John's Midi File Choral Music site

Playing Midi Files

Midi Files are a set of instructions that tell a device that is Midi compatible (that knows about the Musical Instrument Digital Interface protocol) - such as a computer's soundcard - what to do to provide a representation of a piece of music. Additional software may be required to do this. Instances of such software, described in more detail further below, are:-

Windows	Macs and iOS	Android
Suitable software for playing Midi Files
Windows "Media Player" Chris Hills' "MidiPlay" MidiSoft "Recording Session" MidiNote's "Composer" Myriad Software's "Melody Assistant" Winamp.com's "Winamp" vanBasco's "Karaoke Player" Willow Software's "Anvil Studio" Noteworthy Composer's "Noteworthy Player" and "Noteworthy Viewer" "MuseScore" Madhav Vaidyanathan's "Midi Sheet Music" VideoLAN's "VLC" Alexander Scheutzow's "Vocis Magis" Chris Hills's "Choral Music Tutor"	Roni Music's "Sweet MIDI Player" "Garageband" VideoLAN's "VLC" MethodRed's "MIDIPlayer X "MuseScore" "Learn My Part" "Sonja™" Madhav Vaidyanathan's "Midi Sheet Music" Lucas Wong's "4D Music Pocket Player" Chris Hills's "Choral Music Tutor"	Madhav Vaidyanathan's "Midi Sheet Music" "MuseScore" VideoLAN's "VLC" SK Lee's "Midi Practice Player" Chris Hills's "Choral Music Tutor"

Windows "MediaPlayer"
Most Computer Operating System software, such as the various flavours of Windows (up to and including Windows 7; Windows 8 (and 8.1) is different, as explained here), and the succession of Mac OS versions (up to, but not including, MacOS 10.8; see further below), includes a Player that can accept Midi instructions; the Windows one is called "MediaPlayer" (it will usually be found in Start|Programs|Accessories|Entertainment), and it can do all sorts of other exciting things as well as play Midi Files. In addition, there are many other dedicated Midi Players around, some free, some not, and most of these give much more flexibility and choice over what they can do than does Media Player. Several that can be downloaded are:-
Chris Hills' MidiPlay
MidiPlay is a free Windows program for playing Midi files. This is my presently-preferred Player. It shows the Notes as they are played, and allows singers and instrumentalists to adjust both the volume/emphasis and the tempo of the playback, to help them to learn their parts. It seems to do most of what MidiSoft's Session (see below) does, though not in the same way, and without some of the latter's problems. It can be downloaded from here.
MidiSoft Recording Session
MidiSoft seem to have gone through a number of incarnations in the last ten years; I do not know where, on the Web, they are currently to be found. Recording Session (Version 1.11) is the software I used to employ to make my voice-emphasised Midi Files. It allows adjustment of both the volume/emphasis and the tempo of the playback. This version of Recording Session is a very old one - it dates back to 1993 - and a "freebie" version can be downloaded from here. However, it does not run under Windows 10. For other Problems with Session comments, below.
MidiNote's Composer
Composer is a commercial Windows program for composing and playing music. It also plays Midi files, and provides the same sort of flexibility as Session, though not in the same way. MidiNote also sell other music software, and trial versions of their stuff can be downloaded from their Website here.
Myriad Software's Melody Assistant
Another commercial program for composing and playing music is Melody Assistant. Myriad - whose Home Page is here - provides a range of interesting Music Software, and Melody Assistant appears to be a cut-down (and Share-ware) version of their top-of-the-range "Harmony Assistant". Melody Assistant, which runs on Macs as well as on Windows machines, has been recommended to me by several of my correspondents as an excellent player of Midi Files, though I myself have no direct personal knowledge of the Program.
Winamp.com's Winamp
This is a superb - and free - Media File Player that plays just about every type of Music File you can think of - including, and without fault, all those emphasised Session-derived Midi Files which Windows Media Player doesn't like (see below). And although you can't vary the relative volume of any chosen track, or change the tempo, nevertheless you can - unlike with the Noteworthy Player (see below) - start and stop the File anywhere you choose. If all you want, then, is a Player that you can "associate" with Midi Files so that it will automatically spring to life and play whatever Midi File you double-click on, I recommend Winamp. The basic, but-still-with-plenty-of-frills, version of Winamp can be downloaded free from the Winamp.com Website here.
vanBasco's Karaoke Player
This is an excellent, and free, Midi File Player - whether for Karaoke purposes or not! - and many people have recommended it. It seems to play the emphasised Session-derived Midi Files quite happily, and allows both tempo and starting point adjustment, plus for the individual channels some limited volume adjustment (which can itself be used to provide some, or more, emphasis to any chosen voice). It can be downloaded - for free - from the vanBasco Website.
Willow Software's Anvil Studio
This is another excellent, and free, Midi File Player, and many people have recommended it. It too seems to play the emphasised Session-derived Midi Files quite happily, and allows both tempo and starting point adjustment, plus for the individual channels some volume adjustment (which can itself be used to provide some, or more, emphasis to any chosen voice). An up-to-date (Windows XP and onwards) version can be downloaded from the "Anvil Studio" Website.
Noteworthy Composer's Noteworthy Player and Noteworthy Viewer
I use Noteworthy's Composer program to key in all the music that I then upload in Midi File form, and their free Viewer can quite happily play Midi Files of any sort. However, unlike Session and the others it does not permit any sort of adjustment.nor does it let you start anywhere except from the beginning. And it may look a bit odd (see Odd on-screen scores using Noteworthy Player below). It can be downloaded from the Noteworthy Website here.

Noteworthy Viewer is an updated version of the Player, which does let you re-start from where you stopped, and change tempo. You can also mute one or more staves. Download it from the Noteworthy Website here.
MuseScore
MuseScore is a free, open-source Program for creating, playing and printing music. It is available under the three major Operating Systems - the various flavours of Windows, most of the Mac OSs (including OS X - Mountain Lion), and various sorts of Linux. It seems a little complicated, trying to be all things to all men, but ... in its Midi File Player guise it has been recommended to me a couple of times, so it might be worth a try. It is freely downloadable from the MuseScore Website.
Alexander Scheutzow's Vocis Magis
This is a rather different sort of Player. It takes un-emphasised Midi Files and allows any particular track/voice to be selected and emphasised as required. The free version - downloadable from Scheutzow's Website here - displays no Midi Data note information, so the User is reliant on reading the printed Score, but the paid-for version can show data in piano-roll format. The software is written in Java, so will run under Mac and Linus OSs as well as most flavours of Windows provided they have Java on board (Java Runtime, version 1.5.0 (alias 5.0) or higher, is preinstalled on most modern computers and is otherwise available free of charge).
Chris Hills's Choral Music Tutor
This is another different sort of Player. Rather than being downloadable software, Choral Music Tutor is a web app - that is to say, it is a Program that runs on the Server accessed by your Browser instead of in your machine - that plays MIDI files. This app runs on any computer device - desktop, tablet or smartphone - using any Operating System - Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, whatever - that can browse the internet. It is not an app that you have to download or install. It is a collection of JavaScript files that run in the browser on your device. It does not use cookies, and the only information it uses are the name of the MIDI file you are playing, and anything that you choose to share or send as feedback.

Choral Music Tutor is designed to help choral singers learn their parts by playing the music with one part louder while the other parts play quietly. The aim is not to produce a beautiful sound, but simply to allow one part to be heard clearly above the others.
Roni Music's Sweet MIDI Player
For Mac Users there has been strongly recommended to me this free Midi File Player. I am told that it plays the emphasised Session-derived Midi Files OK, and that it allows you to select/change both tempo and starting point, plus volume adjustment for the individual channels to provide some, or more, emphasis to any chosen voice, as well as enabling you to change the instruments used if you don't like the ones I've selected. A version suitable for Mac OS X (10.3.9 or higher) can be downloaded - for free - from the relevant sub-page of the Roni Music Website. However, Apple's latest version of its operating system - macOS Catalina - is the first macOS that only supports 64-bit apps. Consequently, it will not run Sweet MIDI Player, which is a 32-bit app.
Roni Music have said: "... Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina) has dropped support for 32-bit apps and Sweet MIDI Player is a 32-bit app. [They] will release a 64-bit version of Sweet MIDI Player at some point but [they] don't have any timeline for it ... hopefully some time during this autumn?" [That was in 2019, and they haven't yet done so]
Other Mac-compatible Players
The range of Midi File Players available to Mac Users is strangely limited - and apart from the standard QuickTime most of what there is comes as full editing software, and has to be paid for. Furthermore, the MIDI-playing ability was removed from QuickTime, which is what is used by default to play media files both in a Browser and when looking at files in the Finder, with MacOS 10.8, and there seems to be no simple solution for the Browser bit (you can install old versions of stuff, but that's a bit messy, and it's essentially QuickTime or nothing). So, from 10.8 onwards you seem not to be able to play Midi Files in your Browser at all, and you have no choice but to download them to your machine and play them there with a dedicated Player - which is what I would anyway strongly recommend.

One possible Player is Garageband; with a Macintosh running this - it's been installed on new Macs for several years now, or is available as part of Apple's iLife suite - you just need to drag the Midi file into Garageband and it will split the File all into tracks that can then be individually edited, changed into different instruments, and played around with to your heart's content.

Another possible Player is VideoLAN's VLC. I have no knowledge of this myself - and would welcome comments from anyone who has used it. It comes in various machine-specific versions - Windows, Apple and Android - and I am told that the Mac version successfully plays Midi Files. However, in each case it doesn't play Midis natively, and must have a soundfont loaded in as well.

And you can, of course, use the Mac-flavoured version of MuseScore and Melody Assistant (see above).

Yet another possible Player is MethodRed's MIDIPlayer X, for Ł1.99 from the Apple App store. This is much more basic than Sweet MIDI Player but it plays the midi files, counts the bars and allows you to adjust the tempo. This might be an acceptable work-around until Roni Music release a 64-bit version of Sweet MIDI Player.

Another possible Player is Madhav Vaidyanathan's "Midi Sheet Music", which is free but a little basic. It has various machine-specific versions, and works with Windows, Android, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux.
iPhone and iPad Players
The iPhone and iPad do not seem to support MIDI file playback natively, and it is necessary to install a suitable App.

For both iPads and, apparently, iPhones there is a version of the Sweet MIDI player (see above) which lets you play the file and adjust track volume levels, but it's more of a general purpose General MIDI player, and the free, "try-out", version only plays the first three-quarters of each Midi File. A different - but not free - iPhone player, suited for use by Choral Singers, is "Learn My Part" (LMP). This allows MIDI files to be played in a way that is most helpful for learning parts. Each part is represented with a mixer-style volume control and three preset buttons - Isolate, Highlight and Challenge - to change relative track/channel volumes (Isolate mutes all the other parts, Highlight sets the other parts to play softly and the selected part loudly, and Challenge mutes the selected part), though you can manually set the volume levels however you like. It also allow the tempo of playback to be adjusted, and a marked section of the file to be "looped" (which can be useful for going over a small section you are trying to learn). More details, and a demo video and a link to the application in the Apple App Store, can all be accessed via the link above.
Because LMP allows selective Voice emphasis, as described above, it may be best to download the UNemphasised Files, and then apply the desired emphasis using LMP.

For iPads there is "Sonja™". Sonja™ is primarily a notation tool (using standard piano-roll format) for those who don't read music well, but it is also a tool for learning and practicing vocal compositions recorded as computer Files rendered in either Midi or native Sonja format. After importing a chosen File the User can adjust all the voices' relevant volumes so as to hear, and thus learn, the right part. Since notation tracks and audio tracks can coexist in Sonja, audio accompaniments and voice exemplars may also be included in a Sonja file, and the chosen voice part then played along with accompaniment from a real instrument or a real singer.
The basic version of Sonja™ is free; the paid-for version allows for MIDI export, as well as for importing or exporting Sonja-format files which may include notation tracks, audio tracks, and lyrics that appear on each note.

For both iPhones and iPads there is Lucas Wong's "4D Music Pocket Player", for a mere US$20 (at the moment: November 2021). With over 1600 tracks in the library, and an option to import the User's own MIDI files, this Player is a great solution when playing, bending, and streaming tracks in any tempo and transposition, along with fermata and unique skip ahead function (especially useful for recitatives) and at least 7 different timbres.

Another possible Player for Apple machines is Madhav Vaidyanathan's "Midi Sheet Music", which is free but a little basic. It comes in various machine-specific versions, and works with Windows, Android, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux.
Android Tablets and Smart Phone Players
Android Tablets and Smart Phones do not seem inherently to be able to play Midi Files, but there are numerous Apps, many free, which will play such Files and even show their notation. One such is Madhav Vaidyanathan's "Midi Sheet Music", which is free but a little basic. It works not only with Android but also under Windows, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux. Another excellent notation-displaying Android Midi File Player is SK Lee's somewhat more comprehensive "Midi Practice Player", downloadable for just under Ł3 (at the moment; October 2014), and for which there is a free trial version that does everything the paid-for version does but only plays in 30-second chunks. The paid-for "Live" version can also read MusicXML Files, and allows the use of music fonts (some are provided free). I have been using this myself, and it seems to be very good.

The Problem with Session

As I intimated above, there is a problem with Midi Files produced by Session. Although the Midi Files output (exported) by Noteworthy Composer play perfectly properly with Windows [3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista ...] Media Player (and all other Players I have tried), once they been loaded into and then saved out from Session they may no longer play properly in other Players - they still play OK in Session itself - if they use more than Midi Channels 1-10 (in some other Players, such as Windows Media Player, they may not play all the channels, and there may from time to time be strange changes in tempo). That is to say, I can't work out why, or what to do to correct the situation. But worry not: maybe they'll work for whatever Player you use ... and if they don't then they DO play properly using Noteworthy's own Player (see above).

Session has a number of other, possibly connected, irritating habits. One - though this mainly concerns me, using it to produce my emphasised Midi Files, rather than you using it to play them back - is that it is easily confused by any Time Signatures that are not measured in crotchet time (so 3/4 or 4/4 or 5/4 is fine, but 2/2 or 5/8 halves or doubles the assigned Tempo), and I have to fudge it - which can be done quite easily, but it's still irritating! Also - and this concerns you - Session is a Windows 3.1 16-bit piece of software, and so you have to use "compatibility" mode for XP and the like. Moreover, Session is expecting there to be a directory/folder called "Session" in your root directory/folder (on Drive C) otherwise you can't save any changes you make to Session itself (such as ensuring it always opens in 16-track General Midi mode). Although you can achieve this by actually installing Session in Drive C's root, it seems to be perfectly OK to have a "Session" Folder there but then instal Session elsewhere, wherever you want.

Another slightly irritating feature is Session's ability to stick the wrong clef at the beginning of a track, so that the subsequent notes end up far up or down from where you expect them to be. A typical example of this is in the Brahms "German Requiem", where in the opening number the Alto line has been depicted as though written in the Bass clef, so that all the notes appear up in the air! There must be rules for the conversion (from mere note, which is what Midi is, to note-on-staff, which is how Session displays it.), and I suspect it depends on the range of the notes, top to bottom, in the staff. But, there is something you can do about it ... as follows:- Load in the music (for example, for the "German Requiem", the Alto version of the file A-BLESSED.MID; at the moment the clef assigned to the Alto track is the Bass clef). Then, go to the Session pull-down menus (up at the top of the window) and pull down "Music". Select "Clef ...", and a box opens. In the box, use the little down arrow to find all the tracks, and choose the correct one (in my example, it's No 2, Alto). Then choose the correct type of clef - i.e. Treble - and the bar/measure number where you want this to take effect - Measure No 1. Click "OK", and it will miraculously be done! THEN SAVE THE REVISED FILE SO THAT NEXT TIME YOU OPEN IT IT WILL STILL LOOK OK!!

Problem-ridden though Session may be, even so I use it - and I recommend it. Once installed it is simple and easy to use, and will do all you need to make the Midi Files most useful. That having been said, Chris Hills's MidPlay is good, and gets better with each version!

A slightly newer version of Session - Version 4, from 1995 - has recently come my way from a Contact in America. It deals with some of the noted problems - specifically it is a 32-bit program, originally for running under Windows 95 (so you can properly choose, and save, the Midi Drivers in SetUp) - but ... it still has problems with some time signatures/tempos - and it keeps giving me an "out of memory" error message whenever I use it (but see below). From here you can download the self-extracting SETUP.EXE File (which includes both 16- and 32-bit versions, so you can run it on Windows 3.1 if you really want!), plus a zipped set of HTML Files (which my US Contact prepared to show how to install Session 4 under Windows XP). I actually prefer the layout of Version 1.11, but maybe that's just because I'm used to it.

On the subject of the "out of memory" error message (see above), a Contact in Holland running "Session" under Windows XP notes that if you go to the program location (probably C:\Program Files\Session4), you can right-click on the executable (Session.exe), click on 'properties' and choose the compatibility tab, tick '256 colors', click apply, and then close - and this apparently solves the problem. At the moment I can't test this because I'm still using Windows 2000 (which doesn't show a compatibility tab), but my Contact says that this tweak did the trick for him (for as long as Session 4 is running, your whole computer runs only in 256 colors, but is restored to normal as soon as you close the program); maybe it will work for you, too.

A possible alternative route to dealing with the "out of memory" error message is provided by Craig Edgar on his Website page here. He says
"I'm not a musician and more often than not I can't even spell Midi but I've heard rumours that people are having problems getting MidiSoft Studio 4.0 to work successfully on Windows XP.
"I have the solution!
"Download Solution [this is the Website's address for a downloadable 'hacked' version of Studio 4; you can also find it here] - Warning - Does not work on Windows 7 64Bit. Sorry!
"All you have to do is download the solution and install it. The installation program will install a fresh copy of MidiSoft using my solution. If after installing you find it works for you come back to this site and make a donation, I would really appreciate it."
I have not actually tried this, but ... one of my German contacts assures me it works OK.

Yet more comments about Session and its successors are provided by Bostonian Sara Kunz. She writes:
I was curious as to what had become of [Session] so I went looking and found it on a site that provides abandoned software - WinWorld. She adds:
I ... discovered [some info] about Midisoft [from] HackYa, which led me to the Forte websites here and here. Forte [is quite like Session, and] will run on 32 and 64-bit operating systems.
Further comments come from Charlie Hummel, of Waukesha, WI USA. He says Sara's link to download Session from WinWorld returns an error, but that he's found a Winworld page with downloads for Session v 1.07 & 1.12 here. However, it makes no reference to v 1.11 .

Odd on-screen scores using Noteworthy Player
Warning: if you play these Midi Files back using software (such as the Noteworthy Player) that shows you the score on the screen, you may find that some of them play OK but look a bit odd. That's usually because I had to fudge the Session output to get the tempo right (typically when it measures time in quavers [as in 5/8 time], and switches back and forth between these and other units [such as 3/4 time]. Don't worry; just don't look at the screen - read your printed score!

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Last updated by John on 14/Mar/23