Practical MIDI

For the most part, I’d have to say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my experience of playing live with MIDI files. However, there have been some moments that have tried my patience. Moments that made me wish I was still in a live four-piece band. Moments that made my ears hot and my face flush and my nerves jump. But all in all, I have to say that I wouldn’t and couldn’t go back to a four-piece band after having experienced the freedom of a solo act using MIDI files.

Let’s start with last week’s job and work backwards, shall we? It was an outdoor job on the Riverfront, outside with no shade and the temperature was approaching ninety degrees. I’ve played this particular job before with no problems, but on this hot day, in the middle of a great MIDI rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “I Know A Little” my entire keyboard overheated and shut down, leaving me standing there with very little to say. I explained to the crowd about the heat’s effect on my keyboard and that’s what shut me down, but they didn’t understand and couldn’t have cared less about my excuses. They were there for the music.

Once I could handle, but that afternoon my keyboard shut down during six separate songs. At least on one song it shut down at a point in the tune that sounded like it could have been the ending, so I pretended that it was and strummed one last guitar chord with a flourish and said, “Thank You.”

Going back in time a few weeks, there was the job in the hotel lounge. I was about a third the way through Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page” when my keyboard stand chose that exact moment to collapse, sending my keyboard, cheat sheet book and Digitech harmonizer to the stage floor. Not only did that put an abrupt end to that song, but the keyboard’s hard drive jumped to a different song and began playing it while I stood there looking down at the whole mess.

Back a few months before that and I found myself with my partner at the local golf course clubhouse playing The Eagles’ “Desperado” when the MIDI malfunctioned and decided to play at double speed. I’d have given my night’s salary for a camera to capture the look on my partner’s face. He had to stop singing and make some lame excuse to the crowd about an electrical surge, when in fact it was a misplaced controller in the MIDI file itself. Needless to say from then on I spent WAY more time in the editing process when selecting our material.

Back to beginning of my MID career. Gees, where do I start? Files would stop abruptly, or pitch bend controllers would distort a measure or two, mysterious key changes would jump into the song at inopportune times and of course there were operator errors.

I’d announce one song and cue another, leaving my partner to figure out what the heck was playing, because it sure didn’t match the sheet he was looking at. At that point my partner decided that we were not cut out to be a MIDI act, but I persisted and cleaned up the offending files and the show went on for several more years. But not without my partner’s constant grumbling about being labeled a “karaoke” act because we were using MIDI files.

Last week, after seven years of complaining to me about the unnatural use of MIDI files in our act, I’m happy to announce that my partner actually bought himself a Yamaha MIDI keyboard and since we’ve split to do our own thing, he’s now using MIDI files at some of his jobs, too. I guess it just takes some people a little longer to see the light and realize that MIDI files can actually be a good thing.

©2005 Bill Bernico for CYBERMIDI.com Downwind Publications