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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You use Windows? You want to USE MIDI? You want Maximum MIDI, October 10, 1997
I hate computer books. They are all over two inches thick, and cost their weight in gold, but most of them are only worth their weight in paper. However, there is always an exception, and Paul Messick's 'Maximum Midi' is it. It's a GOOD book. You know, like Citizen Kane is a GOOD film. I can now write MIDI applications in Windows. I feel like a bit of an expert. My first sequencer already loads, saves, plays and records. I've got time to concentrate on making it highly usable. The author assumes that you or I, the reader, is intelligent. There's no assumption that you are a C++ whizz, or an electronics genius; just intelligent, and consequently ideas are explained from first principles by a writer who obviously knows his stuff well enough that he doesn't have to prove it by using long words and big ideas. But from first priciples comes lasting knowledge, and by the time the author moves on to explain the less pretty bits of MIDI implementation you realise that you UNDERSTAND everything that's gone before. The learning curve is so smooth, you don't realise you're climbing. But you are climbing, and quite rapidly at that. If ,like me, you read the book from cover to cover (some books just make you want to do that, don't they) by half-way through you KNOW what Sysex is, and how it works, and what's good about it, and why you have to be careful with it. You KNOW why Windows 95 makes timing algorithms difficult, and how to get around it. By this stage you also know that on the CD of the book, there is a toolkit. The toolkit contains functions that allow you to use MIDI in your programs, without also having to care about 'callbacks', 'thunks' or anything else that gives you a headache. (They are explained lucidly, but kept at a safe distance). Midi Input/Output, synchronisation and reading and writing of standard MIDI files are all introduced, fully explained and, finally, implemented in the toolkit. Although you now feel that could write your sequencer, or patch editor, or desk automator from the bottom up, it's nice to know you don't have to. The toolkit is there, it's tested, it works and it's royalty free. There is no reason not to use it. (It's provided as a pair of DLLs, so you can use it from any language. I'm now calling it from Delphi, and hardly knew what a DLL was before reading this book. A set of C++ classes encapsulate the toolkit's functions into a higher level, and very useful form). Don't you just loathe getting to page 800 of 'Mastering your Scroll-Lock key' and realising you learned as much from the introductory chapter as you have from the rest of the book. Well, Mr Messick's book (a mere 1.3 inches thick, if that's important to you!) is full of new knowledge from cover to cover, even the margins are sometimes used for 'by the way...' type information. For once, a publisher has realised that their readers are not fooled by the 'never mind the quality, feel the width' spin. Any useful book review has balance, so here it is: 'Silicon Etching for Dummies' and 'Adjusting your Windows Colour scheme in 21 days' are very bad. 'Maximum Midi' is very good. Is that balanced enough for you? Paul Spbm Clarke
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Interact With Your Music: Discover, listen to, and buy new music, all from the pages of SPIN's digital edition, free to Amazon customers.
by Robert Guerin
by Curtis Roads
