The Black Keys

at

Last night/this morning.

Ultan Mashup writes:

A real musical prophet has gone. Responsible for so much music creativity. RIP.

The 80’s wouldn’t have happened without him.

Dave Smith, the father of MIDI, has died aged 72 (NME)

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16 thoughts on “The Black Keys

    1. SOQ

      Couldn’t resist trying to get one of your cheap tacky digs in eh?

      Anyways, Midi is the basis for near all electronic music, even today. No matter what Audio software you use, Midi is still there.

      RIP a true genius.

        1. Big Lad

          Feck off scottser, it was an open goal…

          …then SOQ scored an OG and claimed a penalty.. Everybody should get three or four points and let that be the end of it.

  1. K. Cavan

    Indeed, I was among the pioneers in electronic music in Ireland & owned several pre-midi synths, the Roland Sh01 had CSV/Gate triggering, the Korg Poly had -1V, the Drumatix would trigger the Sh01 but neither could work with the Korg, we tried! Then, along came Midi. It was a dream, being able to plug everything into everything else, we even striped a timecode on one track of our Portastudio, things could be a bit laggy but it all worked. A golden age ensued, rich anologue synthesis, with 16-track digital sequencing, via an early version of Cubase on a Mac Classic, a style which is hugely popular on the DR, where it’s called Synthwave. Of course, it’s a tool & has also played a part in reducing much popular music to utter crap, with no proper chord progressions or even chords, sometimes & with a pedestrian rap section in the middle.
    Once, New Order were playing here but several of their synths were stuck in the UK by bad weather. We were able to rent them a few units, which, plugged into their Emulator, allowed the show to go on & me to hang around backstage.
    As you say, SOQ, it’s still the standard today, talk of a Midi V2 remained talk, because the original specs were so fast, so accurate, that it never became neccessary & these days, my Midi interface connects Cubase on my PC to my synths, modules & drumpads & I never even think about it, anything can sequence anything else, patches can be changed between notes, reverbs & echo turned on & off, all via the miracle of Midi, the most robust, long lasting computer standard ever invented.
    RIP, Dave Smith, absolute genius.

    Still, it’s disappointing to think that people who can share an understanding of how important Midi was & appreciate electronic music, ended up becoming Reactionaries, like most but not all of my friends who became Civil Servants. I suppose we can’t all be Radicals all our lives & some, like scottser here, didn’t make it, went over to the Dark Side & became compliant cogs, cheerleading for totalitarianism, for Bill Gates, for the Establishment, with a WEF t-shirt, a poster of Bono on their wall & a Ukrainian flag in their twitter profile. In short, they grew up to unknowingly become their parents.

    1. paul

      I’ll admit to knowing nothing about electronic music so those first two paragraphs were a rush of information and passion. Hearing people talk about the things that bring them pure and honest pleasure is a joy. More of that needed on Broadsheet.

      Third paragraph, not as much.

    2. scottser

      and yet here we both are kcavan – you with your manifesto of hatred and me with my smartarse comments, sharing the one space together in no small part because of pioneers such as dave smith.
      i think i’ll go and make a cup of tea in my soros mug, you go and look at the AR-15 catalogues again.
      :P

    3. U N M U T U A L

      @K.Cavan

      Portastudio!
      There’s a blast for the past. :-) had a Fostex 160 with dolby c. Bouncing tracks with live overdubs, multiple passes until it was right.
      Tape head demagnetizer at the ready! Great stuff.

    4. Hughie Luas

      I had an SH-101 as well. Wish I had it now. Dehringer did a clone recently, the MS-1, but I loved that original synth. The little hand controller and all – very Vince Clarke. They go for well over a grand second-hand now.

      https://lennod.wordpress.com/category/5-sh-101/

      Aiming to get back into this whole space. It’ll have to be M-AUDIOs plus Apple Mainstage/Ableton, DAWS, laptop etc these days. At least they’re a bit more affordable, though I really want a Prophet 5 or a NORD Lead. I like big knobs (write your own joke here).

      There DEFINITELY should be a Vintage Synth feature on BS. Who cares about cars? (write your own Gary Numan joke here too).

      1. Paulus

        Ah, but how many of you have twiddled the knobs on a Transcendent 2000 (A DIY yoke).

          1. Paulus

            A mate built one in the 80s. It was quite educational to those of us who’d never had access to a synth before.

  2. ce

    “i think i’ll go and make a cup of tea in my soros mug, you go and look at the AR-15 catalogues again.”

    … you took the comments right out of my typing… probably because of the chip implanted in our now impure blood…

    I have no idea what midi is but I’ve heard 5G is pretty good…

    1. Mad

      Ain’t that the truth
      Technology good when it lets me wwok away all day long in me ma’s gaff making tuneless gunk no one will ever listen to and laughably referring to myself as a “pioneer”.
      OTOH technology, big Pharma etc bad

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