Coding a musical game using MIDI

[bruno.dumoulin]

I threw together a little sketch
It has midi playing from a file (starts after 1 sec) and you can hook up a midi keyboard and play.
It doesn't do any of the real gameplay

AWESOME!
That's a brilliant jumpstart to help me make peace with JS, thanks ever so much Nikki!

[bruno.dumoulin]

Nope, depends on the synth what sound it produces and whether it cares about midi instruments or not; even using a soundfont doesn't guarantee it'll have all sounds that the GM (general midi) standard defines... and even if it did, the quality can and will differ... you can check out some youtube vids that play the OST of transport tycoon deluxe through multiple midi-compatible devices to hear the difference (and yes, they all play back the same midi files)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmSEfKAYyNo using Windows GeneralMidi sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTi6LG8aeK8 using the AdLib sound card (has a yamaha chip, midi instruments are purely synthesized)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol6Wv4bn2Lc using the Gravis Ultrasound sound card (it plays back samples, sounding subjectively better)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2n1tIaMy5E using a roland MT-32 hardware unit (hybrid synth+sampler, not GM compliant, instruments will sound different)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJu8u3QOmk using a roland SC-88 hardware unit (hybrid synth+sampler, but people mostly used the high-quality samples instead of the cut-down synthesizer it had)

Yes, I appreciate a midi file will sound very different depending on the synth. Yet most of the synth you mention are hardware.
My project, will obviously have to use a virtual synth, so the question comes down to selecting the best virtual synth for my use case.

...btw, if it was up to me, i'd not use anything related to web or whatever that would need a browser to run, that feels cheap to me and i'm averse to have whatever browser i have running for a local tool...

Yes, I understand that and I can somewhat relate