The MIDI discussion may represent a slight lean to the future for
MMDists, not unwelcome to me, since I do electric music only.

Don't forget MIDI was and is probably the most advanced and successful
agreement of hi-tech manufacturers to come up with a standard which
allowed them to do one thing better than ever before: sell
synthesizers.

Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Oberheim, etc., were faced with what modern
computer makers are too, that a consumer will hesitate to buy a unit
which becomes, through sudden day-old tech, obsolete.  There were many
ideas for the standard not deployed to this day.  16-note polyphony,
for example, expedited agreement to the MIDI standard.

Day-old tech makes a few guys playing stocks rich (and allows the
$-bloated companies to try to institute their own technical standard),
but it makes most people scared to buy something.  This is the beauty
of MIDI.  Keep your old "retro", and get something new (every year,
please); wire them up, and they're old friends.  The personal PC,
evolving at the same time, was the finishing touch to this hermetic
digital world.

MIDI was never intended to drive a mechanical device.  This "novel"
adaptation (of the MIDI standard) reminds me of comparing two robots.
One is a digitized graphic representation, that is, an animation,
existing only "inside" the computer.  This would be, for ex, Robocop's
rival robot.  The other (as seen on PBS) is one of those jittery gizmos
MIT students make, which, with great effort, pushes a bean across the
room.

The crossover that MIDI makes, of digitized information into the
"analog" world, of flesh and blood, or rather, of wood and metal, when
a computer sequencer MIDI-drives a Disklavier, questions if we should
accept lab-determined formulae for thresholds of perception.  Belief
has a much finer resolution than perception.  Believe your ears.
Because it's amazing what you can get used to.  Just take a good hard
look at your TV.

Johnny Lite