HOWTO: Play MIDI Files Using API Functions

• Microsoft Visual Basic Learning, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, version 6.0
• Microsoft Visual Basic Control Creation, Learning, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, version 5.0

SUMMARY

This article demonstrates how to play a MIDI (.MID) file from Visual Basic using the WIN 32 API call named mciSendString.

NOTE: You can use the MCI control to play a MIDI file; you don't need to use the APIs.

MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

1. Start Visual Basic, or if Visual Basic is already running, click New Standard EXE Project on the File menu (ALT, F, N). Form1 is created by default.



2. Add a CommandButton (Command1) to Form1.



3. Add the following code to the Command1_Click event of Form1:

   
         Private Sub Command1_Click()
         Dim ret As Integer
   
            ' The following will open the sequencer with the CANYON.MID
            ' file. Canyon is the device_id.
   
            ret = mciSendString( _
              "open " & Song & " type sequencer alias canyon", _
              0&, 0, 0)
   
            ' The wait tells the MCI command to complete before returning
            ' control to the application.
   
            ret = mciSendString("play canyon wait", 0&, 0, 0)
   
            ' Close CANYON.MID file and sequencer device
   
            ret = mciSendString("close canyon", 0&, 0, 0)
   
         End Sub
    




4. Add the following code to the General Declarations section of Form1.

   
         Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias _
            "mciSendStringA" (ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal  _
            lpstrReturnString As Any, ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal _
            hwndCallback As Long) As Long
   
         ' Modify the value of the constant "Song" with your path
               ' to "canyon.mid".
               Private Const Song As String = "C:\Windows\Media\Canyon.MID"
    




5. On the Run menu, click Start (ALT, R, S) or press the F5 key to run the program.

REFERENCES

Microsoft Developer Network Library, Platform SDK, Reference, Multimedia Commands.

For additional information about playing MIDI files using API calls from Visual Basic 4.0, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q141756 : HOWTO: Play MIDI Files Using API Calls from Visual Basic

Additional query words: kbVBp kbdsd kbDSupport kbVBp500 kbVBp600 KBAPI

Keywords : kbGrpVB
Version :
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto