Re: [LAD] JACK & MIDI

On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 13:09 +0100, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 11:13:10PM +0100, Julien Claassen wrote:
>
> > Why can't those people who discussed it here (Dave R., Fons and probably
> > more - simply sit down and try to take as much as possible from the API - as
> > it is - and try to work this new concept around it.
>
> Well, the two you mention have a long history of not having radically
> different views... :-)

Perhaps from time to time, like any people discussing/debating things..
this is not a schoolyard ;)

I mostly agree with Fons on this, just trying to make clear that this
discussion is about what MIDI may be like in a future Jack - the current
one is here to stay in Jack 1.

> Seriously, there are three things that I profoundly dislike in MIDI.
>
> 1. The limited precision of almost all values, 7 bits or 14 with a
> kludge (but even this kludge is not available in any standard
> way for e.g. individual note frequencies).
>
> 2. Note events are identified by their frequency.
>
> 3. The only thing that can actually refer back to a note on event
> is it's corresponding 'note off' message. It's not possible to
> send a controller value that refers to a previous note-on event.

I consider the contents of the actual events themselves to be a
completely orthogonal problem. Yes, MIDI sucks. It's almost as stupid
as not supporting MIDI at all. Almost. :)

> The worst result of all this, and what really drives me nuts is that
> the same limits get built-in, carved in stone, into each and every
> piece of sequencing software. They all perpetuate what is in fact
> a form of cultural poverty "there's not quarter tones in pop music,
> so they don't exist" while technically there is no more reason to
> do so.

Fully agreed, but the solution isn't to try and define the Perfect MIDI
Replacement (we can't, and there's OSC which is pretty good and
widespread anyway) and grind it into Jack just like MIDI. Noone outside
of the extremely Jack focused niche community would want to use
JackEvents anyway.

Subframe accuracy and large messages (e.g. sysex) are problems that
would be nice to see resolved in Jack. People not liking MIDI itself
should simply be solved by not forcing MIDI (or anything else) at all.

Translation: the limitations of, and possible replacements for, MIDI
are well outside the scope of discussion of the Jack event system IMO.

-DR-

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Received on Fri Jan 18 20:15:10 2008