Ruby-RtMidi

Ruby wrapper for RtMidi, a cross-platform C++ library for realtime MIDI input and output.

Features:

• List MIDI I/O ports
• Send MIDI messages to output ports
• Receive messages on input ports

In other words, everything you'd want from a low-level MIDI library. It's still your responsibility to interpret the MIDI message byte streams!

Supported Platforms:

• OS X
• Windows
• Linux

Requirements

To install, you need gcc and g++ on your PATH.

On Windows, you can use Visual Studio's cl.exe compiler instead.

Here's the recommended approach for your system:

OS X Setup

• Install XCode via the Apple AppStore.
• Open XCode's Preferences and install "Command Line Tools" in the Downloads tab.

See this stackoverflow discussion for help.

Windows Setup

with Visual Studio (cl.exe)

• Install Visual Studio (Tested with Visual C++ 2010 Express. Any recent version with a C++ compiler should work.)
• Use the "Visual Studio Command Prompt" to install

with MinGW (gcc/g++)

• Install MinGW
• During installation, on the "Select Components" screen, install the following:
  • C Compiler
  • C++ Compiler
  • MSYS Basic System
  • MinGW Developer ToolKit
• Use the the MinGW Shell (MSYS) to install

Note: when installing under MinGW, this library may not work outside of MinGW. If that is a problem for you, use Visual Studio to install.

Linux Setup

Install JACK or ALSA.

This should work on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install g++
sudo apt-get install jackd
sudo apt-get install libjack-dev

Installation

Assuming you have Ruby installed, and are ready to compile C++ code with gcc, this part is easy:

gem install rtmidi

Usage

See the following examples:

• list MIDI devices
• MIDI channel output
• MIDI channel input
• arbitrary MIDI output
• arbitrary MIDI input

Use the arbitrary MIDI IO to handle channel messages, SysEx, timing, and/or active sensing messages. If you only need channel messages (notes, modulation/CC, pitch bend, aftertouch), it's recommended you follow the channel IO examples.

Documentation

http://rdoc.info/github/adamjmurray/ruby-rtmidi/frames

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. The following must work:

• rake test shows all unit tests are passing
• Build and test the gem manually:
  • gem build rtmidi.gemspec
  • gem install rtmidi-#{version}.gem
  • the examples can be run successfully against this version of the gem (ruby examples/**)

Changelog

• 0.3 - Support for arbitrary MIDI messages including SysEx
• 0.2.2 - Compilable with Visual Studio on Windows
• 0.2.1 - Linux support (thanks to @quark-zju)
• 0.2 - First stable release