[linux-audio-dev] Re: Language fanboys [was Re: light C++ set for WAV]

[lazzaro]

On Jul 25, 2006, at 9:33 AM, Dave Robillard  
<drobilla at connect.carleton.ca> wrote:

> But you don't "just get plug and play" with MIDI.  It's all about
> learning with MIDI.


"Common things should be easy, and unusual things
should be possible".  The common things in MIDI are
plug-and-play. Only the "unusual things" are "all about
learning".

NoteOn and NoteOff, sustain pedal, volume control,
stereo pan, pitch-bend, mod-wheel ... these are all
plug-and-play, and have been since the earliest days of MIDI.

Manufacturers who make controllers know to send out these
commands in a stylized way, and sound designers who write
patches for synths (soft and hard) know to make their synths
respond in an appropriate way to these controllers.  And for
a lot musicians, this is enough for them to do what they want
to do.  This is the MIDI world Garageband lives in, for example,
and the biggest problem Apple has with Garageband is that
it is an entry-level program that makes most of its users so happy
that they aren't interested in upgrading to semi-pro software.

---
John Lazzaro
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro
lazzaro [at] cs [dot] berkeley [dot] edu
---