amidi

amidi is a command-line utility that is part of the ALSA utilities package for Linux and other Unix-like systems. It provides a lightweight interface to the ALSA MIDI sequencer and MIDI drivers, enabling users to send and receive raw MIDI messages from the terminal or in scripts. The tool is commonly used for testing MIDI hardware, debugging devices, and automating MIDI workflows.

Functionality includes capturing and displaying incoming MIDI data, and sending messages such as SysEx (system exclusive) data, standard MIDI messages, or raw byte streams. It can operate on a specified MIDI port or device, and can work with both real hardware interfaces and software MIDI ports exposed by the ALSA system.

Common usage patterns include specifying a port with the -p option, sending a SysEx message with the -S option, sending bytes from a file with -s, and dumping incoming traffic with -d. For example, to send a SysEx message to a device on port hw:1,0,0, you might run amidi -p hw:1,0,0 -S 'F0 7D 10 01 00 F7'. To monitor all traffic on a port, you can use amidi -p hw:1,0,0 -d.

Development and licensing: amidi is part of the ALSA project and distributed under the GNU General Public License as part of the alsa-utils package. It is included in many Linux distributions; usage on other Unix-like systems depends on ALSA support. It is intended as a lightweight tool rather than a full-featured MIDI software environment.

See also: MIDI, ALSA, ALSA-Utilities, SysEx.