I'm new here so be gentle with me
Better late than never, I am returning to the wonderful world of organ playing and, my word, hasn't the technology moved on? Except, it seems, in one area: MIDI...
The MIDI specification dates back to the early '80s when 31.25kbit/s was motoring along quite nicely. In my research for likely ways to implement Hauptwerk, I've been surprised to find that it's still in use in its original serial I/O, 5 pin DIN format, pretty well wherever I look. This seems odd, particularly as USB MIDI has been around for the past 18 years or so and is fairly universally adopted elsewhere.
With a background in electronics and computer programming I started thinking about this conundrum and before long I was coding away. The result is a MIDI program running on an Arduino Due that supports up to three 8x8 matrix keyboards, full pedalboard, four swell pedals and 96 stops/pistons. Each component class can have its own separate MIDI channel and everything is sent via a single USB interface to the host computer running Hauptwerk.
All this needed barely a day's worth of coding to get to the stage where it plays nicely with Hauptwerk. That got me wondering why such an obvious solution is, as far as I can tell, not in common use. It is a remarkably low cost way of achieving a full organ's worth of connectivity.
And so, inevitably, some questions:
- Has this sort of thing been done already and I've just not noticed?
- Is there some dastardly down side to this approach that I've not considered?
- Is this an interesting approach that others might like to consider?
John.
Better late than never, I am returning to the wonderful world of organ playing and, my word, hasn't the technology moved on? Except, it seems, in one area: MIDI...
The MIDI specification dates back to the early '80s when 31.25kbit/s was motoring along quite nicely. In my research for likely ways to implement Hauptwerk, I've been surprised to find that it's still in use in its original serial I/O, 5 pin DIN format, pretty well wherever I look. This seems odd, particularly as USB MIDI has been around for the past 18 years or so and is fairly universally adopted elsewhere.
With a background in electronics and computer programming I started thinking about this conundrum and before long I was coding away. The result is a MIDI program running on an Arduino Due that supports up to three 8x8 matrix keyboards, full pedalboard, four swell pedals and 96 stops/pistons. Each component class can have its own separate MIDI channel and everything is sent via a single USB interface to the host computer running Hauptwerk.
All this needed barely a day's worth of coding to get to the stage where it plays nicely with Hauptwerk. That got me wondering why such an obvious solution is, as far as I can tell, not in common use. It is a remarkably low cost way of achieving a full organ's worth of connectivity.
And so, inevitably, some questions:
- Has this sort of thing been done already and I've just not noticed?
- Is there some dastardly down side to this approach that I've not considered?
- Is this an interesting approach that others might like to consider?
John.