Simple, Cross Platform MIDI Library for Python [closed]

Answer 1

I was looking for a pure-Python library to generate a MIDI file, mxm's Python MIDI library is exactly that.

From this dzone snippet, there is a single-file version of the above library, smidi.py (gist'd here for posterity)

Usage is quite simple:

>>> import smidi
>>> m = smidi.MidiOutFile('out.mid')
>>> m.header()
>>> m.start_of_track()
>>> m.update_time(0)
>>> m.note_on(note=0x40)  # single note
>>> m.update_time(192)
>>> m.note_off(note=0x40) # stop it after 192
>>> m.update_time(0)
>>> m.end_of_track()
>>> m.eof()

Presumably works on Windows (as the original example uses C:\out.mid as the output filename), and I've tested it on OS X

Answer 2

I tried eight packages listed on the wiki http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonInMusic. I found that the one that music21 (http://web.mit.edu/music21/) was

• the most comprehensive
• the best tutorial
• easiest to install on windows

but as to your request for simplicity, I think it's not the simplest one. But I couldn't get any of the other programs to read midi files in a robust way (I have a variety of weird and wonderful midi file formats hanging around)

Answer 3

pyPortMidi is a Python wrapper of PortMidi, which is described as a "a cross-platform C library for realtime MIDI control". I haven't used it myself, but it looks very promising. Explicit mention of being able to send MIDI data in realtime.

Answer 4

If you only need to generate Midi or process midi files, try mingus, It's a great package and it also allows much higher abstractions such as chords, chord progressions, scales and so on.

Answer 5

Look at cSounds.

Answer 6

The MIDIUtil Library (hosted here at Google Code) does what you want: write MIDI Files from a pure Python library. Once nice thing about it (and full disclosure: I'm the author) is that you don't have to keep track of lower-level MID events such as note-on and note-off: it handles them for you.

As an example to write a note, you would do something like:

MyMIDI = MIDIFile(1)
track = 0
channel = 0
pitch = 60
time = 0
duration = 1
volume = 100
MyMIDI.addNote(track,channel,pitch,time,duration,volume)

Hope this helps