Greetings from a damp and increasingly-autumnal Lincolnshire.
This may get a better name, but until then it's 'the newsletter'. I've been feeling a need for a place to overshare what's happening in my world as well as things that pass through my transom relating to MIDI, soundchips, electronics, small-scale instrument-making and music-related retrocomputing.
There are some fabulous new ideas in the entries to the MIDI Innovation Awards, such as the Neoharp and the Mortrix foot controller. I'm very happy that I was invited to submit the new MIDISID. The finalists have recently been announced and are well worth a browse.
linusakesson has made his C64-based theremin more playable by making the note-entry by keyboard while the other hand controls both volume and expression. His rendition of Ave Maria (a duet with himself on real piano and queremin) is beautiful.
Recently I decided to get to the bottom of a problem I've long had with dropped notes when sending MIDI from my computer to MIDI devices. and have built an open-source device to replace the (admittedly cheap) piece of... equipment I have been using. I expected the video about that to be a little dry but it has been well-received and there's some interesting conversation in the comments.
Without further ado, read on for more musical news, views and reviews.
I've had an issue of dropped notes when sending MIDI from Logic Pro to external MIDI instruments. In this video I talk about the simple workaround, a diagnosis of the problem, a beautiful DIY solution and finally I demonstrate it with a piece of music rendered in 6 voices on 2 SID chips with no dropped notes.
The 16 finalists of the 2025 MIDI Innovation Awards have been announced. They're in half a dozen categories covering commercial and non-commercial hardware and software projects.
They invited me to submit the redesigned MIDISID earlier this year and I'm extremely happy to see it alongside some amazing products although it hasn't made the final three in its category.
There are some inspiring, fun and exciting projects among the entries which are well worth a browse.
Austin has acquired and reviewed the Moog E1 sustainer guitar. No, I didn't know that Moog had made guitars either. It has regular pickups, a piezo bridge, an e-bow type device for infinite sustain or muting.
This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete has had a Roland VP330 vocoder in for repair, which has led to some videos from Sam (Look Mum No Computer) and Mitch (Hack Modular).
In this one, Mitch demonstrates the Roland and the museum's Korg VC10. He also explains how they work and goes into the history of the vocoder, with a surprising connection to secure wartime communications.
The Atari ST is loved for its MIDI ports but the Amiga supports MIDI too via its serial port. It just needs a little bit of level shifting. I've demonstrated my own Amiga MIDI adaptor in the past.
Retrobits goes into more detail and demonstrates a vintage box, a Pro MIDI Plus, which sends the MIDI to his MT32Pi.
linusakesson has previously demonstrated his C64 theremin project and here he takes it some steps further with his qwerty theremin or qweremin.
The theremin is hard to play well and so he has combined a keyboard note entry with the gesture interface of the theremin controlling volume and expression.
He goes into some detail about the external volume control, necessary because while the C64 SID chip has an envelope control for each voice, it's difficult to smoothly adjust volume during the sustain period of a note. The really mind-boggling part is the ingenious solution he came up with for digitally controlling the volume of a signal while maintaining a constant bias voltage. I've had to watch that a few times to get close to understanding it, and I'm in awe of him for understanding the problem and coming up with such a clever solution.
His rendition of Ave Maria (a duet with himself on real piano and queremin) is in a separate video and is beautiful.
1Bit Fever Dreams has made a video about coding MIDI on a classic Mac. (main link)
He has followed this up more recently with a similar video about coding MIDI, SID and YMF262 on Foenix retro-style computers.
Kevin of DIYelectromusic has had the fabulous idea to hook up four AY chips and a controller to give 12 voices of square-wave goodness. My main link goes to a recent blog post. He has also published a video on Maker Tube which allows you to hear the beast in action.
Back when PCs had a beeper speaker, a company called Covox made a speech device that connected to the parallel port.
James discovers that it was pretty simple, builds one of his own and writes code to generate audio.
I'm sure that fellow wind players are always as excited as me when a new wind-instrument-based MIDI controller is released. As an Artinoise Re.corder owner, I'm on the lookout for something that suits my needs a little better without breaking the bank.
Why do many of these things only connect over bluetooth? I'm personally after close-to-zero latency and I'm happy with a wire.
My 'recorder teacher' Sarah Jeffery has recently reviewed two such controllers, the very expensive but professional-looking e-corder, which made her 'super happy', and the more affordable Digital Wind Instrument Pro 2 (main link).
I'm enjoying David's series "The Instrument Makers" very much. In this episode he visits Alexander who 'invented' a guitar/cello hybrid, only to discover that it existed centuries ago and was called the Arpeggione (due to its strength at playing arpeggios).
Alexander's instruments have some neat features such as the fan frets and practical sound holes, He has made a 'bodyless' electric version, although his more classical-looking ones also appear to have pickups.
We get to see him at work and get a look at some of his more creative instrument ideas.
I can't claim to understand everything that's inside this device, but I love the 50s sci-fi aesthetic (and the labcoat).
All that remains is for me to thank everyone who blogs, writes articles or posts pictures on the subjects I'm excited by.
Nor can I do the things I do without your support, so thank you for that.
If you're on the email list then please forward this to anyone who may be interested. If you've received this email from a friend, then please consider joining the list, the sign-up form is below.
It's always good to hear from readers for any reason and I'd particularly like tip-offs about about any relevant stories, video, websites or social media accounts that I should be following.
Happy music-making!
Shiela Dixon - Editor / curator
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