Chapter 7 MIDI and Sound Synthesis: 7.1

Overall this chapter is by far the most practical and most successfully written one. It gives very detailed information covering the physical structure of MIDI, how it works on a high level of abstraction, how to create our own synthesizer sounds etc. Along with the learning supplements, this chapter definitely stands out from others. I feel I’m biting the real meat of this text.

7.1 Concept

7.1.1, The Beginning of Sound Synthesis, is two and a half pages long, and since it is not THAT closely related to the actually work, it is very easy to get dry and be skipped. But we’ve already put so many words in it, why don’t we use more pictures of the electrical instruments mentioned to walk the readers through the history of sound synthesis? (say, we mentioned MIDI controller, but some readers might not know what a controller is until 7.1.2.)

7.1.2, MIDI Components, talks about various meanings of MIDI and gives an example of a setup for recording and editing MIDI on a computer. However, if we could move Figure 7.5 to the front of the bullets, or insert another figure showing the entire structure, the readers would have a concept of the whole picture before they start going into the details and getting lost somewhere 2 pages later. And we really need to move Figure 7.6, the 5-pin DIN connection for MIDI, away from the end of this section since it is an example of earlier material, but we already summarized the section in the paragraph above it.

7.1.3, MIDI Compared to Digital Audio, is pretty well written. I don’t have much to say. Maybe mention that we will discuss Note On message later in 7.1.5.2? Actually we might not even need to mention the data bytes until later.

7.1.4, Channels, Tracks, and Patches in MIDI Sequencer, is very straight forward. I have nothing much to say about this section except it has a typo in the first sentence before the word “track,” and some figures in this chapter are a little bit hard to read. For example, Figure 7.13, I have to zoom in A LOT to see what’s going on in the picture, and this can be easily solved by cutting off part of the right end of this picture.

7.1.5, A Closer Look at MIDI Messages, is the most mathematical and theoretical section in 7.1. First, can we possibly change the name for this section? “A Closer Look” just doesn’t sound right. In 7.1.5.1, a figure showing the conversion among binary, decimal and hexadecimal numbers is needed, or we can refer the reader to the previous section on binary.

I do not have much comment on 7.1.6, just Figuare 7.17 is a little hard to read.

7.1.8, Synthesizer Components, gives brief description of each component within the synthesizer, and the practice exercise in 7.1.9 wraps everything up. As these two sections are not finished yet, I am looking forward to reading the completed version.