The Musician's Guide to MIDI.

Skinner, Robert

At a Music Library Association chapter meeting a decade ago, a community college faculty member gave a well-received presentation on his institution's nationally known program in music technology. During the question period, he was asked how the college's library was supporting the program. The faculty member answered that the library did not support it. He was then asked what a library could do to support music technology: "Nothing that I can think of' was the disappointing reply.

The Musical Instrument Digital Interface, popularly known as MIDI, had been in existence for several years before his talk, but it has been much more recently that readily available periodicals, such as Electronic Musician, and books, such as the one under review, have enabled libraries to provide support for persons interested in music technology in ways that were not possible in the mid- 1980s.

Even though MIDI has become ubiquitous in the last decade, volumes as comprehensive as this one are still a rarity. But what is one to make of the inclusion of "musician" in the title? Does this mean that the author assumes that his readers are trained players of acoustical musical instruments? There are references, such as comparing the superior touch qualities of acoustical versus electronic musical instruments (p. 262), but these are few. While there are no sections or chapters on music basics, Braut does define most musical terms inter alia: "The first analog synthesizers were monophonic. In other words, they let you play only one note at a time" (p. 250), information that should be unnecessary for musicians. Nor is there much of an attempt to relate to what an acoustic musician might be comfortable with, such as how a score might be represented in the MIDI protocol; music notation appears only as part of screen shots in discussions of MIDI-based computer programs. Perhaps the author recognizes musicians may need more hand-holding in explanations of technical matters? No, while Braut writes clearly, there are no concessions in this area: "by drawing a graph with the time along the abscissa and the changes in pressure along the ordinate, you can show the sound in its two-dimensional form: i.e., it's waveform" (p. 4). Although there is "A Glossary of MIDIspeak," a good familiarity with digital terminology is a prerequisite for making much headway on most of the topics. The answer, such as it is, appears in the introduction: "Far from being a drag on creativity, mastery of the MIDI standard will help musicians focus on the artistic aspects of their work, by giving them ways to optimize their use of these new tools" (p. xxxv). In other words, "musician" is in the title because musicians need to have an in-depth knowledge of MIDI.

Regardless of the intended audience, the book offers comprehensive, technical coverage of the MIDI protocol. The first chapter is an overview of musical acoustics, development of pre-MIDI electronic instruments, and the characteristics of the MIDI interface used by the musician to control the sound generators. Chapters 2 through 6 examine those parts of the MIDI protocol relating to the controller and generators themselves. Chapters 7 through 9 cover MIDI hardware and its many related applications; these include recorders, sequencers, synchronization, sampling, editors, librarians, and MIDI device memory and data formats. Three chapters are related to system exclusive messages, including programming and applications. The final section of the book covers recent additions to the MIDI standard: General MIDI, MIDI Show Control, and the MMC (MIDI Machine Control) commands. Nine appendixes include the previously mentioned glossary, addresses of MIDI hardware/software manufacturers and vendors, and treatment of various technical topics, such as "Test Procedures and Hidden Functions" of some seventy-five MIDI devices made by Boss, Korg, Kurzweil, Roland, and Yamaha.

Throughout the book there are hundreds of programming examples, detailed breakdown of various MIDI formats, and diagrams of various equipment setups. While many of these are specific to particular MIDI devices, the discussion of microcomputer-based MIDI software is generic. Neither readers nor acquisitions librarians should be mislead by the series statement: this volume is not Macintosh specific, although the screen shots of representative types of MIDI programs all seem to be from that platform.

The Musician's Guide to MIDI can be recommended because it is current and comprehensive, even if its title promises something other than the book delivers.