MIDI as a Strange Idea: Module 9

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Close your eyes, if you safely can, and listen to one short phrase four times: on a piano, on strings, on a slow synth pad, on a mallet. Notice what stays the same and what changes, and pick the one you'd want to hear again. All four came from a single drawing of four notes, handed to four instruments. That drawing is MIDI. This is the audio lecture for the ninth module, where synthesizers get keyboards. MIDI separates the idea of a sound from the sound itself, and the idea is something you can see: rectangles on a grid. That makes this the most visual week of the course so far, so the practice underneath everything is keeping your ears in charge of a tool built for your eyes. The first half builds a voice, the way a synthesizer does: adding sine waves up, or carving a rich sound down with a filter, and choosing presets by ear, with the name read last. Then a sound's life in time, from Pierre Schaeffer's bell with its attack cut off to the envelope, and modulation crossing the twenty-hertz line, with John Chowning's FM and the bells of the DX7. The second half plays that voice with data. MIDI as a communication protocol that carries instructions and no sound at all; the score and the player piano as its ancestors; Wendy Carlos handing Bach to a Moog; and Edgard Varèse's "organized sound," with the sound taken out. Then the grid, quantizing, and one habit worth keeping for good: listen before you look. Then the piano roll as a canvas, from Conlon Nancarrow punching player-piano rolls by hand to Laurie Spiegel's programs at Bell Labs and Caterina Barbieri's sequenced patterns, with Pauline Oliveros's focal attention as the way in. Plus one question about who the composer is when a model writes the notes, with Holly Herndon's work alongside it. It ends with twenty seconds of listening to wherever you are. Required listening: Caterina Barbieri, Fantas (2019), all of it, ideally with nothing on a screen in front of you. Required reading: Jeffrey Hass, "Envelopes and Gates" and "MIDI Overview and History." Speakers or headphones, at a comfortable level. Pairs with the Module 9 pages and videos. Chapters 00:00 Four notes, drawn once 03:25 Building a voice, by ear 06:01 A sound has a life 10:11 Instructions, without the sound 13:32 The grid, and listening before you look 15:26 The piano roll as a canvas 19:31 Who writes the notes 21:00 One more listen