Regarding the Boehm post from Richard D.:
I'm not sure what your point was here. I think we need to encourage as
much debate as possible about what was good, what can be done, what can
be retained, what should be discarded--what can  be retrieved, like
advantages to the Lyricon. Otherwise the New MIDI boss will be the same
as the old MIDI boss.
And another thing (;

>No doubt there were posers in
>all these fields, but history has easily forgotten them, as they (by
definition) did
>not produce anything.

History can't be counted on as any kind of judge, since it seems to
forget people, good and bad, rather arbitrarily.  And in remembering, it
turns ordinary folk into gods. If history were fair, we would remember
the sweet song of every unambitious savant, or we would forget all of it
and listen instead. But its not, it's the ultimate people poll, in which
folk like Microsoft benefit from general ignorance.

>There is clearly a general consensus that most Western orchestral
instruments have
>now reached the optimum poise betweeen difficulty, utility and
expressiveness -
>except perhaps in the field of percussion isnstruments, where invention
has never
>ceased.

I think the instruments we have say a lot about us as a culture, but
certainly none are finished evolving. Some of them, by the way, have
barely begun (the trombone, the guitar). The prize of volume +
expressiveness (and tunable diatonicism) isn't a natural law and as it
passes away many of these shining Boehm machines are going to go back to
the drawing board. Even if it was a natural law, amplification opens a
lot of other doors (anybody want to start a clavichord quartet? We could
play Carnegie Hall. Hell, we could play Shea Stadium.) The piano
itself--that creature so perfect that I am awestruck to call it a
machine--remains to be brought into the 21st century (or it will become
an museum piece). How do you move the piano into a musical world where
pitch is never fixed?  Maybe the computer is the natural replacement for
the piano--how sad--that awaits only the brilliantly designed human
interface.

Carlton Joseph Wilkinson
http://excaliber.net/alex/wilkwrks.htm