BEFORE there was MIDI Recording......BEFORE there was even MIDI....

Doge

There was this:

The Xerox Mockingbird Music Scoring & Recording software (1980):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xu3r5lZds0

Click here to skip to the part where the computer records notes from a synthesizer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xu3r5lZds0#t=5m55s


Nothing short of amazing, as you would expect from the TRUE people responsible for modern day computing.....

the good people at Xerox PARC.

madtheory

Love this stuff! Thanks. There was a lot of score writing stuff around at that time. I think the Fairlight could do this when released in 1979.

As for Xerox PARC, well, yes they did give us one aspect of modern computing (icon based point and click) but it took someone with vision to implement it. They didn't realise what they had. IIRC Jobs bought the patent rights for $1.

Interesting also is that they're using a Yamaha electronic piano, can't remember the model but these had a pre MIDI digital polyphonic interface for connecting to Yamaha CS synths, on a D Sub connector.

Doge

madtheory wrote: »

Love this stuff! Thanks. There was a lot of score writing stuff around at that time. I think the Fairlight could do this when released in 1979.

As for Xerox PARC, well, yes they did give us one aspect of modern computing (icon based point and click)
but it took someone with vision to market it. They didn't realise what they had. IIRC Jobs bought the patent rights for $1.

Fixed!

The researchers/inventors knew exactly what they had,
it was the management that got in the way of the commercial success.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Bg461mnN8#t=8m33s

Their software was extremely user friendly, even more user friendly than what apple had to offer.

As the the title of the video says "Great Artists Steal"

I'll never give Steve Jobs more credit than he deserves.


Poor Steve is probably doing a "barrell roll" in his grave as I type! :pac:

Doge

madtheory wrote: »

I think the Fairlight could do this when released in 1979.

The CMI Series 1 could indeed record notes from a musical keyboard before this.

But given the graphical constraints It couldn't show score by means of traditional music notation.

I think it just showed a "C" for the letter C, far more crude.

I love how you can select, copy, cut and paste the score in the Mocking Bird software also.

I mean you couldn't have made it more user friendly.

madtheory

Great research! Fair play.

I dunno, I think Jobs was good at putting several existing technologies together, so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. He was also good at pulling together good engineers into teams. You need to be a bastard to do that stuff!

IIRC the earliest brochures for the CMI state that it can print out a score. Where did you get your info from? Sounds interesting.

Doge

madtheory wrote: »

Great research! Fair play.

I dunno, I think Jobs was good at putting several existing technologies together, so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. He was also good at pulling together good engineers into teams. You need to be a bastard to do that stuff!

IIRC the earliest brochures for the CMI state that it can print out a score. Where did you get your info from? Sounds interesting.

I agree 100% there, that was what Jobs excelled at.
I just get pissed off when people think he innovated everything, but as you said he pulled existing technologies together, and in a very polished way.

The CMI Series 1 could print alright, so it very well could be able to print score.
I was just looking at the screens for each "Page" and couldn't see any page that displayed the score.

Malice

Funny I always thought MIDI went back to the 1970s. I guess not!

madtheory

http://www.midi.org/aboutmidi/tut_history.php

Anima

The great thing about midi is the simplicity but it's getting a bit outdated these days for a lot uses (except just playing notes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Sound_Control is much better.

madtheory

That looks really great, except it's lacking the goodwill and co operation among manufacturers that Dave Smith miraculously enabled back at NAM 1983. The best thing about MIDI is that it's everywhere. That's hard to beat!

Doge

Anima wrote: »

The great thing about midi is the simplicity but it's getting a bit outdated these days for a lot uses (except just playing notes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Sound_Control is much better.

I think you're forgetting about Control Changes and NRPN there.

NRPN has a very nice sized resolution, does me grand!

madtheory

OK, so while it could sequence 8 monophonic parts, sample synthesize etc. etc. the CMI didn't have actual scoring until 1984. It was called StaveWriter:
http://www.fairlightus.com/Downloads/Historical/Legacy%20User%20Manuals/CMI/CMI_IIx_TheStavewriter.pdf

Doge

madtheory wrote: »

OK, so while it could sequence 8 monophonic parts, sample synthesize etc. etc. the CMI didn't have actual scoring until 1984. It was called StaveWriter:
http://www.fairlightus.com/Downloads/Historical/Legacy%20User%20Manuals/CMI/CMI_IIx_TheStavewriter.pdf

Ah good man!

A fair bit of digging needed to be done to find that info, which means one thing:

There is a severe lack of in-depth videos of the fairlight!

madtheory

Correction- there's a severe lack of Fairlight in my studio!