Hi All, I’m wondering is there any way to get MIDI piano/keyboard input into Grasshopper? I googled some discussions which are all years ago that most sources are either too expired or really technical.
Before getting into the technical rabbit hole, I’m wondering is there any simplified method to read MIDI keyboard input in Grasshopper these days?
Thanks in advance 
Bump
This thread is relevant to my expensive hobby of audio as well.
After a bit of research it looks like e.g Python’s Mido library could be helpful. This with the Hops functionality could work out. Will check it out 
While we’re in the general topic, has anyone ever gotten Grasshopper and Cycling 74’s Max to talk to each other?
Stupid question but has anyone tried this yet?
I hadn’t tried Mandrill.
What I succeed finally was getting the MIDI signal with Python using Mido library.
What stopping me from getting it to GH is:
With the Hops component method, could you use the Trigger component to get it to send requests at a given interval? Ideally fast enough so it feels “instantaneous” from when you hit a key to when you get the value in Grasshopper?
Yes, right now I am trying it, at first it didn’t worked out, because it doesn’t update the output values if the Hops component options to Catche are turned on (which is the default settings). So right now I know how to keep updating it, but currently fighting with Mido itself, as for some reason when I copy-paste Mido library code from normal script into the Hops part - I got an error message that suggests that my Midi port is being used in parallel by another process, which is not true. So trying to figure out this part right now 
Ok finally got it!
Will post some results later
Ok, so here is a quick presentation of how it works:
Source code used here for Hops looks like this:
from flask import Flask
import ghhops_server as hs
import time
import mido
app = Flask(__name__)
hops: hs.HopsFlask = hs.Hops(app)
@hops.component(
"/listenMidi",
name="Listen Midi",
nickname="Listen Midi",
description="Listens to Midi",
inputs=[],
outputs=[hs.HopsString("Time Stamp"),
hs.HopsString("1"),
hs.HopsString("2"),
hs.HopsString("3"),
hs.HopsString("4"),
hs.HopsString("5"),
hs.HopsString("6")]
)
def listen_midi():
time_stamp = time.time()
default_value = 10
note_1 = default_value
note_2 = default_value
note_3 = default_value
note_4 = default_value
note_5 = default_value
note_6 = default_value
with mido.open_input() as in_port:
for msg in in_port:
if msg.type == "note_on":
if msg.note == 60:
note_1 = msg.velocity
elif msg.note == 62:
note_2 = msg.velocity
elif msg.note == 64:
note_3 = msg.velocity
elif msg.note == 65:
note_4 = msg.velocity
elif msg.note == 67:
note_5 = msg.velocity
elif msg.note == 69:
note_6 = msg.velocity
break
return time_stamp, note_1, note_2, note_3, note_4, note_5, note_6
if __name__ == "__main__":
app.run(debug=True)
If you want to start slow without Hops, then here is some code to just print the MIDI message with Python and Mido only:
import mido
in_port = mido.open_input()
while True:
for msg in in_port.iter_pending():
if (msg.type == "note_on"):
print(msg)
That’s great! Thanks for sharing this.
Hi W,
I’m REALLY keen to get this working, but I’m afraid I’m not too great with programming. Could you possibly explain this to me like I’m 3 year old? Here’s my ideal scenario:
I’m running Reaper with recorded Midi. I can send the Midi out of Reaper via a virtual midi cable (LoopBe1).
I’ve downloaded the Mido library and placed the whole unzipped folder in my ProgramFiles/Rhino7/System folder, but Python doesn’t see it. Could someone help a brother figure this out?
tx,
dh
Hey Declan,
if you want to install Python library, then go to the command prompt (cmd) and type in:
pip install mido
Then you can check if it’s installed correctly by trying out
import mido
cmd line doesn’t look too happy.
Propably you don’t have Python installed on your machine. Install Python first: Download Python | Python.org
Hello W,
I’ve installed Python and installed mido from the cmd line. However,
import mido
doesn’t seem to be successful:
‘import’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Thank you in advance for your help - this is something I would LOVE to get working.
Hey,
the sample code that was written here is a Python script. You can run it in cmd in a slightly different way, but it will be better if you’d install some sort of code editor / IDE for Python. Personally I’m using Pycharm, but there are also: Atom, Visual Studio Code, Spyder etc. Once it’s installed you can copy paste the shorter example posted and try to run it. But generally I’d recommend checking out some basics of Python, because without it it would be difficult to change script the way you’d like. Or if something won’t work, then without it would be hard to say which part has failed. Good news is Python on a basic level is quite easy to learn.