When Coders Learned to Sing

Miko-chan, you’ve heard of MIDI, right?

…The thing that connects instruments, nya.

Yep yep! Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Born in 1983 ‘cause synth makers had a big problem — a Roland synth and a YAMAHA synth couldn’t talk to each other AT ALL. Totally different languages~

So Ikutaro Kakehashi from Roland and Dave Smith from Sequential Circuits got together and said “let’s build a universal language for instruments.” At the 1983 NAMM Show, they hooked up a Prophet 600 and a Jupiter-6 with one cable, and they played together. First time two different makers’ synths ever did that~

…Two strangers speaking the same tongue for the first time, nya.

And here’s the thing — MIDI doesn’t carry sound. It carries actions. “C key pressed.” “Velocity 80.” “Key released.” Like stage directions, not the performance itself.

…A script, not a recording, nya.

Exactly! And it’s still everywhere — 43 years later. MIDI 2.0 dropped in 2020, fully backward-compatible with 1.0. The original design was just that solid~

Okay so here’s the part that blew my mind. MIDI was 1983, right? But in 1978, someone was already writing music on a computer. In Japan.

…Five years earlier, nya?

The SHARP MZ-80K — an 8-bit home computer — came with a BASIC language that had MUSIC, TEMPO, and BEEP commands baked right into the ROM. You could type musical instructions and the computer would play them through its tiny speaker~

That idea spread fast. NEC’s PC-8801, MSX computers, and eventually Microsoft’s own GW-BASIC — they all had a PLAY command. Type PLAY "CDEFGAB" and you get Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti. That’s MML. Music Macro Language~

…You write C and a note comes out, nya?

C4 for a quarter note, C8 for an eighth. O5 sets the octave, T120 sets tempo. All plain text, all in a text editor~

…So back then, computers could barely show text and make beeps, nya. And someone thought “what if I make the beeps musical,” nya.

Right~! No mouse, no touchscreen, no audio interface. Just a keyboard. So they wrote music on a keyboard — not the piano kind, the typing kind (≧∇≦)

…Hold on, nya. Let me sort this out.

Both MML and MIDI store instructions, not sound, nya. So what’s actually different, nya.

Great question~ The difference is who’s reading.

MML is a text file that humans write and read. MIDI is a binary stream that machines send to each other. Same destination, totally different roads~

…Cooking analogy, nya. MML is a recipe — “mince the garlic, heat the oil, cook on low.” Written for a person to follow, nya.

Ohhh, go on~!

MIDI is the kitchen ticket system, nya. “Order 5, fire burner 3, plate in 2 minutes.” Messages flying between stations in real time, nya. No human needs to read them — the kitchen runs itself, nya.

Miko-chan, that is SO good (≧∇≦)

…It’s just obvious if you think about it, nya.

People mix them up ‘cause the end result sounds the same. Sound comes out of speakers either way. But one was made for humans to write, and the other was made for machines to talk. The audience is different~

Okay THIS is my favorite part of the whole story~

…Nya.

MML kinda faded in the ’90s. Windows took over, MIDI went mainstream, GUI sequencers got good. Nobody needed to type music anymore.

But in 2001, on Japanese internet forums, someone built a tool called mck — Music Creation Kit. An MML compiler that targeted the NES sound chip~

…The NES, nya. The game console, nya.

The NES only has 5 sound channels. Two square waves, one triangle, one noise, one sample. That’s it. Composers figured out tricks like switching a single channel between melody and bass so fast your ear hears both, or squeezing drums AND hi-hats out of the one noise channel~

…Five voices, nya. A full orchestra has a hundred, nya.

And that’s what made it exciting! The constraint was the whole point. How far can you push music when you’ve only got 5 channels and a text editor?

…

Like making a full meal from whatever’s left in the fridge, nya.

Exactly~! And then Jake Kaufman — a game composer who later did the Shovel Knight soundtrack — translated the mck manual into English. That’s when the chiptune scene outside Japan really caught on~

…Y’know what’s funny? Music written as text, shared on text-only forums. It was kinda the purrfect match all along.

…Netsuki-chan. One question, nya.

Yeah?

Can people who write MML play instruments, nya.

…A lot of them probably can’t.

…Nya.

And that’s kinda the whole point. Type C4D4E4 and you get sound. No finger technique, no years of practice. If you can type, you can make music~

MIDI started from “let’s connect instruments” — so the natural entry is playing something. A MIDI keyboard, y’know? The whole idea begins with performance.

…And MML begins with writing, nya.

Two different doors into the same room. Performers walk in through MIDI. Writers walk in through MML~

…Someone who writes a good recipe doesn’t need to be fast with a knife, nya. The dish gets made either way, nya.

…Yeah. MML gave programmers a door into music. A keyboard instead of an instrument. A text editor instead of sheet music.

…Netsuki-chan.

Yeah?

MML is 48 years old, nya. MIDI is 43, nya. Why are they still here, nya.

…Huh. That’s a really good question.

MIDI survived ‘cause the spec was clean and extensible. Simple enough to last, flexible enough to grow. Good engineering ages well~

…And MML, nya.

MML… I think it survived ‘cause the kind of person who wants to type music never went away.

…

No matter how good the GUI gets, there’s always gonna be someone who’d rather open a text editor and type CDEFGAB. Someone who thinks about music the same way they think about code~

In 1978, they typed music ‘cause that’s all they had. In 2026, they have everything — and they still choose text. The reason flipped. Not “gotta” anymore. “Wanna.”

…Hand-kneaded bread, nya.

Wait what?! (≧∇≦)

A machine kneads dough more evenly, nya. But kneading by hand means your fingers feel the temperature, the moisture, the resistance — and you adjust for that day’s weather, nya.

Typing notes one by one means choosing each pitch and duration yourself, nya. Trading convenience for the feel of making it, nya.

…

So Miko-chan kneads bread by hand for the same reason a programmer types MML…

…Don’t lump those together, nya.

You already said that once today~