MIDI

Once you’ve mastered converting code to music, you might wonder - what’s next? Sometimes the constraints of working purely within Sonic Pi’s syntax and sound system can be exciting and put you into a new creative position. However, sometimes it is essential to break out of the code into the real world. We want two extra things:

1. To be able to convert actions in the real world into Sonic Pi events to code with
2. To be able to use Sonic Pi’s strong timing model and semantics to control and manipulate objects in the real world

Luckily there’s a protocol that’s been around since the 80s that enables exactly this kind of interaction - MIDI. There’s an incredible number of external devices including keyboards, controllers, sequencers, and pro audio software that all support MIDI. We can use MIDI to receive data and also use it to send data.

Sonic Pi provides full support for the MIDI protocol enabling you to connect your live code to the real world. Let’s explore it further…