MIDI In Your Pocket with PocketAMP 2

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.vsoftsol.com/pocketmidi/' target='_blank'>http://www.vsoftsol.com/pocketmidi/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"To the rescue comes PocketAMP 2. PocketAMP is a simple program that lets you have your wish - MIDI playback on any Pocket PC device. It sounds great, is easy to use, and can actually come in handy in a variety of situations (like impressing your Palm buddies)."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050325-PocketAMP2.gif" /><br /><br />There are probably 101 reasons why you'd need advanced MIDI playback on your Pocket PC, so I won't delve into that too much. PocketAMP 2 (the update to PocketMIDI) has a huge bundle of features including: an easy-to-use interface, advanced playback controls (tempo, transpose, solo/mute), quality controls, a modular engine, and much more. It's still in the Release Candidate phase, so if you find any bugs, the developers would probably appreciate it if you could report it so that it's all nicely patched up when the final version is released. Also, did I mention this was free?

[dean_shan]

Great thanks for the link. I always thought that Pocket WMP should have midi support.

[Darius Wey]

Great thanks for the link. I always thought that Pocket WMP should have midi support.

Unfortunately, no. WMP Mobile is still really basic whichever way you look at it. Comparing WMP on the PC and Pocket PC is very much an apples/oranges thing.

[i_spock]

OK maybe I'm dumb, or maybe it's too early in the morning on a non-work day, but I can't think of any of the 101 reasons why this might be cool. Can someone help me out? :oops:

Thanks!

[Darius Wey]

OK maybe I'm dumb, or maybe it's too early in the morning on a non-work day, but I can't think of any of the 101 reasons why this might be cool. Can someone help me out? :oops:

Haha. It was a figure of speech, but a donut to anyone who does have 101 reasons.

[archinemnon]

My SX66 came with the "Album" program on it as well as the MIDlet manager. Can anyone suggest a reason why this program would be more useful than the one that shipped in rom with my device? Looks handy for someone who doesn't have that functionality built in though. Although I can't say I've ever listened to a MIDI file before... MP3 works great for me.

[Don't Panic!]

Reason Number 1, The Space Battleship Yamoto (Star Blazers) theme (http://www.the-nest.com/yamato/sounds.htm) is in Midi format. :oops:

[njl2016]

This program might have a short life. It uses the old VB Runtimes for PocketPC, which won't be supported in the next version of Windows Mobile.

[SteveHoward999]

Haha. It was a figure of speech, but a donut to anyone who does have 101 reasons.
I think the last time I used Midi files was 1998 - and that was becuase it was the first year I had a computer at home, and I didn't know any better ...

[sponge]

Games can use it as an alternative to MOD, etc. Mostly ports of old DOS games. However, we already have a port of the open-source Timidity.

[PDANEWBIE]

Man now I have to break out the theme from my Commadore 64 game The Mountain King!

[foebea]

until there is a decent midi editor out there for the pocket pc, I just cannot afford to get excited about the players. I have storage cards, i can use mp3s, there is no need for midi.

If i was able to mess about with a pattern editor from a pocket pc then i could work up my own ringtones or message alerts for my phone. That would be the best use of midi on a ppc in my opinion.

[R K]

Games can use it as an alternative to MOD, etc. Mostly ports of old DOS games. However, we already have a port of the open-source Timidity.

I think a lot of games are already using MOD to play music these days. I don't think MIDI is possible unless someone makes a modular MIDI player since the developers would have to form a MIDI playing engine from scratch.

The Timidity port is awesome.
You can upload 35MB of instrument samples to your Pocket PC to use with it too. :lol:
Someone should post a link to it.

[foebea]

I know GSPlayer uses a Timidity port, could that be the one you are thinking of? You can find it on freewareppc, or searching google for 'pocket pc timidity'

[R K]

Yeah that was the one I had.
Of course, if someone really wanted to listen to MIDI that badly, they could also just convert their MIDI to WAV to MP3/WMA from their desktop. They'd get really nice quality from it too.
I sure hope the developer for this program doesn't intend to charge for it since I think it'll be a very limited market.

[Don't Panic!]

This looks pretty interesting MidNote (http://www.pdamusician.com/midnote_tour.html). And this one sys you can modify Midi tracks. MidIControl (http://www.pdamusician.com/midicontrol.html). Do you guys write music?

[IpaqMan2]

. Do you guys write music?

My thoughts exactly....
It's all about what you can bring to the table figuratively speaking than about having to have a purpose for each program ever written on the Pocket Pc platform.

Having a decent Midi program on the Pocket PC may not be needed by most people, but I'd still love to see a good program and even a Midi editor for the Pocket PC.

I've used Midi files a lot when working with and writing music, and when studying music theory. I've also used classical music of midi files a lot to play for myself to relax or even at times to help put my youngest to sleep at night. Midi files are extremely small and you can literally store thousands of different Midis in compared to MP3 or any other format, and sadly enough I have actually heard some Midi files of songs that sounded much better than the actually recording of the songs. Or as already been mentioned a good Midi editor could be used to make ring tones or other alarms for the PPC.

I probably couldn't come up with a 101 reasons why to have a midi program, but I sure can think of about 20 reasons why it would be nice to have a program like that which really is about 19 more reasons why I can think of for a lot of other programs I see floating out there for the PPC.

[Craig Horlacher]

I use GS Player for playing midi files on my pocket pc. It's free and it plays them. It doesn't do much else though it offers interpolation and maybe a few other features.

The only reason I use it is my mobile phone plays midi's so I can download and preview them on my pocket pc first if I want. Then I can transfer them to my sony t637 using either ir or bluetooth:)

[RobertCF]

Good grief, thinking about midi files in relation to games? There are a lot of us out here who actually write music or arrange music. Being able to work on arrangements via a PocketPC would be awesome. There's only one company I know of who actually built a real MIDI interface, but it's only for the iPaq 36xx devices and it connectst to the sync port on the bottom. I just can't figure out why someone hasn't created a CF MIDI interface yet. As it is, I have to take a hardware sequencer if I want to do a gig somewhere. I have two synths and a Roland A-30 controller to talk to my stack of sound modules (including the original SoundCanvas and a Roland XV-2020) and it would be much easier if I could do things on my Axim to work through sequences, etc.

Having the ability to edit arrangements and then try them out with a built-in GM emulator on the PocketPC (for instance waiting at an airport) would be a tremendous help.