midi seriously

[mojo_pin]

You know i'm not too all familiar with midi. I work alot with just audio and all. I've just never really incorporated midi into my music that often. I was just curious what everyone else used their midi i/o's for anyway. If i knew what the possibilites are with midi then i guess i would be more enthusiastic about it. I'm getting ready to buy the 828 because i really don't have the dough to the the layla 24 cardbus which is what i really want. Just let me know what you think.
thanks

chris

[macmidi]

Do you live in the US? Just curious as the 828 and Layla are about the same price: $800.

This is a lot of info that I can't quite cover all in a forum but...

When it comes to Midi it's great for looping and creating songs quickly. I use various hardsynths and softsynths to trigger drums, keys, whatever. But in midi you can quantize these functions.
Meaning you can correct the timing so that it's perfect. And if you make a mistake, you can drag the wrong note to it's rightful place.
Also, you can experiment with various sounds.
for exampe: if you write a trumpet line melody, you can experiment with the melody simply by changing the 'patch' (patch being a defined sound - 'trumpet' is a patch, piano is a patch etc).
You only played the trumpet line ONCE but now you can experiment by changing the trumpet patch to say, a bell, or a sax, or a whistle... whatever you want.
AND midi takes up far less info to process since midi is information not actual audio. Midi is like a 'trigger' and depending on what it's triggering, will play it back exactly the same way every time.

Hope that makes some sense.

And check out the pricing on those and other cards via this link:

http://audiomidi.com/hardware/audio/interfaces.html

[Lancaster]

Well, in this case, you dont obviously miss it, so no point saying that you dont know what you're missing :-) but....

What can be done with midi is simply amazing . If your recording just guitar,bass,drums you may not need it at the moment but musical styles change and so will your taste in music.
From a keyboard or mouse you can have access to an unlimited arsenal of sound . Every TV show , movie , commercial (almost) uses midi to generate an amazing array of sounds and rhythms from synthesizers,samplers, drum synths . Effects can be controlled with pin point precision.
Adding keyboard and synth sounds adds a huge new dimension to your music , even if , like me , you are primarily a guitar player and a bad key player....with careful editing , you can sound like a pro.
For midi on a computer, a simple interface will do ; no latency issues ,
stuttering playback , ram overs ,expensive breakout boxes ,worrying about driver updates , the pre amp of the week ,and all that stuff.However, it is possible to run 4096 midi channels at once if you wanted to make some kind of supreme statement to the universe . Yes, that's 256 midi devices pounding out 16 channels of stuff each.
And midi sequencing , once you get the hang out it, is a lot of fun.And the software is excellent ; it's been developed over years . Programs like Cubase, Logic, etc.
You can add a huge new dimension to your music with midi.