Week 1 Creative Computing - Creating a MIDI network over LAN

After opening "Audio MIDI Setup", we created a new "session" on Jamie's computer which I then connected to. "MidiKeys" was used to test communication over the network. On Jamie's computer, MidiKeys was set to listen to the Novation controller and "thru" the information to to network session. On my computer it was set to listen to the network port and as expected when Jamie's Novation controller was played, MidiKeys lit up on my computer.

To demonstrate the practical uses of a MIDI network we used logic as a sequencer on Jamie's computer. I opened the (primitive) synthesizer application "SimpleSynth" on my own computer and recorded midi information in logic could be played back using my computer for the synthesis. This workflow could be useful to distribute tasks between multiple computers in a sequencing setup involving very CPU intensive virtual instruments. A MIDI network could also have applications in sharing MIDI timecode between multiple sequencing computers and to share outboard midi-controlled hardware in a multi-computer, multi-user environment.

During our general experimentation the latency did not register on the latency bar which suggests that this setup would be practical for musical use as the delay in communication should be unnoticeable.


One issue we came across was the accidental creation of a midi loop which quickly crashed logic and finally created some action in the latency bar of Audio/Midi Setup. We resolved the problem by disengaging the "thru" function that we were experimenting with in MidiKeys.