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Electronic and Computer Music$
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Electronic and Computer Music

Peter Manning

Print publication date: 2013

Print ISBN-13: 9780199746392

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2013

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746392.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use. date: 13 April 2021

The Development of the MIDI Communications Protocol

The Development of the MIDI Communications Protocol

Chapter:
(p.262) (p.263) 14 The Development of the MIDI Communications Protocol
Source:
Electronic and Computer Music
Author(s):

Peter Manning

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746392.003.0014

This chapter describes the development of MIDI as an industry standard communications protocol for the control of synthesizers. The idea of establishing an industry-standard digital protocol for connecting synthesizers and associated peripherals together at the control level was first proposed informally at a meeting of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) in the early summer of 1981. By September 1982 the draft of a considerably expanded specification was complete, including the final choice of an acronym, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI. By the end of the year, both Sequential Circuits and Roland were producing synthesizers with MIDI-compatible interfaces, and a demonstration at the January 1983 meeting of NAMM finally persuaded manufacturers that this was a development that had to be taken seriously.

Keywords:   MIDI synthesizer, industry standards, digital protocol, Sequential Circuits, Roland, National Association of Music Merchants

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