sseidman@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (The MIDIman) (02/01/91)
Someone recently was asking about books on programming MIDI on comp.music.
I recently purchased some good books on the subject. They don't get too
far in depth, but they are a good starting place.
"MIDI Programming for the Machintosh" by Steve DeFuria and Joe Scacciaferro
This is from M&T Publishing Inc. This is obviously a book geared towards
the Macintosh. All coding examples are in both MIDIPascal and MIDIBasic,
so it might be wise to purchase one of these packages. Actually, they go
through creating one program using MIDIPascal and a different program using
MIDIBasic. Any decent Pascal or C programmer should have no problems
converting what they wrote in MIDIBasic to be used with MIDIPascal. The only
problem with the book is it was written in 1988, and the Altech software
packages have gone through serious major changes. The commands are quite
a bit different now, although with a little thinking, I had no problems
converting what they were using into the new commands.
A good companion book, and reference manual is the "MIDI Programmer's Handbook"
also by Steve DeFuria and Joe Scacciaferro. Also, from M&T Publishing Inc.
This book is nice, in that it isn't geared towards any specific computer.
They go through every MIDI command giving you the hex and binary for each
command. It even goes through MTC, such as Cue Point, delete event start/stop
and more. Also has some nice SysEx charts. There is even a section on the
Standard MIDI File. They also have some example code at the end of the book.
Another good reference is, of course, The MIDI Resource Book, once again by
Steve DeFuria and Joe Scacciaferro.
I looked at the books by Jim Conger, but as they are geared towards IBM,
I wasn't interested in them. Is the code in the books VERY IBM specific,
or would I be able to translate it for the Mac with little or no effort?
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