MidiKit Windows

Browser

To browse a directory click the "browse" button in the browser toolbar. The browser will display the most significant information about MIDI files. You can easily edit these tags in the "Info" dialog. You can also edit the MIDI file content with the editor. Finally you can batch process selected items.

The browser columns can be reordered and resized to fill your needs. Window and table state are saved among sessions. The browser toolbar can be customized by control-clicking on it.

Some columns may require a short description here:

Reset

Displays the reset messages present in the file. They can be GM, GS and XG.

!

A bug icon is displayed if the file have some problems. Open the info window for explanation.

Sequence Name/Copyright

These are the standard Track Name and Copyright meta events.

Title/Author

Because there is not a standard way to store this information in a MIDI file, these strings are extracted from the two first text meta events tagged as @T (from SoftKaraoke format)

C(hannels)

This column reports the number of used channels. You can specify in the preferences window if it refers to notes only or any channel message (controllers, etc...).

Info

To display the Info window, select a MIDI file and click the "Info" button on the toolbar. You may use the navigation buttons ("Previous/Next") to display sequentially all items displayed in the browser. Changes are saved as you click the "OK" or the navigation buttons and the browser list is updated accordingly. To discard last changes, click "Cancel". The player allows a quick preview of the MIDI file via the Apple DLS Synth.

Editor

See the MIDI Editor section.

MIDI Settings

To open the MIDI Settings window, choose the "MidiKit/MIDI Settingsā€¦" menu item. You can here set the player's MIDI output and input. The input MIDI stream is routed to the chord editor.

To quickly access your MIDI system configuration, click the "Audio MIDI Setup" button.

The DLS Synth parameters can be edited in the "Music Device" window.

 

Music Device

To open the Music Device window, choose the "Window/Music Device" menu item.

Music devices are specialized OS X audio units that generate sounds in response to some control protocol (MIDI in our case), like virtual synthesizers. Mac OS X includes a Virtual Instrument (Apple DLS Music Device) compatible with both the industry standard DownLoadable Sounds (DLS) format and SoundFonts. The Mac synthesizer provides applications with high quality and low latency sample playback.

By default, the "QuickTime Music Synthesizer" SoundFont is used, but you can easily install and use other SoundFonts:

First, download a SoundFont (a .sf2 file). The SoundFont must be at least GM (General MIDI, with 128 instruments) or better GS (GM plus some Roland Extensions). You can find SoundFonts from 4Mb to 128+Mb in size, depending on the quality and richness of the instrument set. For example, the default Roland SoundFont is 1.5Mb in size.

Once you've found a .sf2 file, follow these steps to install it:

  1. Copy it to the SoundBanks folder ~/Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks or Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks.
  2. Choose "Music Device" from the "Window" menu
  3. Select the SoundFont name in the "Sound Bank" popup menu
  4. Click the "Save Preset" button.

Tip: to quickly open the SoundBanks folder, click the "Show" button in the Music Device window.

Preferences

To open the preferences window, choose the "MidiKit/Preferences…" menu item. You can here choose startup actions and set other general settings.

Log

To open the log window, choose the "Window/Log" menu item. If an error occurs during batch processing, this window automatically shows up.

 

XF/WX Chords Map

To open the XF/WX Chords Map window, choose the "Window/XF/WX Chords Map" menu item. Because XF chords are not encoded as strings, a "mapping" table is needed to convert string types to XF "sequencer specific" meta events. You can edit this data to meet your needs in this window.

Same thing for the GEM WX chords, which requires a specific text formatting to be recognized by GEM keyboards.

XF Chords Editor Panel

To open the chord editor panel, choose the "Window/Chords Editor Panel" menu item or by using the MIDI document contextual menu.

Manual Editing

Adding a chord:

  1. Open the chord editor.
  2. Edit the chord attributes (you can "preview" the chord via the speaker button).
  3. Choose the chord format (XF chord meta event, XF chord sysex or TEXT meta event)
  4. Open a MIDI document.
  5. Set the desired time in the measure picker and click the "Insert" button.

Modifying an existing chord:

  1. Open the chord editor.
  2. Select the chord you want to edit in the MIDI document event list.
  3. Click the "Read" button in the chords editor Panel.
  4. Make you changes (you can "preview" the chord via the speaker button)
  5. Click the "Write" button.

Chord Identification

Notes received via MIDI input or generated by clicking a MIDI document event (with preview speaker enabled) are routed to the chord panel. If one or more chords ar detected, they are displayed in the piano view. The first identified chord is also loaded in the editor. Click a chord in the piano view to load it in the chord editor.