Python suitable for Midi ?

[Michael Sparks]

Protocol wrote:

> Is Python suitable for building a multi-track midi sequencer (with a
> gui), that would run on windows / mac ? I fail to find sufficient
> information on this, being a newbie and all. 

We had a Google Summer of Code student working on this sort of thing this
year (This clearly puts a bounds on experience btw). He got a fair way along
with this, but didn't get his code to a mergeable state (mainly in the
application files rather than in the components which are largely
mergeable).

Essentially it generated a bunch of components which he was using in his
application, which are naturally reusable.

I've pinged him since the end of GSOC, and had a response that essentially
says "sorry, too busy, maybe next semester". We'll see on that (he was
having fun, so I suspect he really does want to come back to it, but hasn't
had time). In the meantime, the answer is, yes, you can do this in Python.
His code is here, if it's useful to you:

   * http://code.google.com/p/kamaelia/source/browse/trunk/Sketches/JT
   * ( svn co http://kamaelia.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Sketches/JT )
      - requires Kamaelia 0.6.0 btw

Top level file/application file is this:

http://kamaelia.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Sketches/JT/Jam/application/trunk/jam

(The reason I don't feel it's mergeable as is, is because it could with a
code clean up IMO, but it's pretty good - to say the least - considering
the GSOC timeframe - also it shows it is doable, and if you're reusing his
components, then it should be very doable)

It is likely though that his component library:
http://kamaelia.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Sketches/JT/Jam/library/trunk/Kamaelia/Apps/Jam/Protocol/

will get merged before christmas though, since that code is a lot cleaner.

In case you're wondering, he was aiming to build something a bit like this,
but using Pygame as the interface, and it allows multiple users to run
their local version, connect to each other and do shared "jamming" - hence
the interesting subdirectory is "Jam"

As well as Midi it also supports OSC.

Underneath it all, he was using the python "rtmidi" bindings, and pyosc
bindings to talk Midi and Osc. (Most of his quagmire in the last bit of
GSOC was caused by audio under linux, which doesn't sound relevant to you)

> Furthermore, i found references on Python not being really able of
> multi-threading, that further adds to the confusion.

Kamaelia's component model effectively gives you concurrency for free,
since you build systems out of components that talk to each other. I
haven't attached the introspector to Jam, but I suspect it's embarrassingly
parallel. He didn't have to worry about that though :-)

If you're curious about the model, this tutorial is specifically targetted
at new developers:
    http://www.kamaelia.org/MiniAxon/

It was originally written for someone (specific) who had learnt python the
previous week, had little programming experience, and we needed to get them
up to speed quickly and gently. It's been slightly generalised since, but
is a nice introduction to the ideas. (Under the hood Kamaelia is
significantly more optimised than that example, but the components you
create for that tutorial system work with the full/real world system)

Regards,


Michael
--
http://www.kamaelia.org/Home