When you invented Midi, did you realise what a standard it would become? It's pretty amazing - there are few standards that have lasted 20 years and are still basically on version 1.0. It's great that it's still being used everywhere... it's one of the few 100% supported standards. I kind of started the whole thing, then most of the work was done by Roland and Sequential, with two or three companies involved when we first developed it in 1981-82.
Did advances in Pentium processors help make the software-synth "revolution" achievable? Yeah. We basically went through three generations of software-synth. The first one we did 10 years ago, under contract to Intel. That was on a 486 and was very basic. When the Pentiums emerged, we licensed the second-generation soft-synths to Creative Labs and they sold millions. It still wasn't a professional instrument, just a slightly better General Midi-type synthesizer. When the Pentiums got to 200Mhz and faster, we were working on Reality because there was enough horse-power to get a reasonable number of voices going at the same time.
Is Warez stifling smaller software development companies? I've heard some people claim that only one in every five pieces of music software is actually paid for. It may be as high as one in 10! The average person doesn't see the value of something they can't hold in their hands. It's the same with people stealing music. Kids now download to an MP3 quite happily as they don't feel the need to hold something when they buy it... everything's becoming virtual, which makes it easier for people to rationalise taking it free.
Any opinion on file-sharing? It's a no-win situation for everybody. They're starting to get the right idea with things such as iTunes. You should be able to buy a song for $1 or less, then once you've bought it you should be able to use it how you want. Forget copyright protection, as people will always find a way around it. If you try to fight it and stick to the old models,you'll make the problem much worse than it needs to be.
How about ring tones outselling CD singles? That's a perfect example. From the beginning they had a cheap, easy way for people to purchase ring tones, which are going to get more complex as they get General Midi in them. Because they're so cheap, people have no reason to copy them. Companies make money and everybody's happy.
Bookmarks? To me, the web is strictly a tool. I never use it just for entertainment so I don't have favourite sites. I've been working with computers so long the last thing I want to do with my free time is spend it on a computer! When PCs and Apple 2es came out, it was a long time until I had one at home. I just use Google as a jumping-off point for everything. If I'm travelling, I might hit <A HREF="http://www.expedia.com"" TARGET="_NEW">Expedia or Travelocity.
Visit: www.davesmithinstruments.com
· Dave Smith's new hardware synth Evolver is out now
