Re: [fluid-dev] Some questions about Midi playback

[Josh Green]

On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 13:05 +0200, Sebastien Frippiat wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> >Sorry for the late reply.  It sounds like what you are looking for is
> >more of a sequencer library rather than a software synthesizer.  As you
> >mentioned, FluidSynth is more of a soft synth.  For this reason, I don't
> >think modifying the MIDI player in FluidSynth to use external MIDI
> >devices makes much sense.  There is already a wealth of MIDI sequencers
> >out there, which can even be used instead of FluidSynth's somewhat
> >primitive sequencer to sequence FluidSynth.  Of course, feel free to
> >modify FluidSynth's source to your needs, but I don't think those
> >changes belong in the official release.  If on the other hand, there is
> >something broken with the fluid_player_set_midi_tempo, it should
> >probably be fixed.
> >
> >  
> >
> Thank you for replying. I already searched a lot around the web for a 
> good MIDI library. I found PortMidi which I think is pretty good for 
> handling low-level Midi I/O. However it lacks support for MIDI files. 
> And the problem is there : I need to play MIDI files while being able to 
> dynamically modify parameters (tempo and velocity). Moreover, I need to 
> play them on a Midi port (Midi synthetizer of the sound card, maybe 
> external devices later). There are libraries on the web for loading Midi 
> file but I don't know enough about Midi to handle the timing myself. 
> Then, finding such a library is pretty though. I think that another way 
> to do it is to use libkmid under Linux and DirectMusic under Windows... 
> which complicates the task.
> 
> So, I will look at the source code to try to redirect output to a Midi 
> port (I guess I should say "hack the source code" because it will cause 
> fluidsynth to do something it wasn't developped for). I'll tell you 
> about my progress about it even it it's not the main purpose of the lib.
> 
> Anyway, if someone has any MIDI sequencer library suggestions, they are 
> welcomed.
> 
> Have a nice week-end,
> Sebastien Frippiat
> 
> 

You may find something useful on the Sound and MIDI software for Linux
site (http://linux-sound.org/).  Many of the applications on there are
open source and support other operating systems also.  You'll want to
have a look at the "MIDI Software" link.  In particular the TSE3 library
(http://tse3.sourceforge.net/) provides a C++ MIDI sequencer library for
accessing MIDI files and sequencing them.  Hope that helps.  You have a
good weekend also!  Mine has been great so far :)
        Josh Green