDI instruments, particularly those from Arturia, include an external input for processing audio signals through the synthesizer's filter, VCA, and effects modules. That's cool enough, but of course, what's even cooler is that is that you can then use MIDI to trigger filter and VCA envelopes, turn filter resonance up high and use a keyboard t...
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May 17 Non-Rigid Quantization
Craig Anderton
Byte Sized Tips and Tricks
One of the complaints about "MIDI music" is that quantizing everything to the beat sucks the life out of a song by eliminating the kind of timing variations humans make. But that's not the fault of MIDI— the problem is the person doing the quantization. So, here are three ways to make quantization more human-sounding. Quantization strength. Instead...
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May 16-The Advantages of Starting Songs with MIDI
Craig Anderton
MIDI Month Tip of the Day
When you're songwriting, you want nothing to get in the way of your creativity, and you want as fast a workflow as humanly possible—so for those reasons, you're better off starting the songwriting process with MIDI rather than recording audio (if not you're not a keyboard player, even a simple MIDI guitar controller like the Jamstik+ or You Rock gu...