MIDIchat

This blog intends to become a discussion forum for all the users of MidiChat, making it a usefull and fun tool. The development team must acknowledge in particular the valuable contributions and suggestions from Leonardo Silva and Edson Bártolo.

O renew our commitment with the continuous improvement of this open software. MidiChat is a mix of MIDI and CHAT, enable remote rehersal of MIDI bands/orchestras.

The initial idea was simply to establish a platform for virtual rehersal of visually impaired persons, rapidly other people came showing a much broader audience potential. Some of the central ideas about the MidiCht potential, at this time, can be summarised as follows:

- Prevent people isolation, nlot only visually impures but also mobility impaired, elder people and minoritary groups, such as immigrants etc.;

- Enable interaction between different groups;

- Promote contact and understanding between different peoples in the world;

- Promote interchange and multi-cultural dialogue;

- Promote music teaching at distance, as an effective instrument and facilitator for accessibility and mobility;

- Proximity enhancer between students and the teachers / trainers;

- Facilitate multilinguistic contact through music, the really international language;

- Promote the involvement of people with disabilities in th eprocess of technological development, assuming R&D as an open participative process;

- Sensibilization of the general community for the use of Information Technologies on the restructuring of society and promotion of social cohesion;

- Facilitate the exchange of ideas and experiences;

- Facilitate the establishment of friendship communities on the base of a common interest for music - thus constituting midichat as a socialization processand communication facilitator;

The author is proposing this sofware for the community to use it for free and provide feedback for further improvement. One of the aspects is the translation for as many languages as possible - the stringtable will be provided on demand; also it is our objective to comply with IRC standards, to make it work eventually over any chat network server.

Our main objective, right now, is to spread the word and enlarge the community of users so that this tool becomes more and more an answer to the needs for which it was created.

Please feel free to visit the blog, download MidiChat and give it a try. Send us feedback with comments and suggestions, join the group, receive the newsletter. You can also send email to luisbotelhoribeiro@oniduo.pt. Please pass the midichat.blogspot.com address to friends, musicians and music students, visully impaired peopel, publish it on your blogs, let's democratize midichat.

To download the program - just for Windows for the moment - just clic the link "MidiChat download" at the left column of the blog.

Have fun!

Luis Botelho Ribeiro

Paredes, 4th May 2006

- Is is already possible to connect a MIDI synthesizer as an output device; only a few roland / alesis QS6 models were tested so far - users feedback welcome

- It is also possible to have MIDI input from external keyboards

- In pure PC mode, the Tsamples delay of the ASIO driver is still a problem: ASIO4ALL improves a little but that's not enough; also long distance rehersal adds delay time - migration from TCP transmission to UDP is now being carried out

- please report any use of the system to luis@botelhoribeiro.org

Thank you
Muito obrigado

Luis Botelho Ribeiro

comment this post to announce next midichat sessions