Practical MIDI

Back in 1966 B.C. (Before Computers) I started my own band while still in high school. It was a labor of love-my love for the music of the time and, as of 2001, I’ve stayed with it for 35 years and counting. I’m still out there playing on weekends but the music scene has changed drastically. My original band consisted of six friends with a common goal-to make some music, make some money, meet some girls and have some fun. And we accomplished all these things.

As John Lennon said in one of his songs, "Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans." Well, those other plans eventually caught up with the other members of my band. The bass player joined the Army. Our rhythm guitarist went on to college. My keyboard player took over the family business. The drummer moved out of state and the singer went on to become a preacher. That left just me. Not much of a band.

I eventually replaced all these players with other musicians over the years, but life caught up with the replacements as well and I was constantly looking for other musicians. Well, about a dozen years ago I had a four-piece band that was on the verge of breaking up so I proposed the idea of a duo to one of the members and we’ve been playing as a duo since 1990. It started out as just two guys with two guitars but over the years I added a keyboard, bass, drum machine and a vocalizer. Now the two of us sounded more like four guys again. A few years ago my band opened for Steppenwolf. I was familiar with their music and their personnel. However, when I looked up at the stage I noticed there were only three musicians backing up John Kay. Where was the bass player? I found out later that the bass parts were sequenced and that most people never even noticed his absence. That made me curious enough to look into this procedure called sequencing.

Skip ahead to 1998. It’s still me and my partner making music the old fashioned way-one instrument at a time. A friend of mine introduced me to sequencing, where a person inputs values into a computer using sequencing software. These values translate to notes and sounds and specific instruments. The result was once again my six-piece band, only without the other five members. Once completed, the newly created sequence can be played back on the computer to sound like drums, bass, keyboards, harmonica, horns, strings, and in some cases, even backup vocalists oohing and aahing. It was the answer to my problem.

I couldn’t imagine myself dragging my whole computer setup to a job and playing along with it so further research led me to the fact that certain electronic keyboards were equipped with floppy disk drives for playing back these sequences. The sequences became known as MIDI files. MIDI is an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Now I had a compact, convenient way to transport and play my midi files.

I think you can see where this is going. Even if other band members move on with their lives and leave you holding the musical bag, so to speak, you can carry on with all of your favorite tunes without sacrificing quality or sound. However, now you don’t have to split the night’s take with five other guys. You don't have the hassle of five different personalities clashing. You don't have to ask anyone else's opinion on which songs to play. You can continue to play your favorite guitar and sing while your band resides on the disk. The down side to all this is that now there's no one else to help you pack up the equipment at the end of the night. That shouldn't be much of a problem, though, since the equipment can now fit in the back seat of your car instead of that converted Greyhound bus you used to tour the countryside in.

©2002 Bill Bernico for CYBERMIDI.com Downwind Publications