javax.sound.midi (A Head First Java Question)

[Tj Kendon]

So I'm playing along with the Head First Java book and I'm working on the midi examples in chapter 11.

For those of you not playing along at home there are a number of examples but they're all basically of the form :

/**
*
* Example class from Head First Java.
* Sierra, Kathy & Bates, Bert 2nd Ed (2005) O O'Riley Medi
*
*/

import javax.sound.midi.*;

public class MiniMiniMusicApp {

public static void main (String[] args) {

MiniMiniMusicApp mini = new MiniMiniMusicApp();
mini.play();

}


public void play() {

try {

Sequencer player = MidiSystem.getSequencer();
player.open();

Sequence seq = new Sequence(Sequence.PPQ, 4);

Track track = seq.createTrack();

ShortMessage a = new ShortMessage();
a.setMessage(144, 1, 44, 100);
MidiEvent noteOn = new MidiEvent(a, 1);
track.add(noteOn);

ShortMessage b = new ShortMessage();
b.setMessage(128, 1, 44, 100);
MidiEvent noteOff = new MidiEvent(b, 16);
track.add(noteOff);

player.setSequence(seq);
player.start();

}
catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

Now the program works okay, makes noise and every thing, quite happily, but it hangs at the end.

Debugging it looks like it goes through all the midi code, but then waits at the last line of the program. I'm not sure I haven't spent that much time debugging.

Any ideas? I've tried setting the mini reference in main to null, but that doesn't seem to help, and calling play.stop() (which seems like it might make sense) only causes it to play nothing at all.

I realize this question has been asked before, but it doesn't seem to have been answered.

Thank you.

[Ulf Dittmer]

This doesn't really answer your question, but you can add an event listener that gets notified when the sequence is done playing.

[Richard Long]

I ran into the same thing when I was trying that example in the book. I added the following lines after the player.start(); statement to fix the problem.

    while(player.isRunning());    // Wait for sequence to finish playing
 
    player.close();

If you look at the java api documentation http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/sound/midi/MidiDevice.html#open() you will see that you need to call the close() method to release system resources and exit the application cleanly. Not sure why this is not part of the example in the book.

[Tj Kendon]

That makes a lot of sense (except why they didn't mention it) and a simple solution.

Thanks!

[Robbie Hinman]

Not to kick a dead horse, but I was fiddling with that issue too and it was a little frustrating. Might be worth noting in the 3rd edition.