midi-simple

A simple and minimal MIDI library for Haskell, written with real-time applications in mind. It provides fast decoding and encoding of (normalized) MIDI messages as output by e.g. JACK.

Currently, the MIDI 1.0 specification is supported. No extensions (e.g. General MIDI) are implemented at the moment, but may be added in the future.

In particular, timing information, relative or absolute, is out of scope for this project, as it messages are timed in the way they arrive in a real-time setting. There are currently also no plans to support MIDI files, although this library can be used as a base for building support for such a use case.

Usage

Most intended use cases should be covered by the Sound.MIDI module. The modules Sound.MIDI.Parser and Sound.MIDI.Serialize export the innards of the parser/serializer respectively for when they are needed.

Performance

In my benchmarks, the library has proven to be sufficient for real-time use. Parsing of common MIDI events such as Note On/Off or Pitch Bend runs at around 50-60ns per event.