How to play MIDI on the iPhone?

Question

As far as I know, there is not native or third party library available to play MIDI on the iPhone. But there seem to be quite a few apps that do exactly that. What are they using? Any clues?

If there are no third party libaraies for playing MIDI, they probably just made their own, or looked harded... or paid. MIDI should be a fairly simple format to work out what's going on, then you just need to play modulate your samples to play them like the song requested. Remember, MIDI dose not say what it HAS to sound like, only what it should play. It's up to your MIDI software/hardware to turn it into anything good. — thecoshman, Mar 31 '10 at 09:02
MIDI is natively supported in iOS, just link with the CoreMIDI framework. — Berik, Mar 25 '13 at 09:20
I've written a tutorial on how to play MIDI using CoreMIDI through an AUGraph here. — James Andrews, Mar 22 '12 at 21:21
I found this library that is available for licensing. Hope it helps someone else. http://www.crimsontech.jp/eng/softsynth/ — Plumenator, Apr 21 '10 at 08:43

Phil Loden · Answer 1 · 2014-11-13T20:28:57.970

6

FYI for those going down this road: AVMIDIPlayer was introduced in iOS 8. Seems to work well on device, sim not so much.

edited Nov 13 '14 at 20:28

answered Nov 13 '14 at 06:18

Phil Loden

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This is the way to go. For a tutorial, check this out: http://www.rockhoppertech.com/blog/swift-and-avmidiplayer/ – Zeezer Sep 02 '15 at 19:59

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '18 at 12:23

This worked for me for playing midi file on iPhone:

import AVFoundation

class MidiPlayer: NSObject {
    static let shared = MidiPlayer()
    var musicPlayer: MusicPlayer?
    var sequence: MusicSequence?

    func play(file: String) {
        guard let midiFile = Bundle.main.url(forResource: file, withExtension: "mid") else {
            return
        }

        NewMusicPlayer(&musicPlayer)
        NewMusicSequence(&sequence)

        if let musicPlayer = musicPlayer, let sequence = sequence {
            MusicSequenceFileLoad(sequence, midiFile as CFURL, .midiType, MusicSequenceLoadFlags())
            MusicPlayerSetSequence(musicPlayer, sequence)
            MusicPlayerStart(musicPlayer)
        }
    }

    func stop() {
        if let musicPlayer = musicPlayer {
            MusicPlayerStop(musicPlayer)
        }
    }
}

and then MidiPlayer.shared.play(file: "midifile")

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

Check out the MusicPlayer class. Combined with the AUSampler audio unit available since iOS 5.0 you can build a MIDI player quite easily. (The link is OS X, but it applies for iOS as well)

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MusicAudio/Conceptual/CoreAudioOverview/ARoadmaptoCommonTasks/ARoadmaptoCommonTasks.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40003577-CH6-SW13

About the sampler audio unit see: Simple embeddable MidiSynth for iOS?

How to play MIDI on the iPhone?

3 Answers3

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