Entries tagged with “midi” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

One of the things I helped "show off" at the Expo conference was a new controller that I ran across. Actually, *I* didn't run across it - my friend Gregory Taylor did, and had one sent to me. It is the Manta controller...

As I threatened in my last blog entry, I purchased the set of Korg Nano controllers and I shall expound upon them now; with three months of use under my belt, my feelings have changed somewhat, and I've shifted love affairs among them several times - leading to a lasting relationship in one case, and a bad break-up in another.

Heading out the door to a laptop jam session today, I eyed my chunky little MIDI keyboard, but even it was too big to fit in my backpack. I ended up typing out melodies and chords on the computer keyboard itself. Not very expressive. What you really want is velocity-sensitive, piano-style keys along with pitch-bend and modulation controls.

Late 1980s, deep in the basement of the Oberlin Conservatory: Strolling past the broken-down harp cases, a surprise visitor enters my electronic music class.

Imagine what creative developers could do if Flash could transmit and respond gracefully to MIDI. Now an online petition is urging Adobe to do something about that.

Musicians who buy synthesizer wind controllers, such as a Yamaha WX-* or an Akai E*I, are often soon disappointed, not because of the controller's quality or their possibilities, but because they just don't work well with conventional MIDI synthesizer modules. Now that VST and other plugins are common, there has been an enormous explosion of new synthesizers. You would hope...

My most optimistic hope is that IXMF will be to interactive media what MIDI was to keyboard music.

A mysterious email arrived the other night. It said, "Please find enclosed two pictures of Midi Controllers. Do you know the make and model of this two units?" The top one looks like a commercial product; the bottom one looks more homemade, but I could be wrong. Any guesses? Please leave a link. I'm off to browse Analogue Haven....

I saw a bunch of wacky MIDI controllers at the recent Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) festival, but none as creepily expressive as the Sonic Banana: According to the inventor's site, The Sonic Banana consists of four bend sensors in a row, running the length of a rubber tube, with a pushbutton switch at the end. Software in...

In retrospect, it was so easy. Last week I got a mysterious e-mail saying, Our host just had a birthday (perhaps a BIG one, I'm not sure) and was "lamenting" according to [his wife], that there was no celebration. She asked us not to bring gifts, but Chris and I have an idea: when we all sing him the surprise...

In this week's Digital Media Insider podcast, "Express Yourself," I played a bunch of examples recorded with wind controllers, electronic devices that transform the player's breath into expressive musical gestures. Matt Traum, who contributed the amazing Crumar sawtooth solo, just wrote to remind me about the extensive wind controller FAQ on his site. Matt Traum on the Steiner EVI. As...

Can Someone Please Explain To Me Again Why I Can't Loop An MP3 File!? When I sat down to write Part 2 of my rant, I discovered it had been 7 years to the day since my article "Songs in the Key of Beatnik" was published (Electronic Musician, Feb 2000 issue), and amazingly enough, you can still find it online....

I spent the last month making my own home-made USB control surface: a Velleman USB IO board, a multiplexor board of my own, some home-made pressure pads/ribbon controllers, and various pots, switches and plugs for external pedals and controllers. Looks good in a brown leatherette upholstered box. I'm working on programing the USB to MIDI software so that it can...

First released for $180 in 2002, the M-Audio Oxygen8 was a breakthrough. This 2-octave USB MIDI controller with eight programmable knobs appealed to a broad audience. Desktop musicians liked it because it had a small footprint and could fit in the limited space on their desks, next to their PC keyboard. Mobile musicians liked it because it wasn't much...

One of the most interesting technologies at the recent Audio Engineering Society show wasn't accompanied by pulsing LEDs or Bavarian vacuum tubes. In a simple booth, CEntrance was showing its Universal Driver (UD), a $79 piece of software that enhances FireWire audio and MIDI on Windows. In addition to low latency (reportedly 5ms roundtrip), UD supports device aggregation, which...

The new issue of Make magazine features a tutorial I wrote on embedding a MIDI data detector in a tiny Japanese monster toy. I took a bunch of photos for the article, along with two videos. You can see one video on the Make site, so I thought I'd share the other here....

Summer NAMM-watcher Mark Vail just sent me a link to the gorgeous TonePort KB37 from guitar-processor manufacturer Line 6. In fact, it's a guitar processor with keys and a 24-bit USB audio interface. In a world of square, gray MIDI controllers, this guy really stands out. And the audio I/O looks pretty flexible. You get two mic inputs with...

There's a scene in the movie Crumb, about the retro-iconoclast cartoonist & musician R Crumb, in which he sketches out his belief that everything went to hell when wires were strung across the American landscape*. I'm with him. Wires are ugly, and furthermore they have a lot in common with chains. That's why wireless technology feels not just convenient,...

On October 8, the MIDI Manufacturers Association will outline the High-Definition MIDI protocol (HD-MIDI). Here's what we know now.

A reader asks how he can wire a music keyboard into his car so he can suss out songs while driving....