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Getting started

Requirements

isobar has been tested on Linux (Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS) and macOS. It has not been officially tested on Windows, although third-party contributions of support and QA efforts would be welcomed.

It requires Python 3.5 or above.

On Linux, the libasound and libjack-dev packages are also required:

apt install libasound2-dev libjack-dev

1. Install isobar

The simplest way to install isobar is via pip:

pip3 install isobar

To download the examples, you will need to clone the repo and install from source:

git clone https://github.com/ideoforms/isobar.git
cd isobar
pip3 install .

2. Set up an output device

The example scripts are based on sending MIDI to a DAW or MIDI-compatible hardware instrument. By default, isobar uses the system's default MIDI output as its output device. If you want to specify a non-standard MIDI output, you can specify the name of the MIDI device when creating the Timeline, or set a global default output device by using an environmental variable:

export ISOBAR_DEFAULT_MIDI_OUT="Prophet 6"

When you run an example script, you can confirm that it is using the right output as it will print the name of the output device it is using.

3. Run an example

Inside the repo directory you cloned above, there are a number of example scripts. To run the "hello world" example:

python3 examples/00.ex-hello-world.py

The script will print the default MIDI driver to screen, and begin triggering notes.

Troubleshooting

If you don't hear any notes, check that:

  • the name of the correct device is printed to the console
  • your device is configured to listen for MIDI on channel 1, and can play the note 60

Use a MIDI monitor utility to check that the events are registering correctly.

Next steps