How do I view a midi device stream

Question

I have a midi controller, and it creates two files on my ubuntu system /dev/dmmidi and /dev/midi1. I want to see the raw output of my midi device when I push buttons and move sliders. I've tried tailing the file. I've tried screening into the file. I've tried lessing the file. I've tried all of those commands as root. The output is always blank.

When I run aplaymidi -l I see my device. How do I get the bytestream from my midi device? I only want to read data.

Answer 1

The /dev/*midi* devices are just for compatibility with the legacy OSS interface; the actual ALSA devices are in /dev/snd/.

To show incoming MIDI messages, run aseqdump -p xxx with the port name shown by aseqdump -l.

To show the raw MIDI bytes, run amidi --dump -p xxx with the port name shown by amidi -l.