Web MIDI is a thing yes, we've been keeping an eye on it for a while since some early demos by various Google coders.

We were contacted over Christmas by developer - Syntedon who's created some web based HTML 5 instrument editors which allow through the use of the Web MIDI standard,  some impressive editors for NORD Lead 2X and the Roland TR-8, these interfaces will communicate with your available MIDI interfaces, as well as over network MIDI (RTP) which is standard in OSX 10+ and now also accessible under Windows 10 too. Additional support is there for Android too whcih makes the possibility of running editors on a low cost Android tablet highly possible.

These are not just controllers, Syntedo tells us:  "For example it is possible to send a patch from the NL1/2/2X by SYSEX to the browser and see the controller values instantly updated. Thus it's immediately visible how the patch was constructed and then modify it , which ins't possible with hardware knobs/sliders."

Here's the Nord Lead 2x editor screen shot - link below:

Link: http://www.syntedon.com/site/products/WebMIDI/nord/NL2X/NL2X.html

He's also done one for the Roland TR-8:

Link: http://www.syntedon.com/site/products/WebMIDI/roland/TR-8/TR-8.html

We know that MIDI is over 30 years old now, but it still represents an extremely powerful way to communicate over cables, network, bluetooth and WIFI. With the proliferation of low cost Android and other touch devices, this could represent a pretty easy way to make your own editors or MIDI applications and run them on cheap hardware. Thats the beauty of the standard.

How long it will be before we see WYSIWYG drag and drop interfaces for the creation of web based applications, like we've seen for MIDI editors on the iPad and Android?

For more information on web MIDI:http://www.w3.org/TR/webmidi/

Syntedon.com

 

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