The discrete nature of MIDI and its purported effect on music is one of the main example complaints in You Are Not a Gadget, and one of the easier ones to evalu

The discrete nature of MIDI and its purported effect on music is one of the main example complaints in You Are Not a Gadget, and one of the easier ones to evaluate. Has the richness of music been decreased since the MIDI standard was promulgated, or has it increased? Music is like many other sorts of human information systems (natural languages, laws, business practices) in that there are various forces both for and against standardization. Standards in music are much older than MIDI; the equal-tempered tuning of the Western scale is exactly a somewhat unsatisfactory compromise forced by standardization. More here: http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2010/02/review-you-are-not-gadget.html http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2010/02/review-you-are-no...