MidiMon 1.00, a USB MIDI app

Not THE John Williams. You may get another film score out of that keyboard yet.

hopefully the ABS sorted out at long last

Nope. The controller is toast. Well, not quite, it sometimes works, but the fault is there not the sensors or the wiring.

He said it should be changed if the car is up to, say, three years old… but on one that’s a decade old with 60K on the clock he wouldn’t bother. It doesn’t actually do that much on a car moving at 29mph maximum (legally), so the mechanical brakes will do the job.
Speaking of which, new pads in both drums, and will have new front pads at the next 5000km service (he’s not doing both at the same time as that makes the braking overly harsh).
Or, and new bearings on all of the axles. Plus the filters, new oil, etc etc. And fixed the automatic window that “needed help” to close properly with copious amounts of silicone spray.

Been here quite a while (watched a film downloaded from Netflix last night) but it’s a necessity.

Basically the minimum delay to play a midi synthesizer

Fair enough. I don’t envisage any particular lag, but it would be good to test.

It’s worth noting that serial MIDI takes around 320µS per byte, which without running status is just under 1ms per note, about two and a half for a simple chord. That’s why running status was devised. ;)

But, hey, I’m all for testing with experiments. A loop in BASIC to echo anything received ought to do the job.

but posher

France – England but posher?

<ducks>

But, yeah, Picard can be financially devastating…

A loop in BASIC to echo anything received ought to do the job

callbacks can have large delays I discovered when testing usb audio. An application has an even bigger delay. I was thinking more sitting on a vector waiting for input and playing with the lowest latency.

Kind of imagine this will be in the ballpark of €400…

Underestimated that slightly. 😨

Still, lots was done. The printout of work fills a page.

Now for comfort food…

Not THE John Williams.

No, the other one. I play guitar. No, not that one either.

We can make a LoopBack with MIDI
Two methods:
I) My expander has a MIDI Thru connection (Din socket) to be able to cascade several devices. So I can connect the USB input to this output (which is a copy of the input with just an IC in between) and retrieve the sent data.

II) Rhapsody4 has a MIDI Thru functionality (Menu IconBar), this is very practical because it allows you to listen to what you are playing on the keyboard during capture.

The difference between the two methods is that the first uses hardware and the other is software.
Also be careful with looping, it can make noise.
I can do the tests but I need modified module, (I can do it, but I need info to know what to measure)

@Hi John et le Petit Four.

Jean-Michel was kind enough to help me with some of the French language stuff I make available here in the capacity of “proper native French person”! Only relevant in that he is   French, Rick lives in France, and I did for a time. And we are all interested in this topic on getting MIDI working!

Took a while to find it,

For delay measurement, this is the most extreme test I did, using a couple of
usb midi adapters.

DigitalCD → MPlay → MidiSupport → USBMidi(port 0) →

  h/w midi adapter 1 → (first 32.5k serial link) → h/w midi adapter 2 →        

    USBMidi(port 1) → MidiSupport → USBMidi(port 1) →

      h/w midi adapter 2 → (second 32.5k serial link) → h/w midi adapter 1 →  

        USBMidi(port 0) → MidiSupport → MidiSynth

Round trip delay from the MPlay module to the MidiSynth module is 3ms, 2 of
these are the 2 serial links at 923us each for a 3 byte midi message. For a
single 32.5k link looped back, the measured delay is 2ms.

From when I was doing silly tests on my USB module.

The above test was done with nothing else going on.

callbacks can have large delays I discovered when testing usb audio

Yes, I found the same. My timing mechanism provides the modules via a callback with the number of millisecond interrupts since the last callback. Fine no problems. I changed the code in the MIDI file player to use “1” instead of number since last call. This would assume that no interrupts had been missed. The player would very noticably slow down when a window was moved around. I concluded that it was easy to get callback delays of more than a millisecond.

Okay, home now. Got myself a big confetti cake that’s a lot of whipped cream. I wanted a cheesecake, but they’re hideously expensive, and Picard was offering a third off of this cake if I used my loyalty card.
I feel like I need comfort food (also got three packs of Cathedral City cheddar – nice!), and of course there’s a Tetley on the table beside the monitor. ;)

Anyway, I threw this together…

SYS &604E2, 0 TO ; f%
IF (f% AND 1) THEN
  PRINT "MIDI initialise error - is module loaded?"
  END
ENDIF

PRINT "Simple MIDI echo"'"================"''"ESC to quit"

REPEAT
  REM Get a command
  SYS "MIDI_RxCommand", -1 TO d%, t%
  SYS "MIDI_InqError" TO err%
  IF ((err% AND 255) = ASC("X")) THEN
    PRINT '"MIDI device unplugged or not present."
    END
  ENDIF

  REM Pull it apart
  da% = ( d%        AND 255)
  db% = ((d% >>  8) AND 255)
  dc% = ((d% >> 16) AND 255)

  REM Is it a Note On?
  IF ( ( da% >> 4 ) = 9 ) THEN
    REM Really a note ON?
    IF ( dc% > 0 ) THEN
      REM Yes, so echo it at max volume
      PRINT "Note "+STR$(db%)+" on"
      SYS "MIDI_TxNoteOn", db%, 127 : REM Loudest
    ELSE
      REM No, velocity is 0 so it's a note OFF
      PRINT "Note "+STR$(db%)+" off (v=0)"
      SYS "MIDI_TxNoteOff", db%, 0
    ENDIF
  ENDIF

  REM Is it a Note Off?
  IF ( ( da% >> 4 ) = 8 ) THEN
    REM Yup, so do it
    PRINT "Note "+STR$(db%)+" off"
    SYS "MIDI_TxNoteOff", db%, 0
  ENDIF

  REM Repeat Until Bored
UNTIL FALSE

The reason it blasts out the note at maximum velocity is because my keyboard is touch sensitive, so I can play the note gently, and hear it after doing a round trip through the MIDI module (twice) and some BASIC.

There may be delays measured in milliseconds, but to my shonky perception it’s playing as I press the keys. Even bashing lots at once and/or swiping a hand down the length of the keyboard… the only difference between this and the keyboard regular is that there’s no finesse. It’s just behaving like the sensitivity is turned off, there’s no discernable lag.

In order to get lag, one must run it in a TaskWindow and drag the window around while playing. But this is inconsequential as by that point the MIDI notes will have already been timestamped so when they are actually received by the app is not important, so long as they’re received in time that the buffer doesn’t overflow.

No, not that one either.

Didn’t you once have a bloke just down the road also called John Williams?

Okay, here’s version 0.11 of MIDI. It’ll be on my blog soon.

https://heyrick.eu/blog/files/midi_011.zip

It is functionally equivalent to v0.10d but since RMEnsure doesn’t work like that, and I can’t add extra numbers (like v0.104), I’ve just bumped the number so one can programmatically check for the most recent version (that, you know, works ;) ).

It’s about 186K IIRC. Comes with full source (not just the bits that have changed), the Mapper app, the two tests, and the English language copy of the EUPL licence as a PDF.

Known bug: MIDI beat timing works with an external clocking source, but there’s still plenty of brokenness around it – probably best to not use at this time. À voir…

Sounded good to me Rick – except for no velocity. Does that mean that the keyboard maker skimped on midi output and didn’t transmit velocity data?

the Leclerc

“The Leclerc” – Charles has a younger and an older brother, you know¹.

He also has a MBT

Now I’ve got velocity working in your program it feels a bit delayed – odd.

I follow this thread with interest (despite having zero interest in MIDI – last time I did anything related was testing ReMIDI and TiMidity…). But I note that we really need some distinction between “keyboard” and “keyboard”, because it confuses me every time I read it :-) like in German “Tastatur” vs. “Klaviatur”.

except for no velocity.

I did mention, it’s so I can play softly and hear the notes coming back through the computer over anything the keyboard piano might be generating itself.

we really need some distinction between “keyboard” and “keyboard”

Yeah, it’s a bit awkward in the comments and docs to have to try to remember to specify which keyboard.

I tend to refer to the keyboard that makes noises as a piano. When I remember, that is. ;)
[Rick quickly goes up and corrects the bit above]

BTW, it’s clavier and clavier in French. Same problem.

Didn’t you once have a bloke just down the road also called John Williams?

Yes – a tiny commune in France having two John Williams’ – bizarre! But off topic!

Discovered through mis-delivered packages! But still off topic!

I changed the program to just RXCommand in TXCommand out. Run it single tasking – not too bad – and I can switch instruments from the keyboard – neat.

Wonderful things manuals.

Wonderful things manuals.

Even better things: standards.

Even better things: standards.

Yeah, even Apple have a USB C on their charger cable these days.

Sadly, it’s on the end that fits into the USB socket on the mains adapter…

A little whoopsie in Rhapsody.

MidiSetup → GM → Tones

It says:

p#58  Trombone

which means it doesn’t get listed.

Thanks Rick
“p” must be the play from Rhapsody not with the good focus window…
Corrected in distribution.

This morning I have a new test version, it works better, if you have time to test.
I’m using version 11 of your module, it’s ok.
Test version 2 of !RunImage to download, save the previous one :-)
https://jeanmichelb.riscos.fr/Download/Rhap4_runimageTest.zip

This works for StepTime and for semiRealTime, to be confirmed.
For RealTime it should work but not yet flexitime.

Note: I did a test with the MelIDI demo, the notes are taken into account, but it corresponds to Rhapsody’s StepTime. We can’t save anything anyway.

Also with !SysExy (ESP + MidiSupport(ESP) + USBMidi Driver Peter) I was able to recover information (dump) from my exapndeur Roland SC55 and save it, you can also do it it from !SysExy to Roland. This can be useful for saving configurations and reinstalling them.
For information, the !Midiphile (ESP) application allows you to see if the MIDI file contains SysEx data.
All these applications are freely available on the link given by Peter.

To avoid keyboard confusion, I suggest:
PianoKeyboard and Keyboard (computer) ?

I feel that there will be composers following in the footsteps of John Willams the first, second…:-)

@Rick
This morning I tried to put your V0.11 module when starting Rhapsody, but it stuck…
Previously I loaded version 0.10 from June 2013, then version 0.11 and in this case no problems.

When I load version 0.11 I get error messages.

Error  : &00800E07
  Message: Internal error, no stack for trap handler: Internal error: abort on data transfer at &FC1E01B4, pc = 00008BCC: registers at 0001C640

** WimpError ** from unknown task
  Error  : &00800E07
  Message: Internal error, no stack for trap handler: Internal error: abort on data transfer at &FC1E01B4, pc = 00008BCC: registers at 0001C640

** Error **
  Error  : &00000116
  Message: SWI &2B returned a bad error pointer
11:39:47.08 ** WimpError ** from unknown task
  Error  : &00000116
  Message: SWI &2B returned a bad error pointer

I forgot to copy them… after rebooting. I will add them, its done!

If no devices are connected at startup, version 0.11 does not give an error message.
I haven’t looked at the source yet, but I will.