10History of MIDI
Musicians and instrument builders have long been interested in creating musical instruments that can play themselves. From the music box to the player piano and on to MIDI, a variety of technologies have been used to create mechanical instruments. Each of these instruments have a way to program the music it plays, and each system is unique from each other.
Some instruments use perforated paper in conjunction with an air system to trigger notes while others use metal spokes on a rotating cylinder. In all the years of mechanical instruments, there were very few standard performance specifications and so each designer built his own. This means that instruments couldn’t sync together to create a larger ensemble, and it limited the ...
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