Practical MIDI

Bill started his musical career like most guys from his era…with the arrival of The Beatles to America in 1964..at the impressionable age of 14 when he got his first guitar. The following year he started his first band where he played lead guitar. That lasted six years until he started his second band, where he played bass guitar. His third band was in need of a drummer so Bill stepped in, having taught himself the drums the year before.

As that third band evolved, Bill found himself playing keyboards as well. His band career spanned three decades until he pared it down to a duet. The duet still plays occasionally, but most of Bill’s playing these days is as a solo act, made possible by MIDI files and a MIDI-capable keyboard. Bill never did learn to read music and plays all these instruments by ear. He began his MIDI connection by just playing the songs, but soon grew curious as to how they worked so he began dissecting MIDI files and editing sequences. Having already been a published writer since the early 1980s, it was only natural that Bill’s subject matter would turn to MIDI and its many uses.