MIDA

MIDA is a minimalistic declarative language for algorithmic generation of MIDI files. MIDA is not interactive in sense that you cannot control result of its activity in real time, it is intended for producers and should be used with a DAW. MIDA can help you create variative elements in your music in a very simple way. Since MIDI can control a lot of different instruments, power of MIDA is truly great.

Main reason for MIDA development is to create software tool that can be used in such a way that does not change established workflow, so people could use familiar plugins and software instruments.

Currently MIDA can be used to translate source files into .mid files, and also in interactive mode that will help you to understand how MIDA language works.

MIDA is a member of Linux Audio consortium.

Installation

1. Install Haskell Platform;

2. Install Cabal;

3. Download and untar git repository of MIDA, or clone it:

   $ git clone https://github.com/mrkkrp/mida.git
   

4. Go to the root directory of the repository and execute:

   $ cabal update
   $ cabal configure
   $ cabal install --only-dependencies
   $ cabal build
   # sh install.sh
   

   or (if you use Stack):

   $ stack build
   

5. Done (you can use uninstall.sh to uninstall the program).

Alternatively, instead of steps 3–5, you can just:

$ cabal install mida

In this case you will need to add ~/.cabal/bin directory to your PATH:

# in .bashrc or similar
export PATH=$HOME/.cabal/bin:$PATH

Example

Here is a simple example of MIDA program that demonstrates syntax and declarative nature of the language.

#
# Example of MIDA program
# Tempo ≈ 50
#

dur0   = 6
dur1   = dur0
dur2   = dur0
dur3   = {96 $ 2, 24}
pch0   = c5 {e5 d5 [a5 a5]} $ 2, g5
pch1   = pch0
pch2   = {c2 c3}
pch3   = {c6 d6 e6 f6 g6 a6 b6 c7 e7}
quiet  = {40..80}
normal = quiet + 30
vel0   = quiet
vel1   = quiet
vel2   = 0, normal $ 2, 0
vel3   = normal

See MIDA Manual for more information.

How to control other things?

If you're into this sort of thing, you may like my another project, called ALGA. It allows to control automation natively in various DAWs.

License

Copyright © 2014, 2015 Mark Karpov

Distributed under GNU GPL, version 3.