README.md

pymidi

A python RTP-MIDI / AppleMIDI implementation. You can use this library to build a network attached virtual MIDI device.

Latest release: v0.5.0 (2020-01-12) (changelog)

Table of Contents

• Quickstart
• Developer Setup
  • Compatibility
  • Running tests
  • Developing against something else
• Demo Server
• Using in Another Project
• Project Status
• References and Reading

Quickstart

$ pip install pymidi

or

poetry install pymidi

See Using in Another Project and the Developer Setup wiki for more information.

Developer Setup

Set up your workspace with the very excellent Poetry:

$ poetry install

Once installed, you'll probably find it useful to work in a poetry shell, for ease of testing and running things:

$ poetry shell
(pymidi-tFFCbXNj)
$ python pymidi/server.py

Compatibility

pymidi requires Python 3. It has been tested against Python 3.6 and Python 3.7.

Running tests

Tests are run with pytest:

$ pytest

Developing against something else

If you're working on a project that uses pymidi and want to develop both concurrently, leverage the setuptools develop command:

$ cd ~/git/otherproject
$ poetry shell
$ pushd ~/git/pymidi && python setup.py develop && popd

This creates a link to ~/git/pymidi within the environment of ~/git/otherproject.

Demo Server and Examples

The library includes a simple demo server which prints stuff.

$ python pymidi/examples/example_server.py

See --help for usage. See the examples/ directory for other examples.

Using in Another Project

Most likely you will want to embed a server in another project, and respond to MIDI commands in some application specific way. The demo serve is an example of what you need to do.

First, create a subclass of server.Handler to implement your policy:

from pymidi import server

class MyHandler(server.Handler):
    def on_peer_connected(self, peer):
        print('Peer connected: {}'.format(peer))

    def on_peer_disconnected(self, peer):
        print('Peer disconnected: {}'.format(peer))

    def on_midi_commands(self, peer, command_list):
        for command in command_list:
            if command.command == 'note_on':
                key = command.params.key
                velocity = command.params.velocity
                print('Someone hit the key {} with velocity {}'.format(key, velocity))

Then install it in a server and start serving:

myServer = server.Server([('0.0.0.0', 5051)])
myServer.add_handler(MyHandler())
myServer.serve_forever()

See the Developer Setup wiki for ways to test with real devices.

Project Status

What works:

• Exchange packet parsing
• Timestamp sync packet parsing
• Exchange & timestamp sync protocol support
• MIDI message parsing

Not (yet) implemented:

• Journal contents parsing
• Verification of peers on the data channel
• Auto-disconnect peers that stop synchronizing clocks

References and Reading

• Official docs
  • RFC 6295: RTP Payload Format for MIDI
  • AppleMIDI Reference Documentation from Apple
  • RTP-MIDI on Wikipedia
• Other helpful docs/sites
  • The MIDI Specification