pmserver is a server that listens for text commands and can send and receive MIDI data through PortMidi. It works with one input and one output device at a time.

This utility is best used to send and receive sysex messages or as a MIDI monitor. You can send any MIDI message you want, but it only makes sense for pmserver to explicitly receive sysex messages because otherwise it won't know when to stop listening.

pmserver listens for commands on stdin and writes received sysex messages (in response to a read command) or all message (the monitor command) to stdout. Command error messages are written to stdout prefixed by the string "# ". Because pmserver responds to text commands on stdin, it is scriptable.

A sample session:

$ pmserver
> help
...help message...
> list
...list of input and output devices...
> open input 1
> open output My Device
> send 90 64 127    # note on
> send 80 64 127    # note off
> send f0 42 30 68 37 0d 0 f7 # set list bank digest request
> receive
f0 42 30 68 38 0d 0 ...23 bytes... f7
> quit

All commands and subcommands can be abbreviated to one character.

All lists of bytes are displayed in hexadecimal.

List all open input and output ports.

Opens an input port. INPUT can either be a port number or name.

Opens an input port. OUTPUT can either be a port number or name.

Sends either the contents of a file (@ for ASCII hex bytes, . for binary) or bytes to the open input. Byte values b are in hex.

Bytes can be strung together without spaces between them. If a byte string is more than one character long (as all status and system message start bytes will be) then all hex numbers in it must be two hex digits long. Examples:

• b90 b30 bff sends a note on message
• b80 b30 bff sends the corresponding note off message
• b9030ff sends the same note on, and b8030ff the same note off

Receives sysex from the open output and returns it as a string of ASCII hex bytes separated by spaces.

Receives sysex from the open input and saves it to a file.

Listens for and prints all incoming MIDI messages. This is a superset of the receive command.

Type ^C to stop monitoring. (NOTE: this will quit pmserver now. That is a bug that I will fix ASAP.)

Sends either the contents of a file (@ for ASCII hex bytes, . for binary) or bytes to the open input, presumed to be a sysex message, and receives and prints the reply.

Sends either the contents of infile (@ for ASCII hex bytes, . for binary) or bytes to the open input, presumed to be a sysex message, and receives and saves the reply to outfile.

Prints out words. Useful when running a script passed in to stdin.

Only one input and output can be open at a time.

$ ./pmserver <<EOS
o i 1
o o 3
p request for Kronos set list digest
x f0 42 30 68 37 0d 0 f7
q
EOS