Detecting and polling MIDI in devices.

Can anyone help me with reading MIDI input (from a controller keyboard or similar)? I want to write a software synthesiser, I'm having trouble with getting the audio part working (it seems the library I'm using, Port Audio, is basically dead in the water and I don't know what I'm going to do about that).

So I thought I'd carry on and write everything but the actual audio out part for now (until I come across another method for accessing the sound card for raw sample output).

So I'll want some way of detecting a MIDI device and events. I've done this with Arduino so I know a bit about the structure of MIDI messages, etc, but no idea how I'd incorporate this into a Windows program.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

This?
win32 midi api - Google Search

Thank you. I gave this a try: MIDI-in sample program for Win32 (using winmm.lib) * GitHub

And, just like I knew was going to happen, it complained that it couldn't find SDKDDKVer.h. I've never heard of this file and the tutorial just assumes you have it. Yet another bull........ obstacle to just being able to, you know, write code. This is what put me off it for so many years. I just want to code.

I found the header file so I thought I'd try and get the winmm.lib file to work with it. I did some Googling and discovered that Mingw has its own version called winmm.a so I put the command line switch "-lwinmm" into the linker options (removing the #pragma comment(lib, "winmm.lib")). Naturally it just generates about a million errors (see pic).

https://i.ibb.co/LpNQjMN/error.jpg

All I want is to run a bit of code that says "yes i have received a MIDI message". Why is this such a headache!

And the image is, for some reason, too small to read. No idea why that is, sorry. Oh, and, while I'm trying to read the error messages the, after about 12 seconds, the IDE spontaneously opens some random header file and presents me with a different set of error messages so I can't even try and rectify the errors using thinking and reason. It just seems hopeless.

Can I do all this in Java or something? I've had enough with C++. I remember when I used Turbo C++ in DOS and everything I needed was a #include away. Coding C++ today is just overcomplicated bollocks where people seem to be actively trying to make it as inaccessible as possible.

Yeah, save your screen captures as PNG files.
Then at least we have a chance of scaling your images to the point where the text is readable.

Besides, C::B can just copy the console log to the clip-board - try it.
No fuzzy picture.

Yeah sorry, I was just throwing my toys out of my pram. This is so frustrating though - all I'm seeing are seemingly unnecessary barriers to the pure pursuit of coding. I did some stuff with Arduino a few years back (until my hopeless grasp of electronics got in the way) and it really felt like a return to the "good old days".

I'll get back to you with the errors and whatnot at some point but I'm going to take a break for a few days before I smash my laptop.