Midish — command-line MIDI sequencer and filter for BSD and Linux

What is midish?

Midish is an open-source MIDI sequencer/filter for Unix-like operating systems (developped and tested on OpenBSD and Linux). Implemented as a simple command-line interpreter (like a shell) it's intended to be lightweight, fast and reliable for real-time performance.

Important features:

multiple MIDI devices handling
synchronization to external audio/MIDI hardware/software
real-time MIDI filtering/routing (controller mapping, keyboard splitting, ...)
track recording, metronome
basic track editing (insert, copy, delete, ...)
progressive track quantisation
import and export of standard MIDI files
tempo and time-signature changes
system exclusive messages handling
...

Midish is open-source software distributed under a BSD-style license (compatible with GPL).

Help

A complete user manual is available in the source tar-ball. There is also a mailing-list about midish (archives are here); feel free to send your questions, bug reports and feedback to midish[at]caoua[dot]org.

Download

Refer to the documentation for the installation procedure.

Source tar-balls:

midish-1.0.6.tar.gz - stable release from dec 23, 2010
midish.tar.gz - development snapshot from dec 17, 2012 (recommended)

Precompiled binary packages are also available.

Donations

Software is provided for free but its devloppement costs money (hardware, bills, coffee, etc...). So any donation is welcome:

Music samples

The provided MP3s are produced on low-end PC running OpenBSD, a Roland XV-2020 MIDI sound module and a MIDI keyboard:

sample.mp3 (ogg)
This is the historic sample file shipped in the sources tar-ball played with the above hardware. It uses the sound-module in the "General MIDI" legacy mode.
sonate_aux_insomniaques.mp3 (ogg)
Except the accoustic melodica part it's all made with midish; the mix automation was controlled by midish as well. The track is part of one of the OpenBSD CDs.

How to contribute

Contributions to midish are welcome:

test midish and send us feedback
help improve documentation
help add new features (see coding notes)
share your midish scripts to help other users
provide/maintain midish packages for your favorite OS

Feel free to ask questions and send contributions on the midish mailing-list.