I usually use the "drvmidi" utlity to play midis and karaoke. It is an old sound blaster awedrv package. It plays kar files pretty good. I tried to capture the output of it, but there is some problem because the apps output actually goes to the soundcard so it is full of binary data. It would be neat if the lyrics were printed to stderr to avoid that complication. I'll try timidity and the MIDI::Event code above and post my results( whether success or not :-) )

As a last resort, I have been able to run drvmidi in a window in a tk canvas, and I'm sure timidity would work too. So this isn't much better than the command line, but it could be made better by using bigger fonts in the xterm and going full screen and changing the solid color to a photo.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Tk;

my $mw = MainWindow->new();

my $canv = $mw->Canvas(-bg => 'lightsteelblue',
     -relief => 'sunken',
     -width => 550,
     -height => 350)->pack(-expand => 1, -fill => 'both');

my $xtermWidth = 400;
my $xtermHeight = 300;

## this Frame is needed for including the xterm in Tk::Canvas 
my $xtermContainer = $canv->Frame(-container => 1);
my $xtid = $xtermContainer->id();
# converting the id from HEX to decimal as xterm requires a decimal Id
+ 
my ($xtId) = sprintf hex $xtid;

my $dcontitem = $canv->createWindow(275,175,
   -window => $xtermContainer,
   -width => $xtermWidth+100,
   -height => $xtermHeight,
   -state => 'normal');

my $label = $canv->createText( 275,10,
       -text => "Hide xterm",
       );

$canv->Tk::bind("<Button-1>", \&hideShow);

my $width = $xtermWidth;
my $height = $xtermHeight;

$mw->Button(-text => "Exit", -command => [sub{Tk::exit}] )->pack(  );

my $tl; #used to mask xterm 
system("xterm -into $xtId -e timidity z.kar &");


MainLoop();

sub hideShow {
    if ($canv->itemcget($label, -text) =~ /Hide/) {
             $canv->itemconfigure($label,
                    -fill => 'white',
                    -text => "Show xterm");

             $tl = $mw->Toplevel(-use=>$xtId );
           } else {
             $canv->itemconfigure($label,
                    -fill => 'black',
                    -text => "Hide xterm");
             $tl->withdraw;
        }
}
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