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ReceiveMIDI

ReceiveMIDI is a multi-platform command-line tool makes it very easy to quickly receive and monitor MIDI messages from MIDI devices on your computer.

All the heavy lifting is done by the wonderful JUCE library.

The project website is https://github.com/gbevin/ReceiveMIDI

Community

Join the Forums: https://forum.uwyn.com

Chat on Discord: https://discord.gg/sKM6pE575y

Purpose

This tool is mainly intended for quickly monitoring the messages that are sent to your computer from a particular MIDI device. By providing filter commands, it's possible to only focus on particular MIDI messages.

Here's a tutorial video about both SendMIDI and ReceiveMIDI, including some tips and tricks of how to use the command-line on macOS:

ShowMIDI

If you're looking for a beautiful GUI to effortlessly visualize MIDI activity without having to wade through log files, please take a look at my other tool ShowMIDI: https://github.com/gbevin/ShowMIDI

Download

You can download pre-built ReceiveMIDI binaries from the release section: https://github.com/gbevin/ReceiveMIDI/releases

Since ReceiveMIDI is free and open-source, you can also easily build it yourself. Just take a look into the Builds directory when you download the sources.

If you're using the macOS Homebrew package manager, you can install ReceiveMIDI with:

brew install gbevin/tools/receivemidi

Usage

To use it, simply type "receivemidi" or "receivemidi.exe" on the command line and follow it with a series of commands that you want to execute. These commands have purposefully been chosen to be concise and easy to remember, so that it's extremely fast and intuitive to quickly receive or monitor MIDI messages.

These are all the supported commands:

  dev   name       Set the name of the MIDI input port
  virt  (name)     Use virtual MIDI port with optional name (Linux/macOS)
  pass  name       Set name of MIDI output port for MIDI pass-through
  list             Lists the MIDI input ports
  file  path       Loads commands from the specified program file
  dec              Interpret the next numbers as decimals by default
  hex              Interpret the next numbers as hexadecimals by default
  ch    number     Set MIDI channel for the commands (0-16), defaults to 0
  ts               Output a timestamp for each received MIDI message
  nn               Output notes as numbers instead of names
  omc   number     Set octave for middle C, defaults to 3
  voice            Show all Channel Voice messages
  note             Show all Note messages
  on    (note)     Show Note On, optionally for note (0-127)
  off   (note)     Show Note Off, optionally for note (0-127)
  pp    (note)     Show Poly Pressure, optionally for note (0-127)
  cc    (number)   Show Control Change, optionally for controller (0-127)
  cc14  (number)   Show 14-bit CC, optionally for controller (0-63)
  nrpn  (number)   Show NRPN, optionally for parameter (0-16383)
  nrpnf (number)   Show full NRPN (MSB+LSB), optionally for parameter (0-16383)
  rpn   (number)   Show RPN, optionally for parameter (0-16383)
  rpnf  (number)   Show full RPN (MSB+LSB), optionally for parameter (0-16383)
  pc    (number)   Show Program Change, optionally for program (0-127)
  cp               Show Channel Pressure
  pb               Show Pitch Bend
  sr               Show all System Real-Time messages
  clock            Show Timing Clock
  start            Show Start
  stop             Show Stop
  cont             Show Continue
  as               Show Active Sensing
  rst              Show Reset
  sc               Show all System Common messages
  syx              Show System Exclusive
  syf   path       Store SysEx into a .syx file
  tc               Show MIDI Time Code Quarter Frame
  spp              Show Song Position Pointer
  ss               Show Song Select
  tun              Show Tune Request
  q                Don't show the received messages on standard output
  dump             Dump the received messages 1:1 on standard output
  js    code       Execute this script for each received MIDI message
  jsf   path       Execute the script in this file for each message
  mpp   name       Configure responder MPE Profile creating virtual MIDI input
        manager    and output ports with the provided name, available manager
        members    channel (1-15 or 0 for any) and desired member channel
                   count (1-15, or 0 for any) (Linux/macOS)
  mcr   flag       Sets MPE Profile channel response feature (0-1)
  mpb   flag       Sets MPE Profile pitch bend feature (0-1)
  mcp   flag       Sets MPE Profile channel pressure feature (0-2)
  m3d   flag       Sets MPE Profile 3rd dimension feature (0-2)
  -h  or  --help   Print Help (this message) and exit
  --version        Print version information and exit
  --               Read commands from standard input until it's closed

Alternatively, you can use the following long versions of the commands:

  device virtual pass-through decimal hexadecimal channel timestamp
  note-numbers octave-middle-c note-on note-off poly-pressure control-change
  control-change-14 nrpn-full rpn-full program-change channel-pressure
  pitch-bend system-realtime continue active-sensing reset system-common
  system-exclusive system-exclusive-file time-code song-position song-select
  tune-request quiet javascript javascript-file mpe-profile mpe-channel-reponse
  mpe-pitch-bend mpe-channel-pressure mpe-3rd-dimension

By default, numbers are interpreted in the decimal system, this can be changed to hexadecimal by sending the "hex" command. Additionally, by suffixing a number with "M" or "H", it will be interpreted as a decimal or hexadecimal respectively.

The MIDI device name doesn't have to be an exact match. If ReceiveMIDI can't find the exact name that was specified, it will pick the first MIDI output port that contains the provided text, irrespective of case.

Where notes can be provided as arguments, they can also be written as note names, by default from C-2 to G8 which corresponds to note numbers 0 to 127. By setting the octave for middle C, the note name range can be changed. Sharps can be added by using the "#" symbol after the note letter, and flats by using the letter "b".

For details on how to use the "javascript" and "javascript-file" commands, please refer to the JAVASCRIPT.md documentation file.

Examples

Here are a few examples to get you started:

List all the available MIDI output ports on your system

receivemidi list

Receive all the MIDI messages coming from LinnStrument:

receivemidi dev "LinnStrument MIDI"

Receive only notes coming from LinnStrument:

receivemidi dev "LinnStrument MIDI" note

Receive all voice messages coming from LinnStrument, and also MIDI clock start and stop, all displayed with a timestamp:

receivemidi dev "LinnStrument MIDI" ts voice start stop

Receive all messages from LinnStrument and pipe them to the SendMIDI tool in order to forward them to Bidule:

receivemidi dev linnstrument | sendmidi dev "Bidule  1" --

Receive all messages from LinnStrument. Through the JavaScript feature, each note on will execute the test.sh command with the note number as argument.

receivemidi dev linnstrument
  js "if (MIDI.isNoteOn()) Util.command('/path/to/test.sh ' + MIDI.noteNumber());"

Receive all messages from LinnStrument and don't print them out. Through the JavaScript feature, each note on message will send an OSC message to 127.0.0.1:12800.

receivemidi dev linnstrument quiet
  javascript "if (MIDI.isNoteOn()) OSC.connect('127.0.0.1', 12800).send('/note-on', MIDI.noteNumber());"

Text File Format

The text file that can be read through the "file" command can contain a list of commands and options, just like when you would have written them manually on the console (without the "sendmidi" executable). You can insert new lines instead of spaces and any line that starts with a hash (#) character is a comment.

For instance, this is a text file for one of the examples above:

dev "LinnStrument MIDI"
# timestamp the output
ts
# show all voice messages
voice
# show MIDI clock start and stop
start stop

Building on Linux

To build ReceiveMIDI on Linux you need a minimal set of packages installed beforehand, on Ubuntu this can be done with:

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libasound2-dev

After that, go to the LinuxMakeFile directory

cd Builds/LinuxMakeFile

and build the binary by typing make

make

The resulting binary will be in the Build/LinuxMakeFile/build directory and can be moved anywhere appropriate on your system, for instance into /usr/local/bin:

sudo mv build/receivemidi /usr/local/bin

SendMIDI compatibility

The output of the ReceiveMIDI tool is compatible with the SendMIDI tool, allowing you to store MIDI message sequences and play them back later. By using Unix-style pipes on the command-line, it's even possible to chain the receivemidi and sendmidi commands in order to forward MIDI messages.

If you changed the octave for middle C or are outputting hexadecimal numbers instead of the default decimal numbers, make sure that you set up SendMIDI with the same parameters.

SendMIDI can be downloaded from https://github.com/gbevin/SendMIDI