DHSendMIDI

By Douglas Heriot

DHSendMIDI is a simple tool for sending MIDI messages from an OS X command line.

There’s no complicated config files to set up or anything – it just simple sends MIDI messages for you!

Note that sometimes there could be a little delay as OS X wakes up its internal MIDI Server on each execution. It seems that if you’ve got other apps using MIDI also open, it can do this so quickly you probably won’t notice it.

Sounds awesome!

Great! You can download a zip of the latest binary to start playing right away! (Version 1.0)

Feel free to contact me and let me know what you think!

What about a nice user interface?

Glad you asked – you might like my (commercial) Mac app, MIDI Friend.

Usage

DHSendMIDI [options] byte1 [byte2]

Voice Messages

You can use one of the self-explanatory options to set the kind of message you’d like to send: --note-on, --note-off, --aftertouch, --control-change, --program-change, --channel-pressure, --pitch-wheel.

Some examples:

DHSendMIDI --control-change 7 9

DHSendMIDI --note-on 54 127

DHSendMIDI --note-off 54 0

DHSendMIDI --program-change 2

Note that program change and channel pressure messages only have one data byte to send.

DHSendMIDI --pitch-wheel 0 64

Note pitch bend messages are 2 bytes, making a 14-bit value (yes, 14 bits – MIDI uses 7-bit values, and the 8th bit to represent control bytes). It’s little endian, so values 0 64 places the wheel in the centre.

Channel

Set the channel (a number 1-16) with --channel or -c

DHSendMIDI --channel 8 --cc 0 127

(Sends control change message setting controller 0 to value 127, on channel 8)

Destination Device

You can specify a specific device to send to. When this option isn’t specified, messages are sent to all devices.

For example, to send to IAC Driver, Bus 1:

DHSendMIDI --destination "Bus 1" --note-on 52 113

Other Options

• --verbose, -v – Prints message being sent
• --version, -V – Displays version

More Help

For slightly more detailed options (and short versions), see

DHSendMIDI --help

Getting the Code

Note it includes SnoizeMIDI as a submodule, so clone recursively:

git clone --recursive git://github.com/DouglasHeriot/DHSendMIDI.git

License

DHSendMIDI has a BSD-style license. See the file LICENSE.md

Also includes SnoizeMIDI:

SnoizeMIDI

Copyright © 2001-2010, Kurt Revis. All rights reserved.

Small modifications by Douglas Heriot, 2011. http://github.com/krevis/MIDIApps/ http://github.com/DouglasHeriot/MIDIApps/

See LICENSE.md for more details