Midish — command-line MIDI sequencer and filter for BSD and Linux

What is midish?

Midish is an open-source MIDI sequencer/filter for Unix-like operating systems. Implemented as a simple command-line interpreter (like a shell) it's intended to be lightweight, fast and reliable for real-time performance.

Important features:

multiple MIDI devices handling
synchronization to external audio/MIDI hardware/software
real-time MIDI filtering/routing (controller mapping, keyboard splitting, ...)
track recording, editing, progressive quantisation ...
import and export of standard MIDI files
system exclusive messages handling
...

Midish is open-source software distributed under a BSD-style license (compatible with GPL).

Documentation

A complete user manual is available in the source tar-ball.

There is also a mailing-list about midish (archives are here); feel free to send your questions, bug reports and feedback to:

midish@caoua.org

Download

Refer to the documentation for the installation procedure.

Source tar-ball:

midish-1.3.3.tar.gz [PGP SHA256] - stable release from Sep 21, 2022

Using git:

git clone https://caoua.org/git/midish

Donations

Software is provided for free but its development costs money (hardware, bills, coffee, etc...). So any donation is welcome:

One time donation via paypal:
Subscribe to recurring donation via paypal:
Cancel a recurring donation via paypal:

Music sample

The provided MP3 is produced on low-end PC running OpenBSD, a Roland XV-2020 MIDI sound module and a MIDI keyboard:

sonate_aux_insomniaques.mp3 (ogg)

Except the accoustic melodica part it's all made with midish; the mix automation was controlled by midish as well. The track is part of one of the OpenBSD CDs.

Development

Contributions to midish are welcome, see these coding notes for more details.