I have just made available a trial version of PMX (2.17) that can output a
MIDI file. You can get it at the following URL:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/music/musixtex/software/pmx/pmxtest.zip
This new capability enables you to listen to any legal pmx file. Please read
the readme file for instructions about how to use it and a short list of
limitations and assumptions. I'll just mention one: you cannot yet change
the tempo after the piece starts. But I'm working on that.
If you've read this far, you'll probably want to download and try it
yourself. But just in case you'd like a free sample, I put a couple on my
web page at
http://www.geocities.com/pchpublish .
If anyone gets interested in working much with MIDI files, a useful piece of
freeware is MidiNotate, available at
http://www.notation.com/ .
It makes a decent-looking score from the MIDI file, lets you adjust the
tempo if you pause the playback, change instruments without re-running pmx,
and add stereo effects. I don't think you can edit single notes or
pre-program the tempo changes, but there are probably lots of other programs
out there that will do that.
--Don Simons
