Silent Agreement: MIDI and What We Hear in the Wires

Sheet music has always been an invisible treaty. A shared language that belongs to everyone and no one. But fifty years ago, as musicians began shaping sound out of raw electricity, that treaty fell apart.

In this episode

• The Broken Treaty: Why early synthesizers from different manufacturers couldn't talk to each other, and the resulting landscape of incompatible voltages.
• The Unlikely Alliance: How Dave Smith in the US (Sequential Circuits) and Ikutaro Kakehashi in Japan (Roland) looked past corporate rivalry to build a universal standard.
• The Birth of MIDI: How microscopic 1981 microprocessors forced engineers to shrink the musical universe into elegant, lightweight digital sentences.
• Juan Atkins: the Detroit musician whose work sparked the global rise of techno music.

Episode Music

• Jay Sebastian Bach
  • Prelude No. 1 in C major
• James Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0
  • Bright Lights of Summer 
  • Our Ships Line the Ocean Floor
  • Disconnected
• Alfonse
  • Korg MS 10
• Donghyuk Heo
  • Johann Sebastian Bach, Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, on Modular Synthesizer

Additional Reading

Billias, A. (2024, December 21). MIDI history chapter 6: MIDI begins 1981-1983. The MIDI Association. https://midi.org/midi-history-chapter-6-midi-begins-1981-1983

Doyle, T. (2024, November). Classic tracks: Model 500 'No UFOs'. Sound on Sound. https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-model-500-no-ufos

Stewart, D. (2014, December 3). Technical Grammy Award: Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith. Recording Academy. https://www.grammy.com/news/technical-grammy-award-ikutaro-kakehashi-and-dave-smith/

MIDI Manufacturers Association. (1996, February). MIDI 1.0 detailed specification (Version 4.2.1). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ewRrvMEFRPlKon6nfSCxqnTMEu70sz0c/view

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