| On Sun, 14 Dec 1997, Zhenhai Lin wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> I am totally confused about MIDI.
>
> I wonder how I can play midi sounds on SGI. I heard soundplayer can
> handle midi sounds on IRIX6.2( which is what I am using). I tried to
> play and it says I don't have a midi port. So I configured a midi port
> on my machine but it plays without any sound at all.
IRIX6.2-5 can come with a synthesis engine that reads MIDI well and runs
in real-time, but It may not come automatically with the computer. I believe
you have to request in your IRIX package from Silicon Graphics. At least
the last time I was in Mountain View they did a demo for me of the engine
and I was somewhat impressed. It is mainly sample-based sounds.
>
> So is MIDI an idea of controlling an external music instrument? Do I
> really absolutely need some kind of external midi devise to play midi
> sounds? Is it possible to convert to something that I can play just
> using SGI's speaker (such as first convert it to csound file...)
MIDI was orginally designed to let synthesizers 'talk' to each other. It
is basically a set of commands either having a certain note turned on or
a certain note turned off. There are also control commands that can
manipulate other parameters of sound synthesis. The misconception often
is that MIDI is some form of sound file and it is NOT. It is just a
standard communication protocal for synthesizers (that in some ways is
hugely out dated, but it is all we got).
>
> Thank you very much!
>
> --
> Zhenhai Lin
> Department of Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
> URL: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~zhenhai
> Email: zhenhai@cs.wisc.edu
>
> |