Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard =========================== This program is a MIDI events generator/receiver. It doesn't produce any sound by itself, but can be used to drive a MIDI synthesizer (either hardware or software, internal or external). You can use the computer's keyboard to play MIDI notes, and also the mouse. You can use the Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard to display the played MIDI notes from another instrument or MIDI file player. To do so, connect the other MIDI port to the input port of VMPK. VMPK has been tested in Linux, Windows and Mac, but maybe you can build it also in SGI Irix. If you can compile and test the program in this system, please drop a mail to the author. The Virtual Keyboard by Takashi Iway (vkeybd) has been the inspiration for this one. It is a wonderful piece of software and has served us well for many years. Thanks! VMPK uses a modern GUI framework: Qt4, that gives excellent features and performance. RtMIDI provides MIDI input/output features. Both frameworks are free and platform independent, available for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. The alphanumeric keyboard mapping can be configured from inside the program using the GUI interface, and the settings are stored in XML files. Some maps for Spanish, German and French keyboard layouts are provided, translated from the ones provided by VKeybd. Raw keyboard mappings can also be defined, translating X11, Windows or Mac keycodes to MIDI notes. VMPK can send program changes and controllers to a MIDI synth. The definitions for different standards and devices can be provided as .INS files, the same format used by QTractor and TSE3. It was developed by Cakewalk and used also in Sonar. This software is in a very early alpha stage. See the TODO file for a list of pending features. Please feel free to contact the author to ask questions, report bugs, and propose new features. See http://vmpk.sourceforge.net for more details. DOWNLOAD Latest release is available in Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmpk/files REQUIREMENTS You need Qt 4.4 or newer. Install the -devel package for your system, or download the open source edition from Nokia: http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/ RtMIDI is included in the source package. It uses ALSA sequencer in Linux, WinMM in Windows and CoreMIDI in Mac OSX, which are the native MIDI systems in all the supported platforms. http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/ The build system is based on CMake. You can download it from: http://www.cmake.org You need also the GCC C++ compiler. http://gcc.gnu.org http://www.mingw.org Optionally, you can build a Windows setup program using NSIS. http://nsis.sourceforge.net INSTALLATION Download the sources from http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmpk/files Unpack the sources in your home directory, and change to the unpacked dir. $ cd vmpk-x.x.x You can choose between CMake and Qmake to prepare the build system, but qmake is intended only for testing and development. $ cmake . or $ ccmake . or $ qmake After that, compile the program: $ make if the program has been compiled successfully, you can install it: $ make install There are more commands available: $ make uninstall $ make clean You can get some compiler optimisation when building the program, but don't expect too much improvement. There are two ways. First, using a predefined configuration type: $ cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release The CMake "Release" type uses the compiler flags: "-O3 -DNDEBUG". Other predefined build types are "Debug", "RelWithDebInfo", and "MinSizeRel". The second way is to choose the compiler flags yourself: $ export CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -mtune=native -DNDEBUG" $ cmake . You need to find the better CXXFLAGS for your own system. If you want to install the program at some place other than the default (/usr/local) use the following CMake option: $ cmake . -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr NOTES FOR WINDOWS USERS To compile the sources in Windows, you need to download either the .bz2 or .gz archive and uncompress it using any utility that supports the format, like 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org) To configure the sources, you need qmake (from Qt4) or CMake. You need to set the PATH including the directories for Qt4 binaries, MinGW binaries, and also CMake binaries. The program CMakeSetup.exe is the graphic version of CMake for Windows. To use the program in Windows, you need some MIDI synth. It is possible to use the "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth" that cames with XP, but for better performance and quality, you may want to try QSynth/FluidSynth: http://qsynth.sourceforge.net Of course, an external MIDI hardware synth would be an even better approach. To connect VMPK to/from other MIDI programs, you need some virtual MIDI cable software, like MIDI Yoke, Maple, LoopBe1 or Sony Virtual MIDI Router. http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/dl/dl.aspx?dwnid=77 NOTES FOR MAC OSX USERS The build system is configured to create an universal binary (x86+ppc) into an app bundle. You need the Apple development tools and frameworks, as well as the Qt4 SDK from Nokia. To compile VMPK using Makefiles, generated by qmake: $ qmake vmpk.pro -spec macx-g++ $ make $ macdeployqt build/vmpk.app To compile using Makefiles, generated by CMake: $ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" . $ make To create Xcode project files: $ qmake vmpk.pro -spec macx-xcode or $ cmake -G Xcode . You can use the MIDI synth library that is included in Mac OSX, but a program is needed to do so, like SimpleSynth (http://notahat.com). Also from the same author is MIDI Patchbay. You can use also QSynth for the same price. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In addition to the aforementioned tools, VMPK uses work from the following open source projects. * from Qtractor, by Rui Nuno Capela http://qtractor.sourceforge.net Instrument definition data classes * from QSynth, by Rui Nuno Capela http://qsynth.sourceforge.net Knob widget * Icon and logo by Theresa Knott http://openclipart.org/media/files/TheresaKnott/346 Thank you very much.