Those were the days

Once upon a time the internet was more adventurous and filled with surprise. Not long ago I googled Dave Smith... he was mentioned in some political based commentary and I had never heard of him so I went looking. I found Dave Smith but probably not the one they were referring to... he was said to be the father of MIDI and heavily involved in the early development of music synthesizers and had recently passed away.

MIDI was the musical instrument digital interface and allowed one keyboard to control another through this interface. It also allows a computer to control multiple keyboards. He developed the first polyphonic synthesizer. One that could play more than one note at a time. I bought an Ensonic SQ80 around 1986 that was the the latest thing in 8 bit analog synthesizers. It could play eight notes at once and each sound like totally different  instruments.  It is the same vintage as the Roland D50 and had a bunch of cool features. It had a sequencer which could record your key strokes in real time and then you could play it back and play along with what you had recorded. It had midi and could control instruments as well. It was limited by the processing power of an 8 bit microprocessor. 

Now days we have 64 bit processors with 8 cores in cell phones. I used to enjoy the randomness of youboob and the internet as well where you would find interesting things with no connection with what you might have been looking for without even trying. Now on youboob the majority of what shows up is something directly related to what ever you just watched and you will be hard pressed to find anything that is not related to something you just watched. I'm referring primarily to when you're logged in to youboob and go to your home page and the recommended videos that show up there are mind numbingly boring and repetitive. I suppose I'm giving away that I probably spend way too much time on youboob. Perhaps its youboob's way of trying to wean me... that or hope that I will subscribe to youboob for the real experience. 

I'm not that great of a musician but I really do enjoy playing along with songs on youtube... either on the bass guitar or on a Roland D50 that I now own. My dad taught me to play the mandolin and the guitar long ago. I miss him greatly and the randomness of the early days of the internet... RIP Dave and Dad.

This pic from about 1975 or so