Carnatic MIDI Player

Maddy has built a new MIDI player for his friend Prabhu. He has exposed the MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) support in windows multimedia dll (winmm.dll) using .NET. The program needs atleast .NET 2.0 runtime. Windows vista should be able to run the program without any tweak.

The player has two modes - a single swara mode (can be useful for Shruti tuning) and swara malai mode. In the swara malai mode, the notes are picked from a text file. The player can play 128 instruments. By default, the player plays violin.

He has employed a notation similar to the anglised Carnatic notation. For example, say the aarohanam of Mayamalavagowlai can be as follows: S;R1;G3;M1;P;D1;N3;S^;

Except for Shadjam and Panchamam, all other swaras are represented as two letters as per the sthana. Further ^ is used for one stayi higher, _ is used for one stayi lower, + is used for faster phase, and . (dot) is used for slower phase.

B can used for a blank or pause, if a mute is needed in the swara malai mode. He has spent around 30-35 hours over the past 1.5 weeks building the application. Thanks to him.

Ofcourse, for tech savy people, this application might appeal bacause of multithreading (to achieve responsive UI) and dynamic control creation in the instrument selection page.

Though the application is simple, it is powerful and it will have the touch of a technology specialist in building windows applications.

It will be good for music learners. He wanted to thank Rocky (Rakesh) for helping him in making a decision about the musical notation. He wanted to thank Prabhu who introduced him to Carnatic music.

Mail me if you are interested in getting the player from Maddy.