Must master MIDI

[slidey]

Greetings all! Richard, here, I am a 60 something retired professor, and a musician, pretty much all my life. I own a couple of guitar synthesizers, a midi effects pedal, a midi controller keyboard, I have an Asturia BeatStep, and my latest edition electron model: cycles. Not to mention the iPad with way too many synthesizers, and of course, Loopy.

My goal is to play some live gigs by myself, but with some of this technology set up to facilitate some really fun improvisations or actual songs. I think I stumble with MIDI because I’m not willing to make mistakes in setting things up and wasting time doing that, but I know that’s what artists have to do if they want to produce works.

I’ve dabbled with MIDI learn on a few programs and devices yet the whole alternate universe of MIDI just seems to get me flustered.

Looking forward to finding some insight here. Thanks!

[JohnG]

Hi Richard,

Welcome to my tiny corner of the universe.
Sixty something?
You youngster, here I'm well over seventy something, but not a professor.
I used to be a principal consultant (data Communications) for a computer mainframe manufacturer called ICL. What's left is now a part of Fujitsu.

But I started messing around with MIDI way back in the eighties, not too long after the standards were introduced.
My background, since the mid nineteen sixties, has been computer programming and then data comunications, so MIDI came to me quite easily.
Essentially it's just a way of representing music in a digital form. Just as this very text is held in the computer digitally.

May I suggest that you take a look at the section called MIDI basics?
If you work your way slowly through that, you should find that things become a lot clearer.
Then there's the section for questions, you may find some answers there.
If they don't, then please ask me to clarify whatever it is you're struggling to comprehend.

Hope your jouney to understand MIDI is a successful one.
Kind regards,
JohnG.

[JohnG]

Hi Richard,

How's it going?
Need any help?

JohnG.

[parametric]

Dec 15, 2022 13:22:13 GMT slidey said:

Hi Richard and welcome . . . .I'm 71 and spent the last 19 years of my working life ('til redundancy) as Tech Support in a University Music Dept. Midi is very logical but very deep . . . . IME it requires frequent use to "stay" efficient and "remember" how things are done . . . That aside, recent advances with VSTs have "allowed" the Learn features you mention - such that most all parameters can be controlled within a DAW OR allocated to a knob, button or fader on a "Controller".
DAWs are many and various . . . my choice is "Reaper" which is very affordable and under constant improvement.  Especially good are the Video tutorials for every possible task you could imagine . . . Here: Reaper Tutorials That said - I DO recommend John's Tutorials in here . . .There is not much he doesn't know about Midi . . . . I wish you success with your music-making Here's a piece I did just now for Christmas using a Plugin called Realivox Blue performing the Vocal . . .  . . . . . . . Chris