midi-examples

This is a collection of Java examples for using MIDI written mainly for me to experiment with but that may be useful to other people.

MIDI in Java is not intuitive. The goal is to set (connect) a receiver (source of sound) to a transmitter (source of MIDI events like a synthesizer or a sequencer) and open a device (usually the transmitter). You can get the transmitter from the open device.

A MIDI device can be a Transmitter, Receiver, Synthesizer, or Sequencer. The base class for all of these is MidiDevice. You can discover what devices are on your system and what capabilities they have by running the command line program MidiDeviceDisplay. A device that's not a Synthesizer or a Sequencer is a MIDI port. You can tell whether a MIDI port is in or out by the maximum number of transmitters and receivers it can have. The maximums are usually either 0 or -1 for unlimited. MIDI in ports, synthesizers, and sequences have a nonzero number of receivers. MIDI out ports and sequencers have a nonzero number of transmitters.

• MidiDeviceDisplay displays the MIDI devices on your system. You use the name of a device (not the description) in the constants from the programs below.

• PlaySequencer will play Mary Had A Little Lamb, building the sequences from scratch. Use the constant SEQ_DEV_NAME to set the sequencer name or leave it at "default".

• KeyboardToSynth will take input from a musical keyboard and produce the MIDI sounds through you PC speaker. You will need a MIDI IN port for your keyboard. Use the constant SYNTH_DEV_NAME. The synthesizer name goes after the #. Use the MIDI port IN for the TRANS_DEV_NAME for your transmitter device. Sequencers have transmitters, so you can use their name in the constant.