Ins & outs

MORE FROM MIDI It’s official: MIDI 2.0 is happening. There’s no word yet on when it’ll be rolled out in software and hardware, but we do know that it’s going to be prototyped throughout 2019 and will be backwards compatible with the MIDI standard we currently use. YOU’RE THE VOICE With voice control now most definitely A Thing, it was probably inevitable that someone would build it into a music tech product at some point. Step forward Roland, who are releasing an Alexacharged version of their GO:PIANO. AN OVATION FOR NOVATION Plenty of companies go the extra mile to spruce up their booths at the NAMM Show, but Novation’s, which went with a videogame arcade theme, was something else entirely. You could even play a version of Pong on a bank of six Launchpad controllers.

RIP ALAN R PEARLMAN

Alan R Pearlman, who died last month at the age of 93, was one of the giants of the synth industry. The founder of ARP Instruments, without him there would have been no ARP 2600 or Odyssey, among many others.

KEYTARGH!

We’ve seen some strange product trailers in our time, but the one for Yamaha’s new Sonogenic keytar, which shows a load of kids jumping around maniacally and a dog playing the keyboard, is one of the more curious. Watch it here: bit.ly/Sonogen

WHAT THE FREAK?

Confusion reigned when Arturia launched their MicroFreak synth last month, noting that some of its oscillator modes came from a “collaboration” with Mutable Instruments – who then claimed that that wasn’t really the case.