How do I play a midi from the command line in Ubuntu?

Question

I'd like to do something like

$ play filename.mid

and hear the midi file played without opening up a graphical program. Is there a package for Ubuntu that can do this?

score 24 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 27 '10 at 18:41

24

There are many different packages/commands you can try:

wildmidi (as used by gstreamer)
timidity (found this very CPU intensive)
playmidi (never tried personally)

answered Aug 27 '10 at 18:41

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Do any of these work with sfz soundfont files? Or only with sf2? – mherzl Aug 30 '18 at 19:38
wildmidi worked for me, Ubuntu 18.04 – nshiff Nov 19 '18 at 02:13

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 26 '10 at 22:09

9

You'll likely want the playmidi package (sudo apt-get install playmidi) which will allow you to play midi files from the command line.

playmidi filename.mid

answered Aug 26 '10 at 22:09

Marco Ceppi

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Does `playmidi` work with `sfz`? It only seems to work for me with `sf2`. – mherzl Jul 12 '18 at 01:40

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 18 '17 at 16:37

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I know this thread is old, but I was looking for answers for a Raspberry Pi but didn't find any. After more work I came up with the following, it may work in Ubuntu too. The output is through a cheap USB to midi interface.

On Raspbian Jessie Lite with no extra installs:

pi@pizerow:~$ aconnect -l  
client 0: 'System' [type=kernel]  
0 'Timer           '  
1 'Announce        '  
client 14: 'Midi Through' [type=kernel]  
0 'Midi Through Port-0'  
client 20: 'CH345' [type=kernel]  
0 'CH345 MIDI 1    '  
pi@pizerow:~$ aplaymidi --port=20:0 myfile.mid

edited Mar 18 '17 at 16:37

karel

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answered Mar 18 '17 at 15:24

Lee Sanders

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Helped me get where I needed to be! It's basic and doesn't offer many features, but it will indeed play the MIDI file once. fwiw, `aplaymidi -l` will also list the available MIDI ports. The relevant github is here if you want to improve the project: https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-utils/commits/master/seq/aplaymidi – Wray Bowling Mar 10 '23 at 19:06

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 29 '16 at 06:59

4

fluidsynth from http://www.fluidsynth.org/.

Use it like this:
fluidsynth /some/dir/with/sundfonts/some_soundfont.sf2 some.mid

You can find soundfonts here: https://musescore.org/de/handbuch/soundfont

And quite a nice collection of MIDI files to try this out here: http://garyrog.50megs.com/midi1.html

I especially like the soundfont "Timbres of Heaven" from http://midkar.com/soundfonts/.

answered Jul 29 '16 at 06:59

Christian

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Does `fluidsynth` work with `sfz`? It only seems to work for me with `sf2`. – mherzl Jul 12 '18 at 01:46
I'm a little late but Fluidsynth is written specifically to support the Soundfont format, which is sf2 and sf3. sfz is an entirely separate format. – DaVince Nov 04 '20 at 12:11

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 21 '20 at 12:31

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If you have fluidsynth installed, you can also play Midi files with VLC by installing the vlc-plugin-fluidsynth package.

answered Jun 21 '20 at 12:31

mydoghasworms

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The question asked 'without opening up a graphical program'. You don't say what the VLC command would be. `cvlc ` should work. – Cedric Knight Apr 17 '21 at 17:36

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 17 '21 at 17:33

Another alternative besides Fluidsynth nowadays is Timidity. Install the packages timidity, timidity-interfaces-extra and freepats (the latter is about 30MB, but smaller than the sf2 files in fluid-soundfont-gm). Then the following should work:

timidity -Os midi.mid

How do I play a midi from the command line in Ubuntu?

6 Answers6