The perfect MIDI visualizer keeps growing by leaps and bounds. New open-source tool ShowMIDI shows MIDI data in a structured, readable way. And now it’s got a slick new UI and runs on iOS as well as macOS, Windows, and Linux, among other features.
Geert Bevin’s free and open-source ShowMIDI just debuted earlier this month. But there have been some big updates since then. Notably, it got some major UI help, which took the compelling organization of the UI and added a ton of aesthetic gloss. If you don’t like the default, there’s now a built-in theme editor – and the file format is standard SVG, meaning you can also use other tools if you want. See the theming explanation for more.
The big breakthrough in ShowMIDI is showing just what MIDI messages you want to see, structured by message, rather than a big list dumped all at once.
In some good news for mobile users, there’s also now an iOS version (also free). That’s made even more useful by Apple’s switch to USB-C, since now you can just connect a class-compliant MIDI interface directly to the USB jack on a new iPhone or iPad. On iPad, you can easily work with ShowMIDI as an AUv3, making it easy to drop into something like the AUM mixer/host:
Here’s Gavinski’s Tutorials with some thoughts:
There are other recent improvements, too:
- Improved Windows installer
- MPE enhancements: show MPE channel mode, MPE 1.1 MCM messages
- HomeBrew support on macOS –
brew install gbevin/tools/showmidi - RPN and NRPN messages
Here’s a look at MPE with the LinnStrument:
Geert tells us that part of this velocity is because of opening up the tool:
It was really nice to see this one come to life as a true open-source project. A friend helped out with the new design, Arch Linux maintainers helped with some Linux build issues, a user helped with getting a Homebrew Cask written…
Good stuff:
https://github.com/gbevin/ShowMIDI