Music related software

September 20, 2009

These days, I learnt to read the Gregorian chant music score. Then I tried to figure out how to play the music score through the PC (virtual piano). I used MidiPiano Suite before. It is quite nice. It can save and open the MIDI files.

Then, since open source cross-platform software development is very active currently, I tried to search some cross-platform music related software from the Internet. The followings are the software I found (including close source freeware), but I haven’t tried every software:

Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard (VMPK) - Another virtual piano keyboard like MidiPiano Suite. But it cannot save and open MIDI files. However, the website mentioned some other software (for Windows) which can be used with VMPK: MIDIOX, MIDI Yoke, and Qsynth.

MIDIOX - The website stated that it is “the world’s greatest all-purpose MIDI Utility.

MIDI Yoke - The website stated that, it “is used to connect any Windows MIDI Application outputs to any other Applications inputs.” Though I haven’t tried it, I think it is possible to make the VMPK MIDI output to become the MIDI input. The MIDI input can be used in MIDIOX and save the MIDI file.

MF2T and T2MF - I also haven’t tried them. They are used to convert the MIDI to text and text to MIDI. They can be used with MIDIOX log data. Thus, I think it is possible to save the MIDI file by using MIDIOX.

Qsynth - Cross-platform open source freeware. I haven’t tried it. It is a software synthesizer.

Next, I tried to search about other cross-platform open source scorewriters. Previously, I used LilyPond, which is very nice, it can produce music score in PDF and also MIDI file.

Then, I found the Denemo, which is GUI frontend to Lilypond. However, I failed to download from the website. And I tried to download from SourceForge.net, however failed to run Denemo properly, and the version is 0.7.6 beta3, but the official website provides the version 0.8.8. So, I search the file name “InstallDenemo_0.8.8_win.exe”, and successfully download and run the application. Besides that, 0.8.8 includes LilyPond, no further configuration is needed. Very nice!

Then, I used Wikipedia to find the list of scorewriters. So, I tried some of the other open source scorewriters. MuseScore and TuxGuitar. Both are also as powerful as Denemo, though I haven’t tried to use them completely.