Midi: Sonic-pi

[last updated: 2019-11-28]
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• Sonic-pi is a program included in the rPi distro (menu > Programming > Sonic-pi). It has music editing features and seems to be geared mostly to live performance.
  However it can control my Concertmate Midi keyboard, though almost all the documentation and tutorials as I said are related to live performance, so there's a lot of digging needed to figure out how to manipulate the keyboard. But I persevere...
• When you click "run" in upper left, whatever code is in the window will execute one time.
  However if you have a do-loop, it effectively runs until you stop it.
• Turning notes on and off:
• Minimal command to turn on a note:
  midi_note_on :e3 [volume] ... not sure range of volume parameter, est 0 - 100 decimal or so...
  :e3 is "e" note, 3rd octave
  It is equivalent to specify it as 52 (52nd key on a standard keyboard)
  ie: midi_note_on 52 [volume]
• :es3 will play "e3 sharp" (equivalent to note #53), and
  :eb3 will play "e3 flat" (equivalent to note #51)
• It isn't required to use whole numbers to specify a note.
  midi_note_on 52.35 ... is valid too.
• When you've turned on a note, it will stay on until you turn it off.
  You can turn it off with either:
  midi_note_off [noteID] ... or
  midi_note_on [noteID] 0 ... which specifies zero volume
• To specify how long you want the note to stay on before turning off,
  insert 'sleep' command between the on command and the off command:
• midi_note_on 52 50
  sleep 0.5
  midi_note_off 52
• (I think) Units of sleep parameter are "whole beats" (however and wherever they're specified...)
• Programming Structures:
  • do/end loop:
  • defining & using variables:
  • defining & calling functions:
  • defining a function:
    define :foo do
    play 50
    sleep 1
    play 55
    sleep 2

    end

  • defining a function with a passed parameter:
    define :foo2 do |keyN, durN|
    midi_note_on keyN 50
    sleep durN
    midi_note_off keyN

    end

  • executing/calling a function:
    foo ... or
    foo2 50, 0.2

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  • My Concertmate 1100 has ... keys:
  • The lowest key on the keyboard is #36, :C2
    However the keyboard will play even the lowest note possible in Midi format,
    that being: midi_note_on 0,
  • The highest key on the keyboard is #..., :c?
    However the keyboard will play midi notes up to ...
  • ... could not get anything to happen with midi_cc, even giving it up to 3 parameters (comma-sep),
    though it did not give me any errors...

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