What is Reddit's opinion of MIDI For The Professional?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I had a class in college with a professor who wrote a pretty accessible book -

https://www.amazon.com/MIDI-Professional-Paul-D-Lehrman/dp/0825613744

However, if you have a controller and a synth specifically that you want to use, I'd probably check the manuals for them first. They may not implement everything, or do so in a non-standard way.

I get you don't want to use a DAW, but it might also be worth while to connect to a computer to use PD or MAX or MidiOx or something for testing / troubleshooting to be able to view the messages being sent in real time to confirm that what you think is being sent is really being sent.

I used to be very artistic, and I had kind of a fucked up childhood. My art used to be the way I channeled my aggression, but ever since I went to college, my mind became very technical. I have an interest in electronics and computer science, and it became my obsession for several years, and I gave up my art entirely. I satisfied my creative urges by writing code.

Purity Ring's first album is what made me go buy my first synth. I loved the sad and beautiful sounds of that entire album, and it really inspired me to go try and make my own music. I started learning synthesis with a microkorg, with absolutely no musical background, about two years ago. i just listened to a lot of music. I began studying pretty much everything there is to know about midi, the same week I bought my microkorg. I still don't really know how to play piano very well, but I know midi inside and out. I still need to look into OSC, but that's not as standard/universal as midi is in the synth world.

When I make music, I start by picking a scale, and I more or less just visualize chords and progressions in my head and concentrate on which keys are valid keys to touch, or i just drunkenly walk up and down the scale with my fingers, occasionally changing keys. It's very ad-hoc, I understand it may sound very rigid, but it's how I think, and it's very much affected by my current state of mind. I value spontaneity/randomness, and I like being able to just walk up to my rig, turn everything on, and make something cool from scratch. then I throw it all away.

Anyways, I've spent a lot of my time fixing broken synthesizers from craigslist and flipping them for a small profit, buying more shit, and then doing more trades on CL. I've been doing that for a while, now, and i've gotten some pretty lucky trades out of it. At some point, I was able to get my hands on a nord modular g2 (i swapped a DSI Tempest for it), and that has been the single most rewarding instrument I've ever played. it's the most flexible synthesizer on the planet, like having a wall of modular gear (except it's got GLORIOUS POLYPHONY, can have 4 patches loaded and communicating with eachother, instant patch save/recall, you don't have to worry about feedback loops and breaking your modules, patch randomization/interpolation, and it's got 24-bit 96KHz inputs x4 and outputs x4 which can even send and recieve control voltage level signals). i bought a used surface pro for patching it. there's simply nothing that can compare to it.

This is where I'm at right now. I haven't even scratched the surface, at this point, there's so much to learn. I haven't even made any tracks, yet. One day, though.

midi is a serial interface, meaning that evens are discrete. NOTHING happens simultaneously.

You should read this book: http://www.amazon.com/MIDI-For-Professional-Paul-Lehrman/dp/0825613744

it's cheap as balls ($0.77)

I read this in about a week in my spare time and I pretty much know everything there is to know about midi. I suggest it to all teh noobs.

http://www.amazon.com/MIDI-For-Professional-Paul-Lehrman/dp/0825613744