MIDI - doesn't matter

I was absent from the earth when MIDI was invented. Around the same time, the 4-track cassette "portastudio" came along, and that I thought was a good idea. And, like many people still do, when I thought of "computer music" I thought of bips and bleeps and bops and plops. I always hated it. Hated in the way that -- for a very long time -- I hated the sound of an electric piano.

I've come a long way since then, tend not to think in black and white terms, and I've even found MIDI quite useful to me over the past couple of years. Because as soon as computers were powerful enough, finally, to handle multi-track audio without falling over (I'd say from the G3 400 MHz onwards, in Mac-speak, you could record 8-10 tracks without needing a PCI card full of DSP chips to help you out). But although I have used native Instruments B4 and other software instruments, I still think of MIDI as a last, rather than a first, resort.

I was listening with Didi to Barney's Favourites yesterday, and it struck me for the first time (not having really listened to it before) that it was a bunch of kids singing to some very very basic MIDI backing tracks. I mean, it was a MIDI sound module of no particular quality. And in my mind there isn't a lot of difference between that, between Barney's Favourites, and most electronic dance-type music, and all the loop-based stuff. I still hate it, and for mainly the same reasons. Sure, you have to have a certain amount of skill to programme it, but it's not a skill I'm ever going to admire. Might as well be opera or ballet, or something else I hate. Someone once tried to get me to appreciate the skills involved in whatever shit it is that those DJs do, but it's like watching One Man and His Dog. But if you shouted, "Get down, Shep!" they wouldn't know what you were talking about.

Since getting the Variax, and since deciding that it was okay to "cheat" on the drum track with Groove Agent, I've barely touched the MIDI keyboard, and haven't bothered using things like the B4 and other software instruments. Can't be arsed. I'm almomst full circle now. I'd really rather be working with 100% audio. I'll use MIDI as long as I don't have to be the one programming it. The nice thing about Groove Agent, it's all pre-programmed, and you don't have to have the annoying little nerds that programmed it in the room with you. Because you can tell they are idiots: hardly any of what Groove Agent contains is useable, and there are so many basic, essential, techniques and sounds missing. I'm always having to compromise when using it, never really happy with what it does. But still happier to use it rather than go through the sheep dog trial of programming drums myself.