pygt1000

pygt1000 is a Python library for interacting with the BOSS GT-1000 and GT-1000CORE guitar/bass effects processors over MIDI. This library provides an easy-to-use API for controlling and managing the settings of your GT-1000/GT-1000CORE, enabling both real-time interaction and more complex automation tasks.

Features

• Send and receive MIDI messages to/from GT-1000/GT-1000CORE
• Manage and modify effect parameters
• Automate complex sequences of commands
• Retrieve and process device states and data
• Construct MIDI messages using option names instead of hexadecimal codes

Installation

To install the pygt1000 library, you can use pip:

pip install pygt1000

Or for local development, use poetry:

git clone https://github.com/jdesfossez/pygt1000.git
cd pygt1000
poetry install

Usage

Here’s a basic example of how to use the pygt1000 library to interact with your GT-1000:

from pygt1000 import GT1000

# Initialize the GT1000 object
gt1000 = GT1000()

# Open the MIDI ports
gt1000.open_ports()
# By default it looks for a MIDI port starting with "GT-1000:GT-1000 MIDI 1"
# But you can override the portname option here

# Send a command to the GT-1000
gt1000.send_command(...)

# Close the MIDI ports when done
gt1000.close_ports()

Crafting messages

Most of the MIDI specifications from BOSS have been imported as JSON files in the specs/ directory. This allows the user to construct MIDI messages using option names rather than manually crafting hexadecimal messages. For example:

gt = GT1000()
start_section = gt._get_start_section("fx", "1")
message = gt.build_dt_message(start_section, "fx1", "SW", "ON")
gt1000.send_message(message)

The JSON files are created by parsing the text from the specification (one text file by table). Some consistency fixes are performed by the parsing scripts. There are still some unhandled cases like messages options with a very wide range requiring multiple bytes to set the value, but most features work with a single byte operation.