Mad Skills

A cultural history of MIDI (the Musical Instrument Digital Interface), one of the most revolutionary and transformative technologies in the history of music.

A history of electronic music that goes way beyond the Moog.

Part rigorous history, part insightful commentary, and part memoir, Mad Skills tells the story behind MIDI, aka the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, through the twentieth century’s kaleidoscopic lens.

Guiding us across one hundred years of musical instruments, and the music made with them, Mad Skills recounts the technical and creative innovations that led to the making of the most vital, long-standing, ubiquitous, and yet invisible music technology of our time.