MIDNOTE

Midnote is a terminal application that reads a MIDI file and displays you its notes bar-by-bar, while playing it.

Goals

As a blind musician myself, I found it very difficult to learn new songs on my own.

I've "seen" Lunar Tabs, and wanted to make something similar but for MIDI files since good guitarpro5 tabs are not free but you can download many great MIDI files.

Feature Flags

You can choose a different audio backend using one of the following feature flags:

• --features=jack: Use the Jack backend.
• --features=winrt: Use the WinRT backend.

Prerequisites

Midnote works by reading a MIDI file and parsing the messages within. The display requires no MIDI device (software or hardware) but you need one for the playback.

Windows comes with a default MIDI device, which is pretty lame sounding and laggy. OmniMidi is highly recommended for Windows users.

On *NIX, you'll need to install your own MIDI synthesizer. I personally recommend Fluidsynth.

On MacOS, Fluidsynth is available and it should work as good as it works on *NIX systems.

Build Requirements

You need a working Rust installation along with the rust package manager, cargo (cargo ships with the rust toolchain). On *nix, you also need alsa development libraries:

# debian / ubuntu
apt install libasound2-dev
# fedora / sentos
dnf install alsa-lib-devel

If you want to use the Jack backend, you also need the jack development libraries:

# Debian and derivatives
apt install libjack-jackd2-dev
# RHEL and derivatives
dnf install jack-audio-connection-kit-devel

Installation

Windows: With Scoop

First add my bucket to scoop:

scoop bucket add insomnia https://github.com/inssomnimus/scoop-bucket

Update scoop:

scoop update

Install the app:

scoop install midnote

Download a pre-built binary

Pre-built binaries can be found on the releases page.

BYOB: Build Your Own Binary

git clone https://github.com/insomnimus/midnote
cd midnote
git checkout main
cargo install --path . --locked
# To use the jack or winrt backends, do the following:
cargo install --path . --locked --features=jack # or winrt

Usage

You start midnote by giving it a midi file as an argument and optionally, specifying a MIDI device.

# Open megalovania.mid, using the default MIDI device:
midnote ./megalovania.mid

# Specify another MIDI device:
midnote ./megalovania.mid --device 2

# List available MIDI devices:
midnote --list

For more options you can set, please run midnote --help.

Configuration

Midnote accepts a config file (*.json) with the --config command line argument. The default configuration is as follows:

{
  "colors": true,
  "keys": {
    "next": "Right",
    "prev": "Left",
    "replay": {
      "Char": "r"
    },
    "solo": {
      "Char": "s"
    },
    "silence": {
      "Char": " "
    },
    "rewind": {
      "Char": "p"
    },
    "exit": "Esc",
    "help": {
      "Char": "h"
    }
  }
}

Possible Keys

• Backspace
• Enter
• Left
• Right
• Up
• Down
• Home
• End
• PageUp
• PageDown
• Tab
• BackTab
• Delete
• Insert
• Esc

Any letter key is also valid but needs to be wrapped in a Char object, see the default config above.

Function keys have the form {"F": 1..=12 }.