"A history of music production technology that goes way beyond the electric guitar
Part rigorous history, part insightful commentary, part memoir, Mad Skills tells the story behind the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, aka MIDI, through the twentieth century's technological expansion. Author Ryan Alexander Diduck guides us across 100 years of musical instruments, and the music made with them, recounting the technical and creative innovations that led to the making of the most vital, long-standing, ubiquitous, and yet invisible music technology of our time.
Mad Skills recounts:
- the rise of musical instrument technologies throughout the twentieth century
- shifts in popular notions of musical skill
- the global musical instrument trade's unification
- the co-creation of the music industry and modern capitalism
- technocratic consolidation of wealth and power
"A history of music production technology that goes way beyond the electric guitar
Part rigorous history, part insightful commentary, part memoir, Mad Skills tells the story behind the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, aka MIDI, through the twentieth century's technological expansion. Author Ryan Alexander Diduck guides us across 100 years of musical instruments, and the music made with them, recounting the technical and creative innovations that led to the making of the most vital, long-standing, ubiquitous, and yet invisible music technology of our time.
Mad Skills recounts:
- the rise of musical instrument technologies throughout the twentieth century
- shifts in popular notions of musical skill
- the global musical instrument trade's unification
- the co-creation of the music industry and modern capitalism
- technocratic consolidation of wealth and power