`music21.midi.MidiEvent.getBytes()` confuses `SEQUENCER_SPECIFIC_META_EVENT` (0x7F) with `POLY_MODE_ON` (also 0x7F)

[ptolemeow]

music21 version
9.5.0

Operating System(s) checked
OS agnostic
(I am on Ubuntu 24.04, though, but that should be irrelevant.)

Problem summary
music21.midi.MidiEvent.getBytes() confuses SEQUENCER_SPECIFIC_META_EVENT (0x7F) with POLY_MODE_ON (also 0x7F) and will therefore cause a TypeError if the former does not care about channels (i.e self.channel == None).

Steps to reproduce

from music21 import midi

ev = midi.MidiEvent(type=midi.MetaEvents.SEQUENCER_SPECIFIC_META_EVENT, channel=None)
print(ev)
b = ev.getBytes()

---

FYI: Actually I encountered this issue not by instantiating a MidiEvent manually but by writing a MidiFile which comes with some SEQUENCER_SPECIFIC_META_EVENT's.

mf = midi.MidiFile()
mf.open(inputfile)
mf.read()
mf.close()

# write the contents back immediately without touching anything

mf.open(outputfile, 'wb')
mf.write()
mf.close()

Expected vs. actual behavior
EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR:
music21.midi.MidiEvent.getBytes() should process all MIDI events correctly without triggering any exception.

ACTUAL BEHAVIOUR:

File "/foo/bar/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music21/midi/__init__.py", line 982, in getBytes
channelMode = bytes([0xB0 + self.channel - 1])
                        ~~~~~^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'NoneType'

More information
The current code of music21.midi.MidiEvent.getBytes() checks the event type essentially by looking at its value only:

def getBytes(self):
    if self.type in ChannelVoiceMessages:
        ...
    elif self.type in ChannelModeMessages:
        channelMode = bytes([0xB0 + self.channel - 1])
        ...
    elif self.type in SysExEvents:
        ...
    elif self.type in MetaEvents:
        ...
    else:
        ...

However:

class ChannelModeMessages(_ContainsEnum):
    ...
    POLY_MODE_ON = 0x7F
    ...

class MetaEvents(_ContainsEnum):
    ...
    SEQUENCER_SPECIFIC_META_EVENT = 0x7F
    ...

Apparently, getBytes() will mistake a SEQUENCER_SPECIFIC_META_EVENT as a POLY_MODE_ON, and will then fail immediately if self.channel is null.

Therefore, it is probably more appropriate to also check the event class, in addition to the event type value:

if isinstance(self.type, ChannelVoiceMessages) and self.type in ChannelVoiceMessages:
    ...
elif isinstance(self.type, ChannelModeMessages) and self.type in ChannelModeMessages:
    ...
elif isinstance(self.type, SysExEvents) and self.type in SysExEvents:
    ...
elif isinstance(self.type, MetaEvents) and self.type in MetaEvents:
    ...

[mscuthbert]

Thanks for the bug report. I'd like to fix, but the proposed fix, I'm afraid, is unlikely to be the way forward.

We're not going to do isinstance checking on each byte/message because we're using int-enums so that should be irrelevant. There should be another feature that tells us if we should be implementing the Event as a MetaEvent or a ChannelVoiceMessage -- I think we record that somewhere, but just not properly for these (and a few other conflicts) -- so that needs to move up.

To be clear if self.type is 0x7F it's could be either a ChannelVoiceMessage or a MetaEvent -- there has to be some other way of telling not just the class of the enum.

Thanks!