Home Recording For Dummies, 6th Edition

Chapter 11

Understanding Electronic Instruments and MIDI

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding MIDI

Getting to know MIDI ports

Making sense of MIDI data

Choosing the MIDI gear you need

My first job in a recording studio was in 1985. I can still remember the first time I walked into that studio. The owner was sitting, arms crossed, in a chair in front of the mixing console (it was called a console in those days because the mixer took up nearly the whole room). He looked at me and pressed a key on the Macintosh computer sitting next to him. Then, all of a sudden, a synthesizer started playing, then another, and yet another. This is cool, I thought. But then I heard my nemesis — the drum machine.

Drum machines made me lose my recording gigs as a drummer and drove me to expand my career to that of a recording engineer as well. However, I eventually came to love that drum machine and the many others to follow (sigh). In fact, over the years, I became so captivated by the whole MIDI/drum machine thing that I assembled a whole series of electronic drum sets using drum machines and samplers — all ...