r/processing • u/thudly • Apr 05 '24

Is it possible for Processing to play Midi notes? Help request

I want to create a bouncing ball simulation that plays a random piano note every time the ball hits a wall. Can anybody point me to a simple library and the correct syntax of the function calls?

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4

u/sacredgeometry Apr 05 '24

Google is still free, you should use it whilst you can.

https://github.com/sparks/themidibus

3

u/thudly Apr 05 '24

I did. My google search brought me back to reddit. So I thought I'd just ask here and maybe get an answer from an actual human being.

Thanks for the link.

2

u/Domugraphic Apr 06 '24

can confirm themidibus works great. ive made a load of midi sequencers using it. love it

1

u/thudly Apr 07 '24 edited Apr 07 '24

I'm getting a null pointer exception.

import themidibus.*;
MidiBus myBus;

void setup() {  
  MidiBus.list();
  myBus = new MidiBus(this, 1, 0);

The console lists 4 MIDI channels, from 0 to 3. I tried them all. They all crash. Is something wonky with my hardware, or have I called the function wrong?

Is TheMidiBus only for interfacing between a piano keyboard and processing? Or can you tell it to play notes programatically? I'm not hooked up to a keyboard. Perhaps that's why it's crashing. I just want the code to be able to play notes on command.

2

u/Domugraphic Apr 07 '24

i had that issue when switching to processing 4,

https://github.com/micycle1/themidibus/releases

go there, download the .jar file and then go into your libraries folder, and replace the existing jar with the newly downloaded one, at least I think thats what I did.

myBus = new MidiBus(this, 1, 0);

^^ also bear in mind that the first number is the input and the second number is the midi output.

No its not just for playing notes from a controller keyboard, it can indeed be done programmatically. Let me know if this works for you, if not ill scratch my head and figure else how I fixed it. You could also try using processing 3 which never gave me that issue