The Obnoxious 1986 Poll

There’s a revolution afoot, and you probably didn’t even know it. Coincidentally, I found out about it from two sources almost simultaneously: the album I’m not quite reviewing here, and an article posted by a friend on Facebook. And what is this revolution? That after almost two decades, MIDI 2.0 has been released. Released in 1983, MIDI 1.0 was fairly revolutionary itself, though in the same understated way that MIDI 2.0 is. That is to say, it’s a quiet revolution that may pass many people by. But just as MIDI 1.0 revolutionised the digitisation of music (which was not a new thing) by providing a universal standard, so does MIDI 2.0 by breaking that standard.

That last statement may seem counter-intuitive so let me attempt to explain. MIDI 1.0 digitises music by placing all musical qualities on a scale with 128 possible points. Now this is fine for most Western music, and Western instruments with a discrete scale such as keyboards. But there is a world of music outside traditional Western music, and even within Western music microtones are often used in, for example in jazz. MIDI 2.0 “breaks” the 128 point scale by ascribing all data to 32-bit values, rather than the 7-bit values of its predecessor. This higher resolution of MIDI 2.0 will allow the full textures, tonality and range of acoustic instruments. A world of music that has largely been difficult to communicate digitally can now be expressed with an ease that just did not exist before.

And why have I not yet even addressed the new album by Georgian artist, Giorgi Mikadze? Well, I’m getting there. Giorgi Mikadze plays a microtonal keyboard on his new album, Georgian Microjamz. I’ll admit, I didn’t even know such a thing existed, and it was when I was exploring the internet for information about this that I came across MIDI 2.0 – and then only a day or so later, saw my friend post an article about the same on Facebook. What I learnt is that analogue keyboards like pianos and organs are actually suitable for microtonal music after all, as their strings and pipes can be retuned as desired. That’s actually so obvious, I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me. Even though Mikadze uses a digital keyboard, which can also be retuned as desired (although sometimes more in theory than in practice, if it is a MIDI keyboard); the biggest problem in playing microtones on a keyboard is not the tuning, but the traditional keyboard design, and while there appear to be several ways of making this work, none look easy. Which makes Giorgi Mikadze’s microtonal keyboard playing even more impressive.