Mad Skills: MIDI and Music Technology in the Twentieth Century

by Ryan Diduck

A cultural history of MIDI (the Musical Instrument Digital Interface), one of the most revolutionary and transformative technologies in the history of music.

A history of electronic music that goes way beyond the Moog.

Part rigorous history, part insightful commentary, and part memoir, Mad Skills tells the story behind MIDI, aka the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, through the twentieth century's kaleidoscopic lens.

Guiding us across one hundred years of musical instruments, and the music made with them, Mad Skills recounts the technical and creative innovations that led to the making of the most vital, long-standing, ubiquitous, and yet invisible music technology of our time.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2018

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some interesting material on how the MIDI standard developed, and the middle and last sections are pretty good. It is, however, obvious that the book is an adapted dissertation, and the pretentious vocabulary, attempts to sound 'woke', and self-importance of ideology presented by the author is, especially in the first part of the book, frankly, ridiculous.

For example, from page 12:
"We are the disciplined and undisciplined, socially constructed subjects, constitutive of flickering 'cognitive assemblies' of people, things, and thought -- an intelligent web without physical boundaries."

Translation: We are thinking people who communicate with each other. And the "people, things and thought" line is ridiculous. People think, so "thought" is redundant. 'Things"? really? Makes no sense. My keyboard isn't part of "disciplined and undisciplined, socially constructed subjects".

The whole opening is full of BS like this. Basically, whenever Mr. Diduck does this, just skip ahead until he gets over himself.

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A materialist history of modern music's driving digital interface technology, ever so slightly up its own ass but of incredible value for nerds

[Terrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

It starts and ends with seemingly out of place diatribes against capitalism, but it's still fascinating.

[Max Lauber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly a book for people with a niche interest, Mad Skills tries to tie together the development of MIDI, a ubiquitous musical technology, in the context of music performance/production and in the context of corporate culture.

Probably the most engrossing part of the book comes early on, when Diduck introduces to concept of claviocentrism and charts the rise of keyboard instruments and their early incorporations of automation. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but after that first historical section, the book dragged a bit through detailed descriptions of negotiations between different electronic instrument producers.

It is kind of interesting to see how we ended up with the technology that many, if not most, music producers use these days, but if - like me - you are just a user of MIDI technology with only a passing interest in standardization and trade shows I'm not sure if I would recommend spending time with this book. If you can, go record something instead!

[Ambrus Tövisházi · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a MIDI history book, fails to draw a clear picture on the subject, mainly because the timeline is so chaotic, its really hard to keep track of the year the book is about at any given page.

It's a shame though because the subject - the birth, evolution and impact of MIDI on today's music - is interesting enough.

I liked some of the chapters on famous synth artists' contribution to the MIDI game, especially the Herbie Hancock parts.

[Ambrus Tövisházi · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of research was put into this I know but as a MIDI history book, fails to draw a clear picture on the subject, mainly because the timeline is so chaotic, its really hard to keep track of the year the book is about on any given page.

It's a shame though because the subject - the birth, evolution and impact of MIDI on today's music - is interesting enough.

I liked some of the chapters on famous synth artists' contribution to the MIDI game, especially the Herbie Hancock parts.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bulk of the research was done by going through archives at the NAMM HQ in Carlsbad, Ca. and some interviews with a few people that were there at founding of the standard. It includes a chronological history of the development of MIDI with a lot of social and cultural commentary in between. There were a lot of details I was not aware of such as the marketplace telling the industry that it was too complicated and that at one point in the late 90's they though they could increase the market with MIDI 2.0. I felt it could have gone a little deeper on details although maybe a lot of these are just lost to time. There was mention of the first fabled demo with the Jupiter 6 and Prophet 600 at NAMM 1983 including a photo. There was a lot of hand wringing from users about what was not included in the first spec which were really just product and feature requests that any manufacturer or software developer could have take on. The book starts by talking about the origins of NAMM and the piano manufacturers dating back to the 19th century. NAMM also gave Ryan access to a lot of member surveys taken over the years which gave insights into the thinking of MI dealers.

I did enjoy the story about John Chowning, Stanford, and the DX7. And there is the history of Korg, Roland, Oberheim, Emu, but not too much about Rodger Linn or Akai. No mention of the MPC60 or sampling in hip hop, but there is a through analysis of hip hip and MIDI. No mention of Ensoniq, MOTU, Voyetra, JL Cooper, Midi Solutions.

The book does not delve into the basics about how midi works. It is in no way a technical guide. At times it assumes you know the basics but then the author goes one to explain tidbits like 16 channels, mono/poly modes, and system exclusive, perhaps just for reference.

I found the pre-midi solutions section interesting. Both Herbie Hancock and Don Lewis had personal systems in development. But there was no comprehensive stories about CV/gate, DCB, din sync, aftermarket MIDI mods by Kenton, the addition of MIDI during the run of the Prophet 5 and PPG Wave production.

There is not a ton of "synthspotting," mentioning what synths were used on what tracks. Perhaps because the author wanted to stick to MIDI and not synths? But that is the primary place MIDI is found. There are no interviews with anyone who made pop records in the 80s or electronic albums in the 90s with MIDI. No mention of MIDI's use in early DOS PC games and how they used General MIDI which would have been interesting. The launching of General MIDI is mentioned but without a lot of details on how it worked (piano is patch 1, drums on channel 10, etc). There is no a lot about the explosion of electronic music in the 90's, a time when the instrument industry was apparently in a slump, hence the development and pushing of General MIDI at the time.

It almost feels like the author thinks that despite the sever limitation of MIDI that it is any wonder that it worked. Perhaps because of the jockeying of control of all of the various parties like the manufacturers and the groups like IMA, JMSC, MMA. I feel that there are, at this point, there are not too many limitations due to all of the solutions developed over the years and that it did and does all work as promised. But given the long view of things a manufacturer could just easily release a feature that would allow two machines to talk in a specific way and it would either become a standard, being adopted by other manufacturers or it wouldn't.

The book's history of MIDI ends in 1999 after the various working groups gave up on MIDI 2.0 and does not mention any new adaptations like MIDI Polyphonic Expression which probably happened right after the book was finalized.

Perhaps the author will write a follow up of the book with more stories. I think next I may read Any Sound You Can Imagine - Making Music/Consuming Technology by Paul Théberge which covers similar topics.