MIDI 2.0 Is Almost Here!

MIDI has been an essential building block of how music is made for about 35 years now, but music producers and engineers would be surprised to learn that the MIDI standard - the protocol they use every day to play and program music on computers, synths and other electronic gear - is still at version 1.0? The fact that things have remained unchanged for so long has been a testament to the original Yamaha, Sequential Circuits, Roland, Korg and Kawai. But whether you think that MIDI’s [all musicians need or that it’s ripe for a change, a change is on the way in the form of MIDI 2.0, an update to the specification first announced in the last couple of years, with help from some of today’s most significant software creators. We should mention at this point that the MIDI 2.0 specification isn’t final at the time of publication. It’s subject to change, but at this late stage, it seems that the vast, vast majority of the work has been done.