Mondo Knows Facts
MIDI 1.0 let rival synthesizers finally talk
Sequential Circuits and Roland agreed the specification in 1983 Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits and Ikutaro Kakehashi of Roland led the work, and the MIDI 1.0 specification was shown at the 1983 NAMM show. It sent note, velocity and controller messages as serial data, so a keyboard from one maker could drive a module from another. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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MIDI 2.0 arrived more than 35 years laterThe update added two-way conversation and far finer resolutionMIDI let machines talk to each other in 1983One cable carries note, velocity and control messages, not audioMoog's modular synthesizer used voltage as controlPitch, filter and loudness were all steered by electrical signalsThe Minimoog made synthesizers portable enough for bandsThe 1970 model folded a whole modular patch into one wooden caseThe E-mu Emulator brought sampling into reachThe 1981 machine stored its sampled sounds on ordinary floppy disksThe RIAA curve evened out record playbackA single equalisation standard was adopted in 1954 to end mismatched discs
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Tags: midi, synthesizers, standards
MIDI 1.0 let rival synthesizers finally talk: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Sequential Circuits and Roland agreed the specification in 1983. The figure is taken from MIDI Association, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.