MIDI 2.0 specifications adopted at Winter NAMM 2020On Sunday, January 19, 2020 at the Annual Meeting of the MIDI Manufacturers Association, the complete suite of MIDI 2.0 specifications were adopted unanimously by the MMA members in attendance . These five core documents serve as the basis for the future expansion of MIDI. The M...

MIDI 1.0 Specification From August, 1983 Uncovered at Yamaha US offices in April, 2018.  In November of 2018 we uncovered some unique historical MIDI documents.  These were discovered in a file cabinet at Yamaha Corporation of America's headquarters in Buena Park, California.  These documents pre-date th...

Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland and co-inventor of MIDI passes awayIkutaro Kakehashi was certainly one of the most influential figures in electronic music in the 20th century.  He influenced music and technology throughout his lifetime.  He overcame many challenges in his early life to become the head of one of the most influent...

This post was contributed by the well known film composer, Jeff Rona. Jeff was the first president of the MIDI Manufacturers Association and ran the MMA from 1983 until 1992 . Jeff was  instrumental (pun intended) in getting MIDI started and gives us an inside look at the beginnings of MIDI. We recently did an exclusiv...

We put together a series of articles about the history of electronic music and MIDI. Here are links to the series. MIDI History:Chapter 1- 850 AD to 1850 AD - To really understand the origins of MIDI, you need to go all the way back to before there were digitally controlled synthesizers and computers, In fact you need to go back before there w...