Grammy for MIDI Creators Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi | Hacker News Reader

Grammy for MIDI Creators Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi

createdigitalmusic.com

39 pointsjoey_muller6 comments

MIDI single-handledly enabled more people than ever to produce music. Back in 1990, my dad setup a studio with a 486 and produced CDs for a lot of independent artists around our city that would never had it recorded otherwise.

Also, it's amazing how it turned into a standard and is still well supported by all applications. My dad can still open his early works and remaster using improved, true-to-life instruments that make it sound like live recordings.

When I first got into MIDI programming, I really enjoyed discovering the manufacturer IDs in the System Exclusive message byte block:

http://www.blitter.com/~russtopia/MIDI/~jglatt/tech/midispec...

It's like a 1970's and 80's time-capsule.

Haha, seconded. That list got expanded as well to allow for multiple byte (segment) IDs, and the expanded list still feels like a blast from the past! The only thing about MIDI is that the official standard doc is still only officially available as dead tree. While there's plenty of good (and sometimes better) treatments of it online, I wish they'd just catch up a little - I don't really want to send a cheque from the UK to Cali' for it!

Of course, that's rather a digression - it's a surprisingly decent standard, and what it's enabled is startling. Well deserved, and congratulations to them!

Great to see this incredible, simple, elegant idea and OS example get well-deserved recognition. Plus there are few things more fun to code.

Not only is Dave Smith a legend historically†, but he's back in the game these days with his new‡ company "Dave Smith Instruments" (one of the few (only?) companies currently making real, affordable, analog polysynths):

http://davesmithinstruments.com/

† Not just for midi. His Prophet 5 was a seminal, ground-breaking synth (and super popular; it can be heard all over music of the 1980s).

‡ Well, new-ish, starting with the wonderful "Evolver" in 2002.

I got my evolver in 2005 and continue to love it's design and sound quality. His latest device, a joint effort with with Roger Linn called Tempest, is a refined drum machine with the signature fat sound and brilliant versatility of DSI.

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