My parents bought me a Yamaha PSR-230 on a whim for Christmas when I was probably 14 or 15 in the mid-90's. I had been playing drums for several years and they must have figured I needed to branch out! They had no idea what MIDI was and I was only familiar with it for the cheesy music files you could download off of AOL at the time.
I looked into MIDI more and realized you could hook the keyboard up to your computer for composing songs, granted I had no idea how to write music. Once I ordered the cables (over the phone from a catalog!) and received them, I soon realized that the cheesy sounding songs sounded less cheesy when I played them through the keyboard rather than the SoundBlaster 16. I also learned that I could set up the keyboard to examine specific MIDI-in channels and I could learn chords and melodies from downloaded MIDI files because the keyboard would have little LEDs above each key that would light up when the notes were played.
Fast forward about a decade. Over this time, I had learned more about playing keyboard, learned guitar, and had picked up some music theory and songwriting knowledge. Now, my stupid little PSR-230 could control just about any sound imaginable through the use of VSTi's. I could record music that sounded like the stuff on CD's on my computer using either real instruments or virtual ones controlled by the PSR!
To this day, even though I have another, more advanced MIDI controller, I'll often times still use the PSR when I'm working on song ideas.
So happy birthday, MIDI! You're certainly different than my first impressions of you and you've definitely made my life richer.
I looked into MIDI more and realized you could hook the keyboard up to your computer for composing songs, granted I had no idea how to write music. Once I ordered the cables (over the phone from a catalog!) and received them, I soon realized that the cheesy sounding songs sounded less cheesy when I played them through the keyboard rather than the SoundBlaster 16. I also learned that I could set up the keyboard to examine specific MIDI-in channels and I could learn chords and melodies from downloaded MIDI files because the keyboard would have little LEDs above each key that would light up when the notes were played.
Fast forward about a decade. Over this time, I had learned more about playing keyboard, learned guitar, and had picked up some music theory and songwriting knowledge. Now, my stupid little PSR-230 could control just about any sound imaginable through the use of VSTi's. I could record music that sounded like the stuff on CD's on my computer using either real instruments or virtual ones controlled by the PSR!
To this day, even though I have another, more advanced MIDI controller, I'll often times still use the PSR when I'm working on song ideas.
So happy birthday, MIDI! You're certainly different than my first impressions of you and you've definitely made my life richer.