Killer Game Programming in Java

Audio Effects on MIDI Sequences

There are four ways of applying audio effects to MIDI sequences:

Precalculation

Similar to what you've seen, this involves creating the audio effect at development time and playing the resulting MIDI sequence at execution time.

Sequence manipulation

Here, the MIDI sequence data structure can be manipulated at runtime using a range of methods from MIDI-related classes.

MIDI channel controllers

In this approach, a channel plays a particular instrument and has multiple controllers associated with it, which manage such things as volume and panning.

Sequencer methods

The Sequencer class offers several methods for controlling a sequence, including changing the tempo (speed) of the playback and muting or soloing individual tracks in the sequence.

Precalculation

As with sampled audio, using Java at execution time to modify a sequence can be time-consuming and difficult to implement. Several tools allow you to create or edit MIDI sequences, though you do need an understanding of music and MIDI to use them. Here are some of packages I've tinkered with:

The free version of Anvil Studio (http://www.anvilstudio.com/)

Supports the capture, editing, and direct composing of MIDI. It handles WAV files.

BRELS MIDI Editor (http://www.tucows.com/search)

A free, small MIDI editor. It's easiest to obtain from a software site, such as tucows.

Midi Maker (http://www.necrocosm.com/midimaker/)

Emulates a standard keyboard synthesizer. Available for a free 14-day trial.

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