As I mentioned in the last post, I got a couple of toys for the studio under the Christmas tree, and this is the first of two posts to tell you all about them.  So, first up we have a new MIDI interface from Mark Of The Unicorn: The MOTU Micro Lite.  For those of you that don’t know, MIDI – The Musical Instrument Digital Interface – was developed by the MIDI Manufacturers Association back in 1983, to standardise the way electronic instruments (primarily keyboards) talked to each other, allowing one synth to control another, or another device entirely, like a sequencer to take control of the instrument.  Since then MIDI has become ubiquitous on keyboards, and anyone who has spent any time with electronic keyboards will be familiar with the three DIN connectors on the back – MIDI IN, MIDI OUT and MIDI THRU.  Anyway, the Micro Lite is a device that allows a computer to interface from it’s USB bus to MIDI equipped equipment. To quote the MOTU blurb:

micro lite is a 5-in/5-out MIDI interface (compatible with Macintosh and Windows).

Built from the same technology found in MOTU’s flagship MIDI Timepiece, the micro lite is a professional MIDI interface that provides portable, plug-and-play connectivity to any USB-equipped Macintosh or Windows computer.  The micro lite takes full advantage of USB, giving you high-speed MIDI throughput, sub-millisecond timing accuracy, support for “hot-swapping” and plug-and-play expansion.

Computer MIDI interfaces used to be a common sight in studios, and everyone and their dog made one, but as the  software instrument revolution took hold, everyone gave up on their MIDI controlled hardware in favour of software plug-ins.  Now as any regular reader might know, I like software instruments as much as the next guy, and they afford someone like me the opportunity to include the sounds of a classic Hammond organ, or a Moog modular synth into their projects.  However I still like real synths, real hardware with keys, knobs, and of course, for the most part a MIDI socket or three to allow them to be controlled by a sequencer, or DAW.

Up until now I have been using an Edirol 2 channel interface, which was fine, except that a) I have 5 external instruments which meant that I had to daisy-chain them via the MIDI THRU socket, which causes problems when you have multitimberal instruments capable of receiving multiple signals on different MIDI channels, and b) for whatever reason, the mac didn’t like the Edirol driver and the interface would regularly become unavailable for no good reason, which was annoying. To say the least.  Now while little one or two channel interfaces are still to be had, MOTU are pretty much the only game in town when bigger more pro devices are required.  This thing is great.  It’s built like a tank, and device driver is stable and solid.  Nice

As I type, I have the keys and modules all cabled up to their own dedicated interface, and from Logic, I can just call up, for instance, the little Prophecy, select a sound and play.  Which means that I’m having fun trying out all sorts of new lead sounds, and new pads.  Ahhhh!