The Musica MIDI player

What is Musica?

Musica is a GTK based MIDI player. It is currently still under heavy development, but I in my opinion it is rather usable for others. The source is currently also quite bug free (famous last words), so I release it before I'm going to mess it up with new features. Musica currently runs on Linux only, but support for other operating systems is planned.

Musica is released under GNU General Public License. The library replacement functions (memcmp(), strdup(), strerror(), and strstr()) have an X Consortium style copyright so they can be used freely in other software, too. The icons in the buttons come from Tim P. Gerla's CD player in the gnome-media package and are drawn by Charles Sielski and tigert (Tuomas Kuosmanen).

Musica has been written with the use of GNU autoconf, automake, and libtool. People looking for autoconf/automake/libtool examples should definitively have a look. I don't claim this is the only right way to do it, but it certainly works; the Perl motto: TIMTOWTDI (There Is More Than One Way To Do It).

Features

• Plays MIDI files on Linux machines with an OSS sound card interface.
• GTK based user interface supporting drag-and-drop for easy file selection. Drag a MIDI file from the GNOME-ified Midnight Commander to Musica's drop pocket and it automatically loads the file.
• Tempo adjustment: play a MIDI file up to four times faster or slower.
• Fast forward: skip those dull passages in a MIDI file.

Requirements

• A Linux system. Other operating systems will be supported in the future.
• A C++ compiler. Every Linux system comes with the excellent GNU C/C++ compilers, so that shouldn't be a problem. If your system misses the compilers, you'll have to install them. Read the documentation for your Linux distribution for that.
• The GTK widget set, version 1.2.0 or better. Available at http://www.gtk.org/, but maybe also as a package for your Linux distribution.
• As GTK requires X, Musica needs the X Window system, too.
• A sound card with MIDI support. Check your Linux kernel configuration.

Known bugs

• Only plays on the first available MIDI device. In my case, that's a Roland HP-330 digital piano on the external MIDI port.
• Multi track MIDI files are not correctly handled: the tracks are not played simultaneously, but after each other.
• Heavy X usage can disturb timing.
• MIDI timing not always correct.

To Do (in no particular order)

• Virtualisation of MIDI devices to support more than one MIDI device.
• Advanced MIDI mapper support: play instruments on different MIDI devices.
• Better MIDI timing.
• Support for multi track MIDI files.
• Multi threading to be independent of X disturbances.
• Support for more operating systems. SGI IRIX 6.x will probably be the first, because I have an O2 on my desk :-).

Screenshots

Musica with the default GTK theme:

... with the BeOS theme (I like this one most):

... and with MacOS theme:

This is a Musica 1.1.4 screenshot (with BeOS theme):

Download

Stable releases

• musica-1.0.0.tar.gz
• musica-1.0.1.tar.gz - Minor bug fixes.

Development snapshot

• musica-1.1.0.tar.gz - Different layout, DnD bug fixes, typos.
• musica-1.1.1.tar.gz - Play options.
• musica-1.1.2.tar.gz - Play options works, variable fast-forward speed, better README file, many user interface enhancements.
• musica-1.1.3-ss990516.tar.gz - Latest snapshot with multi track support. Sort of.
• musica-1.1.3.tar.gz - Multi track support.
• musica-1.1.4.tar.gz - Better multi track support, better timing.

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