The second quiz will be on 3/17. It includes a listening section and questions about MIDI, synthesis controls, sampler architecture, and early history of electronic music.
The second listening list is online. You need to know composer and title for each work. Both will be listed on the sheet.
From the Intro to MIDI post, you should know:
- Items from the MIDI section – what MIDI stands for, what it is, what it was developed to represent, and that it is a control language (not an audio format).
- MIDI Hardware. Understand the difference between channels and ports, and what you would need to communicate with 17 devices independently (for example).
- From MIDI transmission I’m not worried about the exact communication speed, but the other particulars are important (serial, binary, logical rather than physical channels, one way communication)
- Representation of data is all numbers, and usually of the range from 0 – 127 (128 values, 7 bits).
- Structure of MIDI Message: know MIDI word length (after stripping bits), and the difference between a status byte and a data byte.
- Be able to list 2 good things about MIDI, and 3 bad/ugly things.
From Nibbles, Hexadecimal, and the Noteon Command:
- Know the relationship between bit, byte, and nibble.
- Know the structure of a noteon command (status byte, containing one nibble of command and one nibble of midi channel, data byte for note number, data byte for key velocity)
- Understand that key velocity is not key force. MIDI measures how fast you press a key – not how hard.
Basic Synthesis Controls:
- Gain
- Filters (types, and parameters for each type – cutoff frequency, slope, resonance, etc.)
- Envelopes
- LFO Modulation (waveforms, typical frequency range of an LFO)
Basic sampler architecture, as indicated towards the beginning of my post on the NN-19.
Historical questions drawn from chapter 1 of E/E. In particular, the reading questions that were assigned. I’m not as concerned about exact dates. You should focus on how new devices produced sound, and how they were controlled (performed). You should also know the importance of the manifesto The Art of Noise, and the importance of Helmholtz.
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