Download today the trial tutorial stack of sunnYmidi. Updated the 1st of October 2012.
This tutorial will show you how to connect 2 Midi sources (Input) and 2 Midi destinations (Output) devices.
Better have a look at the documentation Easy Fast Midi Player and Connecting Midi Devices before coding with sunnYmidi© API.
This tutorial focuses on Midi connexions and the last chapter shows you how you can work with Midi raw datas or Sysex messages.
My Midi context
Here is my Midi configuration for this tutorial.
What do I want to do?
As an exercise, and this was actually my Midi config I used for testing SunnYmidi©, I want to do these tasks within a single LiveCode stack:
– Identify the 2 Midi source devices: my Yamaha piano is connected to my Mac with a Midi-USB cable and MidiKeys which is a virtual keyboard you can get for free.
– Identify the 2 Midi destination devices: again my Yamaha piano plus the Midi Monitor which will act as a virtual player dumping all received Midi notes as text. This feature is very valuable for testing your LiveCode stack. (Midi Monitor is also a free Mac app)
– Connect the 4 devices to LiveCode: that’s the only thing to do to be able to send or receive Midi events from or to physical or virtual devices.
– Play drums on the Yamaha piano: LiveCode will play drums for each key pressed on my Yamaha.
– Play different instruments with the Midi Keys app: by using your Mac keyboard or the mouse over the Midi Keys window notes will play on different instruments selected via the Midi Keys Channel menu.
– LiveCode sends notes to the Yamaha: for instance, clicking a button in LiveCode will play a note on the Yamaha.
– LiveCode sends notes to the Midi Monitor app: for instance, clicking a button in LiveCode will print a note on the Midi Monitor as text.
– Setting a muti-timbre for my Yamaha piano: With the sunnYmidi.Connect and sunnYmidi.Set “sysex” commands, learn how to play few voices on different channels on your external device. This scenario is specific to my Yamaha Clavinoca piano, but you get the idea for any others devices.
Identify the 2 Midi source devices
on mouseUp
put sunnYmidi.Get("numberOfMidiSources") into ns
log "numberOfMidiSources ",ns
repeat with i = 1 to ns
get sunnYmidi.Get("midiSource",i,"dump")
log tab , i ,": " , IT
end repeat
putlog
end mouseUp
And the result of this script lets us know that the Yamaha piano (via Usb) is on the device 2 and MidiKeys app on device 3. We need these 2 values for the connection.
numberOfMidiSources 4
1: Source Bus1 NotConnected
2: Source USB Midi Cable NotConnected
3: Source MidiKeys NotConnected
4: Source SunnYmidi NotConnected
Identify the 2 Midi destination devices
on mouseUp
put sunnYmidi.Get("numberOfMidiDestinations") into nd
log "numberOfMidiSources ",ns
repeat with i = 1 to ns
get sunnYmidi.Get("midiDestination",i,"dump" )
log tab,i,": ",IT
end repeat
putlog
end mouseUp
And the result of this script lets us know that the Yamaha piano (via Usb) is on the device 2 and Midi Monitor app on device 3. We need these 2 values for the connection.
numberOfMidiDestinations 3
1: Destination Bus1 NotConnected
2: Destination USB Midi Cable NotConnected
3: Destination MIDI Monitor (Untitled) NotConnected
Connect the 4 devices to LiveCode
Now that we have our device numbers, we can connect them to LiveCode and set a few properties at the same time . This is straightforward and simple.
on mouseUp put 3 into device_index -- midi Keys put 0 into Remap2channel put "*4" into Volume sunnYmidi.Connect "Source",device_index,Remap2channel,Volume put 2 into device_index -- Yamaha piano put 10 into Remap2channel put "+100" into Volume sunnYmidi.Connect "Source",device_index,Remap2channel,Volume put 2 into device_index -- Yamaha piano put 3 into channel sunnYmidi.Connect "Destination",device_index,channel put 3 into device_index -- Midi Monitor put 5 into channel sunnYmidi.Connect "Destination",device_index,channel end mouseUp
Play drums on the Yamaha piano
Just sit in front of the piano and play 🙂
Because we remap our Yamaha source to channel 10 above, this will play drums on the Mac. Not really much to say.
Play different instruments with the Midi Keys app
Use the mouse and click on the virtual Midi Keys keyboard or type on your normal keyboard.
First select an instrument previously with: sunnYmidi.Set 4,”Instrument”,33; then select the same channel (4) on the Midi Keys interface and you can start your band. You can do that on all Midi channels.
LiveCode sends notes to the Yamaha
As we have connected our Yamaha to channel 3, just script this line to play a note.
on mouseUp sunnYmidi.Play 3, 1000, 128, 53 end mouseUp
LiveCode sends notes to the Midi Monitor app
As we have connected Midi Monitor to channel 5, just script this line to send a note.
on mouseUp sunnYmidi.Play 5, 1000, 126, 53 end mouseUp
And you can see the result on the screen capture below.
On Midi Monitor screen you can see that we have selected only “Act as a destination”. You need to do that so you can see it in LiveCode with the others destination. This tool is a gem to debug your Midi creation when coding.
Setting a muti-timbre for my Yamaha piano
I have a Yamaha Clavinoca piano which has 8 timbres. I would like to associate each timbre to a specific channel.
First thing to do, is to connect my Yamaha as a destination. Then, I have to tell my Yamaha to play timbre 1 from channel 1, timbre 2 from channel 2 and so on. I also need to tell the Yamaha to be in a multi-timbre state ( by default, it is OFF ). For the purpose of this tutorial, I want also to set the volume of the first 4 channels or voices to a low value, the other 4 to a higher value. Here is the commented LiveCode script which does exactly that:
on mouseUp
-- connect the Yamaha
put 3 into index_destination
sunnYmidi.Connect "destination",index_destination,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
PerrorQuit "Set Yamaha connection"
-- Multitimbre ON
put 1 into channel
sunnYmidi.Set channel, "sysex", "F043733215F7", 1
PerrorQuit "Yamaha MultiTimbre ON"
repeat with i=0 to 7
-- Change of patch ( 8 instruments on my Yamaha )
put "C" & i & "0" & i into RawData
sunnYmidi.Set channel, "sysex", RawData, 1
PerrorQuit "Yamaha Set Patchs"
-- Set volume for each channel
if i < 4 then
-- Channel 1 in LC means 0 in Midi
sunnYmidi.Set i+1, "sysex", "B" & i & "0710" -- low
else
sunnYmidi.Set i+1, "sysex", "B" & i & "077f" -- high
end if
PerrorQuit "Yamaha volume"
end repeat
-- Try out every timbre of the Yamaha
repeat with i=1 to 8
sunnYmidi.Play i, 950, 70, 60
wait 1 seconds
end repeat
-- Multitimbre OFF
sunnYmidi.Set channel, "sysex", "F043733213F7"
PerrorQuit "Yamaha MultiTimbre OFF"
end mouseUp
on PerrorQuit
-- Print Error and exit
-- ...
end PerrorQuit
Conclusion
Hope this tutorial will help you to start with SunnYmidi©. For further understanding, you can download the SunnYmidi© demo which includes a LiveCode stack with a lot of small scripts describing most of the functionalities. Enjoy!
Thierry Douez. 2012-07-27