midi

midi has many meanings to me. it can mean the middle, as in size. my x-schoolmate also named midi. but what i meant here is of the musical variety. if not mistaken, it stands for musical instrument digital interface. it allows musical instruments to talk to each other digitally. i read about it back in '86, i think, & got fascinated by it. now with computers so advanced, it is used even more prominently. why is it important to me? well it's because i love music, & i love gadgets. i bought my yamaha keyboards back in '95 & i made sure it's midi-capable, eventhough i didn't even know how to use it. then, when i bought my first PC in '96, one of the first things i did was to find a way to connect the yamaha to the pc. then i learned more about midi & how it works. i also learned about soundcard & how it functions. then i explored more oabout wavetables & softsynth. how great it is to record music from your keyboard & showed it on the pc screen. nowadays, most people make music using their PCs. in the 90's MP3s were not that popular, yet. so people shared their music through midi files. these files contain music information which can be played back on any pc. i got hooked & got my hands on hundreds of midi files of my favorite songs. the beauty of midi files is that you can edit, change the notes, the tempo & even change the instruments. you can even change from a slow song to a rock song if you want. you can also mute any instuments you like. in most case, i turn off the guitar parts & play my guitar along with it. midi files don't sound that great actually. it's because the pc tries to emulate the instrument sound as best as it could. it depends mostly on the quality of the soundcard. the most difficult instrument to emulate is the guitar. piano, strings & drums sounds are quite OK, to my ear.

i wish i can compose my own music but i guess i don't have the talent. so the next best thing is to re-create other peoples songs on the pc. normally what i do is just do the drums, piano & strings part on the pc while the guitar part is from, well, my guitar. this has become sort of a hobby for me so that i can play alone in the house haha. thankfully now i got friends to jam with!

i just got hold a USB midi interface for a few hundred bucks. what does it do? well, it will enable my keyboard to connect to my notebook. you see, notebooks don't have many connection like their desktop counterparts with their PCI thing. so the only connection the notebook has to the outside world is via USB. the thing is, my kids have taken over my PC for their games & internet activities. So i'm left with my notebook (which actually belongs to the office shhhhh). in order to continue my craze for music, i bought this interface & manage to link my yamaha keyboard to the notebook. now my keyboard is alive again & i can have new sounds with it via the notebook. who knows i might bring the notebook for the next jamming session & see if it fits in. my next agenda is to buy a nice & small midi controller to replace the keyboard. then i'd be so easy to carry around.