Play MIDI files - Githubissues

page200 commented 1 year ago

Since there's no "Discussions" tab in this repo (and this discussion affects potential add-ons and bugfixes), I'm opening this issue to discuss how to play MIDI files. This discussion started at https://github.com/mudcube/MIDI.js/issues/268#issuecomment-1368694753 and https://github.com/mudcube/MIDI.js/issues/268#issuecomment-1368701177 with @urobot2011 in the repo of MIDI.js, whose SoundFont loader soundfont-player replaces.

The readme of soundfont-player says "It is a much simpler and lightweight replacement for MIDI.js soundfont loader (MIDI.js is much bigger, capable of play midi files, for example, but it weights an order of magnitude more).". Therefore:

By implementing the capability of playing MIDI files, we might partially revert to what MIDI.js does and thus again run into the problem that the first notes play too late. As a quick test, if you use the time argument of play() or schedule() in soundfont-player to program a melody where many instruments play fast in the beginning (for example playing fast scales), does the melody play with the correct rhythm?
What's lacking in soundfont-player is the loading of MIDI files. We could borrow that functionality from other projects than MIDI.js. For example:
- from timidity (which has problems playing MIDI files after reading them, but we would use soundfont-player to play them instead).
- from webaudio-tinysynth (which plays synthesizers but not SoundFonts, and currently is partially out of tune, but that's no problem because we would use soundfont-player instead).

Another thing: When I tried the official demo of MidiPlayerJS months ago, which uses soundfont-player, it had unstable playback, for example when switching quickly between windows. When I tried today, it seemed to use wrong instruments and the rhythm didn't seem perfect. I wonder whether that problem is due to MidiPlayerJS or soundfont-player. It might be due to soundfont-player because that webpage says "This MIDI player was built using MidiPlayerJS to read the file, and soundfont-player to load and play the sounds". I also wonder whether those are the fatal flaws that @urobot2011 mentioned at https://github.com/mudcube/MIDI.js/issues/268#issuecomment-1368701177 and https://github.com/grimmdude/MidiPlayerJS/issues/94, or whether @urobot2011 meant another one.

I wonder what the change was compared to MIDI.js that affected the timing.

mk-pmb commented 1 year ago

Thank you for summarizing!

page200 commented 1 year ago

To sum up several discussions: The only approach that works well so far (correct instruments, perfect rhythm, can play in the background) is the latest official branch of MIDI.js (named "abcjs"), except for the first seconds of the first time a song is played. That problem is described at https://github.com/mudcube/MIDI.js/issues/268#issuecomment-1367335200. Solving that seems like the most promising plan. Feel free to have a look into that.