The MIDI Association has announced the 3 winners of its first #DigMyRig Contest, sponsored in cooperation with media partner Broadjam.
The contest is a celebration of more than 30 years of MIDI, and its impact on modern music. It highlights the broad range of people who use MIDI for a wide variety of musical work flows.
The top 10 #DigMyRig entrants were selected by peer voting and then the final three winners were selected by a panel of industry experts.
First place winner is Lawrence Buck aka Swirve. Lawrence has has been making music and dealing with music technology since the late 80’s.
He was a sound developer for Eye&I Voice Crystal (Yamaha, Ensoniq, Korg, Roland soundcards), LA RIOT (AKAI, Ensoniq Sample CDs) and Alesis (Quadrasynth) back in the early 90s. Lawrence taught Synthesis/Sound Design at UCLA and worked at Opcode in the mid 90s. He is now known as Swirve and besides producing Dance records is a partner in RemixxMe Productions in Kansas City.
Lawrence Buck remarked, “as for MIDI, It’s a testament to the standard that it has been widely used this many years later even after the rest of the music industry has changed so dramatically. MIDI is still MIDI and that’s a good thing.”
Second place went to John Shannon. Check out his music at SoundCloud.
“I’ve been playing music most of my life; I got started in the 70s as a guitar player via a healthy infatuation with progressive rock and fusion. Today I spend most of my time earning a living outside of music, but playing, writing, and recording music are still my obsessions,” said second place winner John Shannon of Saxapahaw, North Carolina.
“Very little of what I do in a live setting would be possible without MIDI,” continued Shannon. “I do like to ‘just play,’ whether it’s acoustic or electric guitar, but I quickly hear additional parts that I want to add, and it would be frustrating not to be able to do that if I didn’t have MIDI.”
Third place winner is Justin Sullivan aka justin3am, who describes how MIDI is a core part of his studio setup.
“My rig is focused on Modularity. In addition to the Eurorack Modular synthesizers, I employ a modular MIDI setup which consists of two Alyseum AL-88C MIDI>Ethernet interfaces. These MIDI Interfaces connect to a high-speed switch which is part of my larger home network. This means that any computer on my network can access the MIDI ports.
The MIDI Interfaces can operate stand-alone (without a computer) or with the Copperlan software, to route MIDI in and out of my computers and even between the two MIDI interfaces. This allows me to route MIDI data from any keyboard or sequencer to any MIDI compatible sound source.”
Visit The MIDI Association for articles on each of the top ten entrants in the contest.
More information: The MIDI Association