[openbeos-midi] Re: activity/status?
- From: "Michael Phipps" <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos-midi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 00:03:49 -0400
>> I understand that you don't think that parsing of the file is a good idea
>in the API.
>> I don't understand *WHY* you think that each developer should have to know
>that
>> '4F' means turn on note 15 (or whatever).
>
>Again I am talking about standard MIDI file parsing, not MIDI stream
>parsing, just
>to be sure you understand me correctly.
>All but the most simple applications would never use a BMidiStore class for
>MIDI
>recording/playback. The midi2 kit doesn't have a BMidiStore equivalent.
>Parsing a standard MIDI file is not that hard and if an application wants to
>control
>how the MIDI events are represented in memory it had best do this all
>itself.
>For the simple applications (like games) that just playback MIDI, ok for
>those
>something like BMidiStore can be usefull. But I don't consider it top
>priority and
>think such a class would be better placed in a seperate utility library.
I appreciate your patience with me in this. I am *NOT* a musician and I know
little to nothing of music, other than a CD Player. :-)
My understanding of this topic comes from reading the MIDI file spec (well,
skimming it)
and looking at the MIDI (1) kit. The API looked very sensible and easy to use.
I don't understand why you (and others) don't like it. Again, though, I have no
real
knowledge of MIDI, though, to make a judgement.
What you seem to be saying, though, makes me wonder what the point of Midi2 is.
It seems like it is just a message passer and replicator (sprayer).
IOW, if I want to write an app that, say, plays MIDI songs, I have to parse the
midi file myself,
create a BMidiProducer, and feed it events. That seems unnecessarily hard to
get started with,
if the main focus of the app isn't music. As you said, a game or something.
I am not sure what the "right" thing to do is, here. On one hand, it seems that
you, as an experienced
MIDI person have good ideas. But I just can't quite consign every programmer
out there who wants
to play music to having to parse files.
>> Actually, what I was thinking of the other day, as a neat idea, would be
>to incorporate
>> MOD (through Translation Kit). Basically make MIDI the "BBitmap" of
>Translation kit.
>> Then all of the music creation languages (mod, midi, etc) could be created
>and played
>> transparently through MIDI kit.
>
>I think this would prove very hard to get even remotely usefull :)
Oh, no question. That would definately be a > R1 thing.
>Because I think this is a higher level and does not belong in the low level
>input/output API, just
>to keep things simple and seperate.
>If we have a working IO API then implementing a BMidiStore like class is
>just a couple of
>hours coding, I am just afraid that starting with implementing these extras
>might distract from
>the more important issues.
And this is what I don't quite get. I looked at the MIDI spec. I couldn't read
it in a couple of
hours, much less understand and code it. When you say a "working IO API", are
you talking
about the Storage Kit?
Can you talk a little bit about 2 things - why Midi (1) is not good enough for
professionals and
what Midi 2 does that is good?
Other related posts:
