Alternatives
Products that do what Cynthia – Reliably play MIDI music files – MIT / Portable / Windows does
Easy to use, portable app to play midi music files on all flavours of Microsoft Windows. Brief Background - Used midi playback way back in the days of Windows 95 for some fun and entertaining apps, but as Windows progressed, it seemed their midi support (for Win32 anyway) regressed in both startup speed and reliability. Midi playback used to be near instant on Windows 95, but on later versions of Windows this was delayed to about 5-7 seconds. And reliability became somewhat patchy. This made working with midi a real headache. Cynthia was built to test and enjoy midi music once again. It's…
- 1LP
I always found sheet music way too hard to read - and I literally spent a year at a company building a sheet music rendering engine. I wanted an app that would display music like the tutorials on YouTube, but not be focused on upselling lessons etc. like most current apps, and also would let me import my own files This works on MIDI files. If it’s a valid midi it probably plays. Since releasing, I did add a subscription for classical music - on a theory that most normal users don’t know what a midi file is. It changed about a month ago from an up front price to in app purchases and/or a…
2023 · jacobdoescode.com
- 2MA
Jan 2026 · github.com
- 3

I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.
17d ago · simedw.com
- 4PB
Hi HN, I'm Erwin. I built a small free open-source utility that bridges Bluetooth LE MIDI keyboards into the new Windows MIDI Services stack so any DAW or Web MIDI app can use them as if they were wired. I bought a Roland FP-90X piano partly because it had Bluetooth MIDI. On my Windows 11 PC, pairing succeeded, but my DAW couldn't see the keyboard, and notes I sent from the PC never made the piano sing. After a regrettable number of evenings, I'd separated this into three independent bugs stacked on top of each other. The first one is the famous one: Windows only natively exposes BLE-MIDI…
May 2026
- 5AP
I'm building a video conferencing app designed to facilitate better remote piano lessons. My hope is to solve a lot of the challenges piano tutors and new students deal with when taking lessons through Skype/Zoom. It leverages WebRTC's data transmission to send media, MIDI state, and (eventually) send sheet music files and other musical data. I'm surprised with how well the MVP has worked and would love to hear any feedback or suggestions!
2024 · keyboardconnect.com
- 6IM
2022 · github.com
- 7KA
Hi HN, I created kew, a music player for the Linux terminal. This started when I asked myself: what if I could just type something like "play nirvana" in the terminal and have the rest taken care of automatically? That got the ball rolling and I kept adding stuff: covers in ascii and then as sixel images, a playlist view, a visualizer, a library view and finally search. While kew can be used as a commandline tool, it has evolved into a TUI app. Here are some example commands: kew nirvana # Plays all of your Nirvana songs, shuffled kew nevermind # Plays the "Nevermind" album in order kew…
2024 · github.com
- 8BW
2018 · bitmidi.com
- 9

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- 13IB
Hey HN, I’m an ex-Google engineer trying to get back into music production. I needed a way to sequence my hardware synths using AI contexts without constantly switching windows, so I built this. It runs entirely in the browser using WebMIDI. No login required. It connects to your local MIDI devices (if you're on Chrome/Edge) and lets you generate patterns. Tech stack: [React / WebMIDI API / etc]. Link: www.simplychris.ai/droplets Code is a bit messy, but it works. Feedback welcome.
Dec 2025 · simplychris.ai
- 14

- 15IC
2025 · github.com
- 16YA
2024 · github.com
- 17

- 18FO
2020 · signal.vercel.app
- 19AH
2025 · nanassound.com
- 20MP
2025 · midimaker.pro
- 21IM
It is built to work on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and was tested thoroughly on my Mac and lightly on my friend's Windows. Unfortunately, no one I know uses Linux. It works with WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis files.
2022 · github.com
- 22

GPU powered models to convert any song to piano
16d ago · pianoify.net
- 23MA
2024 · github.com
- 24MD
2024 · github.com
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