MidiMike

When I first went to a music store near my town to see if I could get a job, I naturally went to a store I shopped in a bunch of times.   I was one of the first customers to purchase a new keyboard that was starting to break all the sales records at the time.  It used FM (Frequency Modulation) to essentially create or ‘synthesize’ new sounds not possible before, ……… and …… you could play up to 16 notes AT ONE TIME!!!  You take that for granted now but that was a thrill for electronic keyboards (other than organs and all that).

So I went over and talked to the owner.  He walked us over to the keyboard I had purchased and said, “can you program this thing?”.  I told him absolutely and I can show him now how to create cool new sounds.  He said, that was OK and I was hired.  That started the sales portion of my journey.  This song got the name and the main groove from the keyboard sound in that Yamaha DX7 synthesizer.

If you played individual notes in the right tempo, the thumping sound would build just right and you got this effect like a helicopter at a distance.  I did write lyrics for this song, but I always hear it as an instrumental. For the early instrumentals, I was recording on the first computer for consumer electronics that had a built in MIDI port, the Atari and I had the 1040 ST.  Again, that means nothing today, but this was space-age technology and had a lot of musical applications.  I still have it (two, actually and two monitors) and it still works to this day.  I can fire up the Atari and still play all these MIDI pieces as I did when they were written.

The drums are all programmed.  In fact, everything is.  All the sounds are triggered from the Yamaha DX7 and recorded via MIDI.  Each time you hit play’, you are regenerating all the sounds to make this song. See the MIDI series for MIDIMike’s intro to MIDI by clicking here.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/michaelskennedy2