7.1

7.1.1 - The Beginnings of Sound Synthesis

This was pretty interesting. There isn't much else to say. I did think it was kind of funny that yesterday I watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory that had a Theremin in it. That was helpful to visualize the instrument, since I saw it being used so recently. It was sort of fun to see how everything came together to come to the synthesized music we work with these days.

7.1.2 - Midi Components

It seems to me a little unnecessary to have the list of different meanings for MIDI at the beginning of this section and then almost repeat them soon after when giving real-life examples of the different meanings. Why not just condense this all by combining the two lists and save a little room?

Above the list of real-world examples on page 4, the Preface is mentioned when it should be chapter 1 that is mentioned. The Preface is mentioned again in the bullet point on page 4, at the top of page 5 it talks about figures from the preface. It should say figures from chapter 1. This is in the second bullet point.
Immediately below the aside on page 5, there is a typo. "If you don’t have a dedicate hardware of software..." Dedicate should be dedicated.

I feel like figure 7.3 should be placed directly below the second bullet point on page 5 instead of at the bottom of the page. It makes more sense, and wouldn't hurt anything.

In the first line on page 6, it references the Preface again, when it should reference chapter 1.

7.1.3 - 7.1.4

All of the sections so far in this chapter are pretty important to gaining a good basic understanding of MIDI and the differences between MIDI and digital audio. However, since we've been using the MIDI already, most of the information is just reinforcing knowledge we already have at this point.

7.1.5.1 - Binary, Decimal, Hex

I feel like since you spent time on binary, spending a little time, either in lecture or in the book, on hex would be a smart thing to do. It wouldn't take that much time, but if it is brought up like this I feel like it should be explained a little bit more.

7.1.5.2 - MIDI Message Types and Format

I think that it is important to know how MIDI works, and learning how the messaging behind a MIDI machine works is crucial to understanding MIDI. I think sections like this are important, but there really isn't anything that you can do with messaging. This makes it a little hard to stay focused.

7.1.6 - Synthesizers vs. Samplers

The first sentence in the second paragraph on page 18 says "There can be than one audio sample." I assume "more" should be placed after "can be."
At the bottom of the aside on page 19 the tails of the g and y are missing. This needs to be aligned better.

7.1.8 - Synthesizer Components

I thought this was a good section. The content was pretty practical to what we are doing, and along with the help that Jason gave us last Friday working with the synthesizers, I think I'm starting to understand how to manipulate them better. Some of this content was review, since we've been working with these machines for several weeks now. I was going to mention that I thought it would be good to have a supplement here, but then I saw the supplement in the next section! I was so, so, so excited.

7.1.9 - Creating your own Synthesizer sounds

The Reason supplement was great. I thought that it was the most practical supplement we've had so far and I had fun doing it. For some reason I couldn't get the sound to work with the subtractonaut supplement, so I didn't get that one finished.