There really is not support for MIDI in Perl that has warranted using Perl instead of a MIDI program. The truth is, if you are into MIDI, you are using tools such as Performer or Cakewalk, both of which are very capable of producing a nice display of the notes from a particular MIDI file.

I have experimented with MIDI, but the results aren't a complete solution:

use MIDI;
use Data::Dumper;

use strict;

my $file = 'chimes.mid';
my $opus = MIDI::Opus->new({from_file=>$file});

# dump the contents of the events
$opus->dump({flat=>1});

# example output (minus the header added by me)
   EVENT      dtime  channel   note   velocity
-----------------------------------------------------------
text_event      0       (coded at Thu May 31 13:44:10 2001 )
patch_change    0       1       8
note_on         0       1       25      96
note_off        96      1       25      0
note_on         0       1       29      96
note_off        96      1       29      0
note_on         0       1       27      96
note_off        96      1       27      0


# print the notes as png file: 'experimental' according to docs
# draw() returns a reference to a GD object
my $im = $opus->draw;
open(OUT, ">mid.png"); binmode(OUT);
print OUT $im->png;
close(OUT);

# this produces an image like this
+------------------------------------+
|                                    |
|            ------------            |
|                        ------------|
|------------                        |
|                                    |
+------------------------------------+
[download]

But this is sooooo lousy compared to what a MIDI software package offers (of course, I really shouldn't knock free software either). I think the best use of Perl for MIDI is to create patterns of notes that can be derived from a mathematical sense - like generating scales of notes based from trigonometric functions or other such methods.

I am also anticipating that XML will help revolutionize the ease of displaying MIDI event information.

Jeff

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