MIDI - who uses it?

English Open Chat
1

Just been looking at my parents PC and noticed a reason that PC is not having problems with timidity and is running pulse audio is simply that timidity isn’t there! I didn’t install it and it’s not been missed!

I’m wondering to what extent it’s usage has faded away?

I know I dropped some bits myself in part as I decided I never would be a composer and later never really got on with Rosegarden compared with Cakewalk (not that I regret a switch to Linux) but I usedto once in a while enjoy knocking up things like this (1st tune is one of mine - other is trad - given here converted to mp3) http://jonbanjo.com/tim.mp3

I also dropped a web site with folk songs as my own musical interests shifted. One part (for which I just did the php “glue” - it uses other programs for the conversions) of it was kindly taken over here: http://mandolintab.net/abcconverter.php

try pasting this.

X:1     %Music
T:Darby Kelly
M:6/8     %Meter
L:1/8     %
K:G
D |G2 B B2 D |G2 B B2 D |G2 B (BA)B | c2 A A2
w:My grand-sire beat the drum com-plete, His name was Dar-*by Kel-ly O. 
 D |G2 B (BA)G |E2 c B2 E |D2 B B2 A | A2 G G2 
w:No lad so true_ at rat-tat-too, At roll-call or re-veill-ez O. 
B |A2 D D2 B |A2 D D2 B |A2 d (d^c)d | d2 D (D3|(D3)D2)
w:When Marl-bro's name first rose to fame So proud he rolled_ the Point of War,__ 
 c |B2 A G2 F |E2 G (GF)E | D2 B B2 A |A2 G G2 
w:At Blen-heim he and Ra-mil-lies_ Fired all our champ-ions to the core, 
B |A2 D D2 B |A2 D D2 B | A2 d (d^c)d |d2 D (D3|(D3)D2) 
w:And O, his wrist had such a twist, When  home they marched_ with row-dow-dow__ 
c |B2 A G2 F | E2 G (GF)E |D2 B HB2 A |A2 G G z2 |]
w:With one great shout the boys came out_ The girls they gazed, you don't know how

One thing you should get back is a midi. They remain useful for some in folk.

But where is MIDI? You seem to have to have to buy a soundcard or external device (and I can’t find a cheap USB card with MIDI). I rely on other programs like Rosegarden to play MIDI from Firefox (although I do remember there was some way to get say pmidi to play them).

Is it just confined to niches (including pro audio) these days, and is the main desire for most “ordinary users” to just play recordings on youtube etc. to such an extent that for most people, MIDI is irrelevant?

2

I have timidity installed. Apart from the odd midi track I download, the only other use is as output from Lilypond which allows me to listen to Lilypond scores.

3

Thanks - so mostly music notation software then.

4

It is more a quick way of checking that what I have created in Lilypond is what I intended. Lilypond can generate both a score and a midi file at the same time.

5

Drifting a lot here but:

In my case, that is far too familiar! I understand the basic music theory but I can’t come close to sight reading - in particular, I can’t turn knowing one note is half the length of another into music… Not saying it might not be useful check even for those who do sight read, just I’m hopeless - perhaps odd for someone who did spend a bit of time trying to make some folk music scores available but that’s how it is.

I did look at Lilypond for our folk music use but decided it was too complicated/verbose for our intended useage. That and abc is pretty dominant in folk music (and the jigs/reels, etc. in that format must be in the 10,000s - songs with lyrics less so). I gather it can be great for more complicated scores though.

The only other format I decided to add to the converter was musicXML after I became aware someone was developing some abc to/from python scripts. I’m not sure that many would use that as their main format but it look as if it could be useful as intermediate format for abc to/from several other formats.

6

I tend to use “Qsynth”, a “FluidSynth” Qt4 GUI, to check the MIDI produced by “Lilypond”.

  • I haven’t yet checked if there’s any effort to move “Qsynth” to Qt5.

@Jon_Freeman:
Yes, agreed, Lilypond is complex but, for classical music it produces scores which are beautiful – meaning aesthetic, easy to read, clear, accurate. I personally use it to produce scores for a male choir (Tenor I and II, Bass I and II) from rather old hand-written scores.