[alsa-devel] Newbie question: Sending untimed MIDI data to ALSA seq

[Takashi Iwai]

At Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:13:23 -0800,
Josh Lehan wrote:
> 
> Hello.
> 
> Newbie question: I'm wondering about sending untimed MIDI data to the
> ALSA sequencer subsystem.
> 
> The application would be for a "beep"-like program, from the command
> line, that instead of making beeps, would play MIDI instruments to make
> better-sounding beeps.
> 
> I have TiMidity hooked up into ALSA, as a softsynth, and it works just
> fine for playing MIDI data sent to it by ALSA.
> 
> The "aplaymidi" command works for .MID files, and the "vkeybd" program
> works for simulating a keyboard and sending in untimed MIDI data.  The
> "aseqview" program also works great for watching the notes being played,
> as they go by.  So, my MIDI software stack appears to be in order.  I
> don't have a hardware synthesizer hooked up at the moment (my Kawai K1
> is showing its age, and a few keys are broken).
> 
> I also looked at "amidi", which features a -S option to send in untimed
> MIDI bytes, but unfortunately, that addresses an entirely different
> namespace.  Evidently, it only speaks to "RawMIDI" devices, of which
> TiMidity is not.
> 
> So, I can't generate untimed MIDI data on my own.  I was thinking of
> writing a small "midibeep" program that would do this, similar to what
> vkeybd does, but without requiring any user interaction.
> 
> Does such a program already exist?

I don't know of such thing, too.
It'd be nice to have in alsa-utils.


Takashi