Virtual MIDI keyboard for Mac OS X?

Question

Is there a virtual MIDI keyboard or any other program that can generate MIDI events like if it were a MIDI instrument for or in Mac OS X?

I've found some but they are extremely old and for PPC. I'd like something that doesn't require Rosetta.

Answer 1

How about MidiKeys?

Its a universal binary, so you won't need Rosetta.

Haven't used it myself, but from the feature list on the home page it looks like it fits the bill.

It also has global hotkeys, which is a nice feature for improving workflow.

Answer 2

Do you mean from a standard qwerty keyboard? Or MIDI events generated by a program? Some sequencers have support for using the computer keyboard for MIDI input, like Logic and Ableton Live.

I don't know of any stand alone programs that does this though.

Answer 3

If you would like to build your own custom virtual MIDI keyboard, a good way would be with Pure Data (Pd).

Pd is a graphical object oriented environment which easily (after some time spent in the tutorials) lets you map keyboard keys to MIDI events - such as audio/visual triggers (which you program yourself). It is a tool for electronic music composition but can be used simply for building MIDI patches if you like. Best of all it's open-source and free :-)