When I were just a lad, there was a show on TV that I now vaguely remember to be titled something like Rock School or Rock Steady or something where some musicans explained all about making music. Not the dry and dusty way of reading music, knowing theory and so forth but actual music. I don’t remember too much about it other than the woman bass player was definatly more butch than the male drummer and in one episode they explained how by playing guitar connected to this magical cable you could control the sound coming out of the keyboard. Yep, this was my introduction to midi!
For those of you in the know, you already understand what midi stands for. Peace, justice and the American way……. nope, it actually stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. When you play a midi controller, be it a guitar, keyboard, drums, or even a violin, with the right hardware you can produce sounds not normally found on your instrument of choice. You could play guitar and the sound playing would be an organ. Why you would want your guitar to sound like a kidney is beyond me but there you go.
A famous example of the use of midi is Rick Allen, the one armed drummer of Def Leppard who used a midi based drum kit when he first began playing drums again after his accident.
Anyway, back at the ranch. The thought of midi and of using a computer to record the music which could then be played back, as many times as you wanted, perfect everytime just blew my mind.
The first computer I had that could do this for me was a Sinclair Spectrum, which once I figured out what I was doing controlled a little midi capable Casio CZ100 keyboard and a drum machine. No matter that the music had to be hand coded as a single line per note, it was worth it. I still remember the song I recorded. ‘I saw her standing there’, the Beatles classic sounded great, but nothing like the original! I was hooked.
Through various computers, software and instruments, I have tried to do more with midi and later on, with digital audio recording. I have actually written several tunes using a PC, Cakewalk and some plugins, which I will post as and when I find the time. I truly enjoy writing music, which is funny considering I dropped music while in school. I own several guitars but my playing level is pretty much inbetween crappy and useless. I can’t play piano or keyboards but I can use a mouse to place the notes where I want them. In a way, home recording helps me be the musician I always wanted to be.
Why am I telling you all this? Because hopefully by the end of the week, I should have a brand spanking new (why do you only get spanked when you are new?) hand built computer that will be able to handle any and all things I want to do when recording. Multiple ins and outs, a processor that won’t die if I play three tracks of audio at the same time and enough memory that can hold all the settings and samples I need. I can’t wait. I might even write some new stuff!
