How MIDI works (unintentionally hilarious retro videos)

Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a protocol that allows keyboards to talk to computers, is generally considered to be a retro technology. With the increase in use of USB hardware controllers, soft synths and VSTis, and protocols like ASIO and the groundbreaking concept behind Native Instrument’s Kore, MIDI is decidedly less useful to the electronic musicians of today.

For the curious, or those who have a soft spot for the electronics of the 1980s, the multimedia artist Paul Slocum has encoded an instructional video he borrowed from the library into streaming videos broken up by chapters.

These are streaming windows format videos, so you should use Windows Media Player on a PC, or download VLC (a cross-platform media player).

Intro
Section 1: In The Beginning
Section 2: The Players
Section 3: A Closer Look
Section 4: Who’s on First
Section 5: The Ins and Outs of MIDI
Section 6: Putting It All Together
Section 7: Troubleshooting

Check out the rest of Paul Slocum’s work here, including a printer synth, c64 sequencer and numerous Atari 2600 hacks including a music tracker (sequencer), and a cartridge that lets you play music using your keyboard.

[thanks, corey!]

[tags]retro, geek, atari, games, gaming, music, electronic music, midi, hacks, hacking, chiptunes, c64, commodore 64[/tags]