About the Author
Jim Aikin is earnestly attempting to enjoy living on this planet, in spite of the obvious difficulties that buzz like gnats around the process.
He fiddles around with synthesizers and music software and then writes about them for a variety of magazines, including Keyboard, Electronic Musician, Mix, and Drum.
He is the author of two nonfiction books — Power Tools for Synthesizer Programming and Chords & Harmony, both of which are nominally in print from Hal Leonard, although you wouldn’t know it from the pathetic sales figures on the royalty statements.
His fantasy stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and other magazines. Though he hasn’t been active as a fiction writer for more than 15 years, he has recently started sending out stories again, and has made new sales to both of the above fine publications in 2008. “Run! Run!” appeared in the Sept. ‘08 issue of F&SF and “An Elvish Sword of Great Antiquity” in the Jan. ‘09 issue. Another story, “Leaving the Station,” is in the December ‘09 issue of Asimov’s.
His two published novels (Walk the Moons Road and The Wall at the Edge of the World) are both out of print.
He teaches cello privately in Livermore and Pleasanton, California, and has performed with a number of local groups, including the Livermore Valley Opera, the Pleasanton Chamber Players, the Silicon Valley Symphony, the Pleasanton Playhouse, the Redwood Symphony, the Diablo Symphony, and the Livermore-Amador Symphony.
He has released five works of interactive fiction (text-based computer games, in other words) — “Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina,” “Lydia’s Heart,” “Mrs. Pepper’s Nasty Secret” (co-authored with Eric Eve), “April in Paris,” and most recently “A Flustered Duck.” The duck won first place in the annual Spring Thing competition for 2009.
His personal website is www.musicwords.net.
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About the Author
Jim Aikin is earnestly attempting to enjoy living on this planet, in spite of the obvious difficulties that buzz like gnats around the process.
He fiddles around with synthesizers and music software and then writes about them for a variety of magazines, including Keyboard, Electronic Musician, Mix, and Drum.
He is the author of two nonfiction books — Power Tools for Synthesizer Programming and Chords & Harmony, both of which are nominally in print from Hal Leonard, although you wouldn’t know it from the pathetic sales figures on the royalty statements.
His fantasy stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and other magazines. Though he hasn’t been active as a fiction writer for more than 15 years, he has recently started sending out stories again, and has made new sales to both of the above fine publications in 2008. “Run! Run!” appeared in the Sept. ‘08 issue of F&SF and “An Elvish Sword of Great Antiquity” in the Jan. ‘09 issue. Another story, “Leaving the Station,” is in the December ‘09 issue of Asimov’s.
His two published novels (Walk the Moons Road and The Wall at the Edge of the World) are both out of print.
He teaches cello privately in Livermore and Pleasanton, California, and has performed with a number of local groups, including the Livermore Valley Opera, the Pleasanton Chamber Players, the Silicon Valley Symphony, the Pleasanton Playhouse, the Redwood Symphony, the Diablo Symphony, and the Livermore-Amador Symphony.
He has released five works of interactive fiction (text-based computer games, in other words) — “Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina,” “Lydia’s Heart,” “Mrs. Pepper’s Nasty Secret” (co-authored with Eric Eve), “April in Paris,” and most recently “A Flustered Duck.” The duck won first place in the annual Spring Thing competition for 2009.
His personal website is www.musicwords.net.
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I have read some of your articles. Some are very good. But you are no midiguru. You mistakenly think that MIDI started in the 80’s. Wrong. Don’t hate, but it was pioneered by myself, Casio, SIEL, and Nilford Labs in the 79’s. Anytime you want the real facts, contact the true MIDIGuru.
Comment by Bruce Thompson | May 31, 2008 |
Interesting comment, Bruce. I’d love to know more about this bit of history! There were certainly digital precursors to MIDI, including the Oberheim System and a Roland system whose name I can’t recall offhand — was it the Roland Digital Bus? MIDI itself was based largely on the latter.
The MIDI Specification was developed jointly by Sequential Circuits, Roland, Yamaha, Korg, and a couple of other companies; there were six in all. I’d have to look up the details. Casio may have been one of them, but SIEL definitely wasn’t. You may have been involved at that point; I wasn’t an insider, and wouldn’t know.
I didn’t recall Nilford Labs, but from a quick websearch, it appears they were involved with Atari and Hybrid Arts in the 1986 era. That would have been a couple of years after MIDI appeared. What they were doing prior to that I wouldn’t know.
Anytime you’d care to share the real facts with the rest of the universe, feel free to trot them out. I’ll run your data past Dave Smith and the folks at the MMA and get their recollections.
In any case, the history of MIDI has nothing to do with the question of who qualifies as a MIDI guru. You could have stepped out of a flying saucer yesterday and still know tons more about MIDI, synthesizers, and digital audio than I do. Or not.
I’ve been writing articles on music technology for Keyboard since the early ’80s. I currently write for Keyboard, EM, Mix, and Virtual Instruments. You can find articles by me on the O’Reilly site, and last year I wrote several features for Drum. I was the chief editor on Peter Kirn’s book Real World Digital Audio (Peachpit Press), and my own book, Power Tools for Synthesizer Programming, is still in print, though Hal Leonard has pretty much managed to kill it.
All in all, I’ve shared my assorted bits of wisdom, information, speculation, and opinion with hundreds of thousands of people over the past 25 years. I’ve received thank-you emails from Istanbul and Kuala Lumpur.
I’m sure your consulting business, which is described very briefly on your website, is doing yeoman service for musicians in your local area (though as far as I can see, your site doesn’t actually say what area that is, which would probably tend to discourage potential customers). It appears from your site that you’re also a reseller for Sonar and Pro Tools. Other than that, I’m not sure what your claims to guru-dom are.
Maybe we should have a face-off on programming Reason tracks or something. That might be fun!
Comment by midiguru | June 1, 2008 |
Enjoying the blog, Jim, mostly for the IF musings but the overall tone seems to agree with me as well. I’ll be sure to stay tuned for more posts as I’m hoping to do some IF development myself.
As it happens I’m also a fan of electronic music (mostly dub, ambience, IDM, etc.) although I am far more an enthusiastic listener than a tinkerer.
Cheers!
Nathan
Comment by Nathan Jerpe | December 13, 2008 |
[...] computer literacy) skills. Hopefully, it’ll be coming out soon (ish). In the meantime, Jim Aikin has been using Inform 7 in his teaching: one to [...]
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