Programming with MIDI in Python | Getting started and sending MIDI Messages 

That's really cool! Glad the video was useful. 😊

You're welcome!

Brilliant, I'm glad you found it useful! Let me know if you have any questions about it.

Thanks very much, glad you found it useful!

Thanks!

Glad you liked it!

😅 Sorry about that, feel free to ask me if you have specific questions . I made a follow up video about listening for MIDI messages from an external device, that might answer some of your questions: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zpZDwqsgSpc.html

Glad to hear that, thanks!

Sounds like a cool project! Yes, as far as I'm aware, the best way is to `del` the port or use the `with` context manager and it'll happen automatically. Edit: also, out of curiosity, what does your midi rotator do?

You're welcome! I took a look at the manual and looks like it's possible. If you go into the settings, there's an option called "MIDI In Navigate" that controls this. If you turn it on, you should be able to send MIDI notes to channel 3 and 4 to control the lighting. I don't have that keyboard to test this, but if definitely looks like you can.

I've only tried a Behringer one that I have, it's a pretty basic one, works fine.

Hi @Stephen, you an keep the port open the whole time you're using it, no need to close and open it for each chord. For the actual application, it's open it once at the beginning and use it until you're done.

Hi @RafaelCosta-ly5jb you'll need some device that accepts MIDI, which could be a hardwae synth, or software like a DAW or VST plugin. There are lots of free VSTs out there with sample based piano and violins.

Thanks for watching! It should work, could you post your code please? If you have a GitHub account, you could make a Gist (gist.github.com) and share a link.

​@@mochreach YT is blocking my link, so I sent you the link directly to your email. Hope you can help me and thanks a lot!

You're welcome! If you don't need low level control, then I'd go for Mido. It's much easier to use for most routine tasks.

@@mochreach Thanks! Now I have to find a way to edit and run Python scripts from a web browser, and I will have a nice custom MIDI router 😊

Yes, that's definitely possible, you can get rtmidi running on Arm. Lots of Raspberry Pi Linux distributions already have python installed, so you should be able to get up and running quite quickly.

Hi @Stephen, yes I definitely could. I'll see if I have time later this week.

@@mochreach very much appreciated! Thanks Mo

Hi Stephen, I've just release a video on this topic, thanks for the suggestion. Let me know if you have any questions.

The midi part would be the same, and after the bluetooth connection is made to the computer, it might just appear like any other midi device, although I've never tested it. I do have a couple of ble devices, so I might give it a go.

You might need a bit of software to make "virtual MIDI" ports on your system. There are lots of options for software that does this, but the exact one will depend on your operating system. Let me know if that helps.

@@mochreach thanks for your response. I eventually got FluidSynth to pop up as an available port, unfortunately I don't remember what I did exactly, but the problem was with FS and its connection to my project rather than with rtmidi. Works great now, your video was very helpful to get my project up and running, thanks!

That sounds totally feasible. Have you tried it yet? You could have a python class that manages the connections.

@@mochreach I am very keen to try it. Just pulled an old pi zero out and found it gets power from a powered usb hub which I have daisy chained 2 of them together because I get 7 connections that way and this zero has 2 mini usb inputs on it, so things are looking good so far just got to digging this stuff out of my shelves. Had problems finding an app to do it properly on my ipad so very keen to get something working right now. Ok I will start by looking into a python class to start with. Had only a very little experience with code but I did write a factory class at one time in PHP that worked very well just took a few weeks to work out how to do it from the onlne manual.

There is a system reset message, you can add it using a Command controller. What it does depends on the midi device you're connecting to, so check your manual before using it!

@@mochreach of course, there is a sort of reset message in the beginning of a midi-file (GM, GS reset in Sysex) , but the player has to be in their respective mode to intercept these ...

Ah okay. What device are you connecting it to? Edit: sorry I just noticed this was on a different video than I thought, that's why I was talking about commands!

This works with any midi capable device, although the messages if can receive will be different, so you'll need to check the manual. Feel free to message if you need help.

@@mochreach But i dont get it ): I am supposed to send this messages to Midi In of my controller, how this midi In messages will be sent through the midi out in order (for example) FL studio will recieve them and make a vst sound?

You should be able to send to MIDI in of any device connected to your computer, then mpc or maybe even FL Studio directly. If you run this, what's the output? : import rtmidi midiout = rtmidi.MidiOut() print(midiout.get_ports())

Well, if you know Python, I'd recommend looking into a library called Mido for handling midi events and a GUI library (I'd recommend PyQT).

Yes, you can use MIDI loopback to control a DAW, for example.

Hi @octaviop.4870, Python might be a bit better than Ruby, and you could probably make it work, but neither are ideal I'm afraid. You'd be much better off using a fast compiled language like C, C++, Zig or Rust. You'll have much more performance headroom to make sure the timing is tight.

@@mochreachyes...im aware of compiled languages but im not really a programmer. I dont want to spend years to learn c or rust. But thank you :)

@octaviop.4870 Well, an alternative might be a game engine like unity or my personal favourite, Godot. Godot's scripting language has a python like syntax and even has built in midi support. Game engines are made for this type of real time application.

@@mochreach but wont they requiere a lot of resources to run?

No, they're optimised to be as efficient as possible for real time applications, so they'll be ideal.

Yes, that's definitely possible. Using the "mido" library would be the best way to do that, it has lots of functionality for working with midi files.

@@mochreach thanks... Follow up question though, is it possible to write a program that distinguishes song sections from the drum beat and playing sequence... Like if I want to automatically display lyrics on the screen for each song section when the section is actually being played in the input... I understand that the current pattern being played should compare from a stored song pattern and sequence... Or maybe is there a program or device that does that already?

I think the easiest way would be to have a record of the best number the lyrics should be displayed on, maybe a file with the best number and the lyric line to display, then read that in and count the beats while playing. Would that work?

@@mochreach I thought that if it was a live performance chances are the beats may not align... That is why I thought there should be some pattern recognition as well...

🤔 If you just keep track of the current beat of the stored song, that's the only thing that should matter, right? There's a Discord server associated with the channel, you're welcome to chat about this there, might be easier to keep track of things. Link at the top of the channel page.

I have python 3.10.6 because other things I'm doing don't work with later versions, Will I have to update python?

No that should be fine. I think the most likely explanation is that pip is installing it to another Python install. If you're on Linux or Mac, you could run `which python` and `which pip` just to make sure they're related to the same Python install. Either that or there was an error on install, in which case, there should be an error message in the log.

Yes you can, check out the Mido library: mido.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

No i have midi file and i wanted to generate music script i have tried this mido but results are not satisfactory by using mido i somehow able to generate xml or html on this I have only Alphabetical representation but i wanted music script how can i do that

No idea I'm afraid!

@Leo Rickli that's very weird, not sure why that's happening. When you installed with pip, were there any errors?

​@@mochreach Yeah, very weird. What package do you use, "rtmidi" or "python-rtmidi"? Because I can't even install "python-rtmidi", it says that it encountered an error while installing the package. "rtmidi" was fine though.

I install with `pip install python-rtmidi`, that must be the problem. What was the error when you tried to install?

It's not OP-Z only, you can send MIDI to any device, including virtual MIDI. Maybe there's something unusual with your setup. Best of luck finding a solution.

Hi @JahidulislamRuman, sorry I didn't see this message when it came in. If you want to write it in Python, I would suggest the PyQT library for making the GUI and Mido for handling midi connections. If you're not determined to use Python, you might want to consider using the Godot game engine, it is open source and a pleasure to use, and comes with some MIDI integration (although not MIDI out, but this is easy to implement using an external library).