Dave Smith to receive GRAMMY!

[NeoHippy]

yeah, probably you are right!

[balma]

Dave Smith is the man.

Not only MIDI. He has contributed so much to contemporaneous music. Commitment, creativity, enthusiasm during several years. And he has put great tools in our hands.

[marino]

Originally Posted by NeoHippy

I agree, they deserve it!

But why 30 years late?

Exactly.
Better late than never, though...

[Dpro]

Originally Posted by BM0

A digital interface for music was inevitable with the progression of computers. MIDI is just a universal standard accepted by the major companies. There were other people involved with the development of digital instruments, well before MIDI was conceived. I think Tom Oberheim should get some recognition for contributions. The DS-2 digital sequencer came out in 1973. The Four Voice digital programmer was also pretty revolutionary for digital interface to analog instruments.

I think you missed the bigger picture here. What Tom Oberheim did was indeed innovative but it did not turn the whole music composition world on its head like Midi did.

All of sudden you had this interface that could transmit the notes you played to software. Which could then be sequenced. It opened doors composition wise. You no longer had to write your music down on paper. You could play it sequence it and build on it.
Trust me if Beethoven had been alive in the age of midi his 9th Symphony would have been finished and he would written quite a few other Symphonies.

Midi opened the door for an explosion of musical composition. Its amazing that a standard that is admittedly imperfect, has worked well enough to not be messed with and is still indispensable.
The fact that Dave and Ita were able to develop this deserves credit. It was a great leap forward for Music.

Congrats to both of them for recognition well deserved.

[clusterchord]

i think they should have awarded that way back in 1990s. by then it was quite obvious what an achievement it was, what significance it has on all areas of music productions, and MIDI was in its strongest era (i.e. pre DAWs/VSTis etc).


otoh i would have awarded him for making the Prophet 5.

[djugel]

Never understood the MIDI hate.. it baffles me actually..

[seen-da-sizer]

Originally Posted by djugel

Never understood the MIDI hate.. it baffles me actually..

Me neither! MIDI may be not perfect, but as a standard it survived many years, and it will be there for more to stay. There isn't a way that an electronic musician did not get affected one way or another by it. For the huge majority of studios, producers, and/or musicians, MIDI is an necessity.

If one hates MIDI that much, use CV/Gate/Trigger which comes with a lot of caveats as well. MIDI is just more universal. IMHO Dave Smith deserves this Grammy!!!

[ozy]

Originally Posted by kcearl

Lol Yeah some guitars have seven strings now

the real problem seems to be the development of guitar players. or lack of.

[BM0]

Originally Posted by Dpro

I think you missed the bigger picture here. What Tom Oberheim did was indeed innovative but it did not turn the whole music composition world on its head like Midi did.

All of sudden you had this interface that could transmit the notes you played to software. Which could then be sequenced. It opened doors composition wise. You no longer had to write your music down on paper. You could play it sequence it and build on it.
Trust me if Beethoven had been alive in the age of midi his 9th Symphony would have been finished and he would written quite a few other Symphonies.

Midi opened the door for an explosion of musical composition. Its amazing that a standard that is admittedly imperfect, has worked well enough to not be messed with and is still indispensable.
The fact that Dave and Ita were able to develop this deserves credit. It was a great leap forward for Music.

Congrats to both of them for recognition well deserved.

I just don't get how two people can be awarded for "MIDI" development. MIDI is just a set of standards so that companies aren't off doing their own thing, making it difficult for consumers to be open to purchasing and using different products from different manufacturers. The technology being mentioned here has nothing to do with MIDI. The technology has all to do with computers. That is what everyone praises. All of things you can do with music because of computer technology. And like I said, other people were developing digital interfaces for instruments before MIDI was adopted. These people deserve the same recognition as Dave and Ikutaro, IMO. I guess the Grammy people just want to give an award to somebody for computer technology with music.

[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by bloodsample

I can't imagine life without MIDI. Congrats to both of them!

too bad that some cant imagine live with proper midi..

[ozy]

Originally Posted by Dpro

Trust me if Beethoven had been alive in the age of midi his 9th Symphony would have been finished and he would written quite a few other Symphonies.

I daily use midi and I praise Dave Smith for his contribution to it,

but that's probably the lamest and wrongest depiction of midi's usefulness I ever read.

Do you really think that Beethoven's workflow was seriously slowed down by the necessity of writing music on paper?

Did you ever happen to watch the average professional music teacher or arranger writing down musical notation? He's probably quicker than you are at typing on a computer's keyboard.

But more seriously:

do you really think Beethoven could have used a software sequencer for... what? cutting and pasting loops or riffs in his 10th Symphony? Getting those tympani in the 4th Movement of the 11th quickly quantized and ready to go?

Do you really think Beethoven didn't compose 18 symphonies because he had not "the right software" to make the menial work for him?

Right.

It was not about THINKING the 9th THROUGH...

It was not about the years he spent living, growing up, becominjg a great soul AND a complete artist and composer, maturing the passion, the feelings and the technical ideas wgìhich, summed, made him write the most breath-taking hymn anybody has ever heard this side of the Heaven gates...

no! the problem was manually formatting those darn verses by Schiller. That took years! YEARS, Beethoven could have better used!

Now that you mention it: what if Homerus had a word processor? We would have had "Odyssey 2, the sequel". Or a prequel to the "Iliad".

Instead he had to verbally commit it to somebody else's memory, which totally ruined the process.

The whole idea of "automation speeds up anything" has really gone way too far

[Stevism]

idk...the way i used to always think of it is that midi is like musical notation, but for robots

the great composers composed, which is just what midi allows you to do as well