Albert,
The reason MIDI is a standard is because it was the first inter- synthesizer communication protocol out of the gates in 1983. It is not a good standard because MIDI was specified to convey the minimum amount of data over a bit less 32 kbps to be musically useful. Thus the restriction to 7 bit pitch definitions or 127 discrete notes. No one is claiming you cannot take the 127 values and make them do whatever you want at the other end, whether a hardware synthesizer or a software engine (like Csound). The point is that its a bad thing to have only 127 discrete values to define pitch. The "pitch-bend" approach to defining pitch is a really bad kludge. To begin with, you need to use a different MIDI channel if you want to have more than one sounding note at the same time. You need all 16 channels of MIDI to support 16 notes of polyphony on a single instrument. It is simply wrong to say that MIDI "supports" anything. MIDI is simply a low-resolution transmission protocol. With the possible exception of input devices, MIDI is hardly used anymore by professional musicians. Most MIDI sequencers now talk directly to software synths (like Csound) and MIDI is handled internally at clock rates that are much faster than 32kbauds. A new standard is on the rise called OSC (Open Sound Control) which is variable bit rate and is transmitted over TCP/IP. "Note cards" are sent over TCP/IP and these can contain as much or as little information as one wishes. It is not prevalent yet but will soon be for aything that needs to send and receive musical (and sound) data. All this doesn't mean that MIDI should not be supported on the XO. There are millions of (mostly awful) MIDI files out there that should be playable on the XO. Csound has complete MIDI support, probably more than any hardware synth you can find. Making a MIDIfile player is trivial. Albert, why not make this your project? You have the world's most powerful software synth at your disposal. This would surely be more useful than dancing on a soapbox.. ;-) In TamTam, we chose to go with something different than MIDI because we wanted to parse time in a way that is difficult in MIDI. MIDI has no awareness of time and makes things more complicated when it comes to designing music generators and editors. Could we have done what we are doing using MIDI? Possibly. Would it have made reading MIDI files easier? Probably not because in TamTam, we are restricted to 5 tracks of audio and MIDIfiles contain more than that. The restrictions in TamTam are largely due to graphics display. Best, ethrop (of TamTam) On 22-Jan-08, at 11:56 PM, Albert Cahalan wrote: > imm ian writes: > On 22 Jan 2008, at 4:11, Albert Cahalan wrote: > >>> You don't need to abuse pitch bends. MIDI lets you >>> redefine the pitches of the notes. You can redefine >>> middle C to be 1234 Hz if you like. >> >> Mmm, well, yes, but... > > No "but". You can redefine at will, for individual notes. > > If you need a player, try timidity. If you have obsolete > equipment that can only do pitch bends, you can use Scalia > to convert a MIDI file. Scalia can also convert back. > >> It's not so much the pitches that are the issue, it's the >> intervals, and MIDI kind of constrains what you can do about >> that, so you do kind of end up abusing pitch bend... > > Nope. (not that abusing pitch bend is a tragedy though) > > Since 1996, the MIDI tuning specification has allowed you to > set the pitch to within 1/16384 of a semitone. > > Since 1999, the MIDI tuning extensions have made this a bit > more efficient. > _______________________________________________ > Devel mailing list > Devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel > > _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel