Coming soon: a better MIDI file player
By Mark Fontana
Greetings all,
I haven't posted to the list in a while, but I wrote earlier this year about an optical roll scanning system I've been working on. (If there is any interest, I'll make some MIDI files of scanned rolls available on my web page this fall, along with pictures and technical information about the scanner.)
I've been reading about how various sequencers and MIDI file players aren't displaying the lyrics in Robbie Rhodes' JEFFDL.MID file (which I enjoyed!).
For the past few months I've been working on a freeware MIDI file player for PC's that will solve these problems.Not only does it intelligently display the embedded text and lyric messages in MIDI files, but it also shows the status of all 128 MIDI notes on all 16 channels during playback. I tried playing JEFFDL.MID with it and it worked just great!(Watching all the notes toggling in a scanned piano roll is almost as much fun as watching the real keys go up and down!)
The program runs under DOS and uses only textmode, so it will run on virtually any graphics adapter.It supports true MPU401 MIDI interfaces, MPU401 UART-mode, MusicQuest MidiEngine parallel-port interfaces, serial- port MIDI, and Soundblaster-type MIDI interfaces.
There are some extra features for users of General MIDI and Roland GS devices, including automatic resetting of tone modules before playback and onscreen display of the patches assigned to each channel.
Sometime after the first version is released, I plan to add a feature that will let you "pump" MIDI files by pressing alternating keys on a velocity-sensitive keyboard, while overall dynamics could be controlled with a data slider.This will allow me to play back my scanned piano rolls with some expression.
Eventually, I'm planning on writing a utility that would let me take a MIDI file of a scanned piano roll and add individual velocity information to every note.This would be accomplished by interactively letting the user skip around in the MIDI file and more or less play the roll by ear (in sections) on a velocity-sensitive keyboard.The program would monitor the incoming note data and assign relevant key velocities to the nearest instance of those notes in the MIDI file.The user interface will be tricky, because there not only needs to be an onscreen roll-style display, but also an assortment of commands for moving around the MIDI file and replaying sections after new velocity information has been added. But I certainly think such a program is feasible.Has anyone already done something similar?
Anyway... I digress.The MIDI file player mentioned above will be freeware and I hope to release it on the net in mid-September.If anyone is interested in beta-testing it, please let me know by email.
Mark Fontana
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(Message sent Wed 16 Aug 1995, 14:11:45 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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