[net.music.synth] Player Harpsichord

chips@tekchips.UUCP (Chip Schnarel) (10/07/85)

OK, I know that this is not the right place for this but then I bet you
people know the answer so...

I'm contemplating a project to bring together a few of my hobbies/interests/
career.  Namely woodworking, music and electronics.  The project would be
a "player" harpsichord.  Starting from a harpsichord kit, I would like to add
electro-mechanical controls to play it from a computer.  I'm primarily a
hardware engineer so I don't want to do too much software.  Device drivers
are about my speed.  A musical composition program is more than I want to take
on.  The BIG question is: is MIDI an appropriate interface for what I want to
do?  The computer would be a Macintosh.  I have seen several music composition
programs for the Mac.  I have also read that people are driving MIDI interfaces
from the Mac.  So I should be able to build a computer which attaches to the
harpsichord and takes MIDI in, and drives solenoid controls out, right?  Then
all I have to do is drive the computer from the right program on the Mac.
A harpsichord was chosen for a number of reasons.  They are available in kit
form. The strings are plucked rather than struck making the keyboard velocity
insensitive and the electro-mech interface that much simpler, and the
harpsichord can play a broad range of music in any key with a pleasent (to me
anyway) sound.  Yes, I know that this isn't a synthesizer, but it seems to
me that any musical instrument could be described by a subset of the
synthesizer protocol.

OK, so where do I find a definition of MIDI at the right technical level
for this sort of implementation?  If MIDI is not the appropriate interface,
are there others defined for this sort of thing?

For the purists out there who question the why of this project, it's because
I can't play worth a darn.  Something about working in real time I think.

Anyway I'm sure that the posting includes several interesting topics for
discussion.

	Thanks,
	Chip Schnarel
	tektronix!tekchips!chips