Ryan Alexander Diduck is an author, scholar, lecturer and critic. His writing has appeared inThe Wire,The QuietusandFact Magazine. He lives in Montreal.
Most people have no idea what MIDI is, even though it undergirds
and regulates a substantial swathe of the sounds they listen to and
love. In Ryan Alexander Diduck’s deeply researched telling — a
biography of a technology, with a caustic critical edge — MIDI
takes on a personality of its own even as it standardizes global
music production to a hitherto unimaginable degree. Blending
technical knowledge, business history, and cultural
polemic, Mad Skills is a sharp study of a human invention
that stamped its post-human character over an entire era of pop. -
Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania and Energy
Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture.
Mad Skills is a history of electronic music technology, of
scraps over standards, and of music’s relationship to capital in
the twentieth century. Through deep dives into archives, original
interviews, and an aptitude for the Marxian archaeology of
electronics, Diduck opens the black box of MIDI for all to see and
hear. - Benjamin Tausig, Assistant Professor, Ethnomusicology,
Stony Brook University.
... a deep, clear read on the historical and social development of
machine music; wisdom about MIDI finally. - Daniel Lopatin,
aka Oneohtrix Point Never.
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