MIDI


Table of Contents

Why midi 
Play abc files via midi under Debian 
Three Steps to MIDI on Linux 
How to play midi files 
How to play midi files 
How to play midi files 
ALSA midi support 
Making MIDI soft-synthetizer to work with ALSA 
Using FluidSynth instead of Timidity 
Links 
Playing Midi files for Intel AC'97 
Play MIDI under GNU/Linux with ALSA 
MIDI Web resources 
The Linux MIDI-HOWTO 
Sound & MIDI Software For Linux 
Midi editor 
Midi editor 
Midi editor 

Why midi 

With nowadays mp3 files, the midi files were never appeal to me, even with the WaveTable synthesizer, because I know hardware based WaveTable synthesizer might really sounds good, but they are not as good as mp3s. Moreover, the midi support under Linux has always been limited, so I never bother to figure it out, until now.

Why midi now? Because I've just found out the ABC music notation language (http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/).

 

The ABC music notation language is a wonderful tool to typeset sheet music. ABC is one of the best designed, easy to use, well-thought out, and nicely implemented notation formats I've ever seen: IMHO, it surpasses other good notation languages like GNU Lilypond or MusiXTeX. (Philip's Music Writer is a serious contender though.) You can write music in a very simple ASCII format and convert it to MIDI, or typeset it to make professional-looking scores.

 
 -- http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/

I'm always a big fan of documenting complicated things using plain text. With ABC to notate music in plain text, even as complicated as Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, (http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/abcmusic/sym7mov2.html), music notations can be easily and portably stored or transported electronically. IMHO, midi is the notation for music instruments; while ABC is the notation for human, and computer too. For machine to analyze tunes (via artificial intelligence), plain text based notation is the first step.

 

A common editor such as vi or emacs is all that is needed to write an abc file. After the file has been written, it can be converted to a standard MIDI file using abc2mid or to a print-ready format using abc2mtex (MusicTeX), abc2ps (PostScript) or abc2pdf (Adobe PDF).

 
 -- http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8629

With ABC notation, one can not only produce professional-looking scores, or MIDI sound files, but also can translate MIDI files into plain text notations as well, with the help of Midi2abc (YAPS, http://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/).

References:

Abc collections
http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/tunes.html
There are now a large number of abc-notated tunes available on the internet
(mostly folk & traditional).

documented on: 2008-05-28, xpt