Re: MIDI interface (feature request)

[Hans Aberg]

On 19 Mar 2009, at 09:57, Mats Bengtsson wrote:

> One technical problem of such a general feature, is that some MIDI  
> commands that are intended to apply to all MIDI tracks should be  
> inserted in track 0, whereas other MIDI commands (that contain a  
> channel number) should be inserted in the same track as the  
> corresponding music. Another complication (at least conceptually) is  
> the different concepts used in LilyPond and MIDI and how they are  
> mapped to each other. By default, MIDI channels correspond to Staff  
> contexts in LilyPond, but this can be changed by redefining the  
> context definitions in LilyPond. A final complication is the lack of  
> standardization of MIDI.
>
> See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-lilypond/2003-10/msg00069.html 
>  for some related information.

One idea is to generate some other format, perhaps Scala seq files,  
which in turn can produce MIDI files. When there is microtonal  
information present, Scala can use special algorithms to assign MIDI  
channels, and also keep track of different synth capabilities. I'm not  
sure how that format stands up with respect to LilyPond information in  
general, but such a format could be developed in a way directly that  
MIDI output cannot.

  Hans