Hi,

Well, the title says it all... I'm looking for software that will enable me
to interactively compose and playback midi tunes through an ascii language.

In other words, I create an ascii file which will have a representation of
the midi tune in a specific language, then I play it back immediately and
can go back and edit the file if I don't like what I hear.

I already know of at least three different midi 'languages' - abc, which
doesn't seem to support multi-track compositions well; Zel which is great
but unfortunately doesn't seem to have midi to zel conversion (so that I can
work on old midi tunes); and Tune which doesn't seem to be well documented.
I think there's also MusicXML, but it doesn't appear to be very compact.

I've tried using abc2midi - what I don't like about it is that it isn't so
interactive, because you have to compile the abc file before playing the
tune (not to mention the issue I have with abc).

Any advice will be much appreciated.

--
Akin

aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk

Well, my wierd little midi sequencer (ditty) is freeware and has a
LITTLE
bit of capability like that...
http://shazware.com/ditty/r22_txt2trak.html

I've always been interested in what you could do with music
ascii-wise...
If ditty's Txt2Trak doesn't meet your needs, ship me some specs at
stephen.hazel over at gmail
I'll see if I can cook somethin up for ya...

You got links for any of the other "midi languages" you mention?

Thanks

....Steve

Epetruk wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Well, the title says it all... I'm looking for software that will enable me
> to interactively compose and playback midi tunes through an ascii language.
>
> In other words, I create an ascii file which will have a representation of
> the midi tune in a specific language, then I play it back immediately and
> can go back and edit the file if I don't like what I hear.
>
> I already know of at least three different midi 'languages' - abc, which
> doesn't seem to support multi-track compositions well; Zel which is great
> but unfortunately doesn't seem to have midi to zel conversion (so that I can
> work on old midi tunes); and Tune which doesn't seem to be well documented.
> I think there's also MusicXML, but it doesn't appear to be very compact.
>
> I've tried using abc2midi - what I don't like about it is that it isn't so
> interactive, because you have to compile the abc file before playing the
> tune (not to mention the issue I have with abc).
>
> Any advice will be much appreciated.
>
> --
> Akin
>
> aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk


You may be interested in MUP available from http://www.arkkra.com/ even
though their main focus on printing the music rather than producing the
sound, and, therefore, their MIDI output is not as good as I would have
liked it to be, you still might find it good enough for your needs.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Epetruk wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Well, the title says it all... I'm looking for software that will
>> enable me to interactively compose and playback midi tunes through
>> an ascii language.
>>
>> In other words, I create an ascii file which will have a
>> representation of the midi tune in a specific language, then I play
>> it back immediately and can go back and edit the file if I don't
>> like what I hear.
>>
>> I already know of at least three different midi 'languages' - abc,
>> which doesn't seem to support multi-track compositions well; Zel
>> which is great but unfortunately doesn't seem to have midi to zel
>> conversion (so that I can work on old midi tunes); and Tune which
>> doesn't seem to be well documented. I think there's also MusicXML,
>> but it doesn't appear to be very compact.
>>
>> I've tried using abc2midi - what I don't like about it is that it
>> isn't so interactive, because you have to compile the abc file
>> before playing the tune (not to mention the issue I have with abc).
>>
>> Any advice will be much appreciated.
>>
>> --
>> Akin
>>
>> aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk
>
>
> You may be interested in MUP available from http://www.arkkra.com/
> even though their main focus on printing the music rather than
> producing the sound, and, therefore, their MIDI output is not as good
> as I would have liked it to be, you still might find it good enough
> for your needs.

Hi Lavron,

Thanks for the reference... unfortunately, MUP seems to suffer from the same
problem as Zel... you can create a midi file from the text file, but it
doesn't seem to work the other way round (midi -> text).

--
Akin

aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Well, my wierd little midi sequencer (ditty) is freeware and has a
> LITTLE
> bit of capability like that...
> http://shazware.com/ditty/r22_txt2trak.html
>
> I've always been interested in what you could do with music
> ascii-wise...
> If ditty's Txt2Trak doesn't meet your needs, ship me some specs at
> stephen.hazel over at gmail
> I'll see if I can cook somethin up for ya...
>
> You got links for any of the other "midi languages" you mention?
>
> Thanks
>
> ...Steve

Hi Steve,

Just took a look at your site... I'm not entirely sure whether txt2trak is
what I'm looking for. Am I right in saying that a trak file is in ascii
format and can also be converted back into midi? (I can see that Mid2Song
converts a midi file into a trak file.)

I'll take a deeper look and download the prog to play around with it. I'm
quite impressed by your goal - I see you hate documentation, so perhaps if I
like what I see, I'll offer you a hand in helping you document how your
stuff works along with any further recommendation.

As to the links to the other 'languages':

abc - loads of links all over the web; a good starting point is
http://abc.sourceforge.net/
Zel - www.zelsoftware.com
Tune - http://www.geocities.com/da5id65536/DavesMidi.html

Thanks very much for the response and help,

--
Akin

aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk

GNMIDI converts MIDI to ascii and back again.

http://www.gnmidi.com/

> Thanks for the reference... unfortunately, MUP seems to suffer from the same
> problem as Zel... you can create a midi file from the text file, but it
> doesn't seem to work the other way round (midi -> text).

Hey Akin,

Thanks for those links - I'll have to do some checkin' out, too...

But if you're lookin for midi->ascii, well you won't find it in
ditty... Sorry... It's an ascii->midi setup.
Just a quicker way to get sheet music into ditty than going
click click click click click (you get the idea) or
actually playing the song.

(ditty turns .mid files into .song and .trak files -
.song is ascii (track list, etc), .trak is binary (events).
just to make dealing with midi files easier at runtime.
.trak is just a midi format specific to ditty that'll be convertible
to .mid format.)

It'd be pretty tough to take the exact midi times and reconstruct
"ideal sheet music" times for an ascii format...

Unless you've got some ideas on how to do it?

Catcha l8r

....Steve

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Hey Akin,
>
> Thanks for those links - I'll have to do some checkin' out, too...
>
> But if you're lookin for midi->ascii, well you won't find it in
> ditty... Sorry... It's an ascii->midi setup.
> Just a quicker way to get sheet music into ditty than going
> click click click click click (you get the idea) or
> actually playing the song.
>
> (ditty turns .mid files into .song and .trak files -
> .song is ascii (track list, etc), .trak is binary (events).
> just to make dealing with midi files easier at runtime.
> .trak is just a midi format specific to ditty that'll be convertible
> to .mid format.)

So .song files can't be converted back into .mid files? That's what I was
hoping for.

> It'd be pretty tough to take the exact midi times and reconstruct
> "ideal sheet music" times for an ascii format...

I think midi2abc is able to do something like this - I suspect that the
sheet music that is reconstructed won't be exactly what the user might have
been hoping for (probably a best guess effort). But I don't care very much
for sheet music - I just need a textual representation of midi that I can
easily edit.

Cheers,

--
Akin

aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk

> So .song files can't be converted back into .mid files?

Typically, you'ld take the sheet music and type it into a text
file in my "txt" format.
There's usually 1 track per .txt file, but you CAN put em all
into 1. You can also "#include" a .txt file of notes for repeating
rhythms, etc.
Then, you make a .song file that says which device/channel/sound
is used by each track.
Then, you use txt2trak to convert the text file(s) to a .TRAK file
of all the midi events (in binary format) for the song.

Ditty loads in the .song and .trak file and plays the song.
(It will also convert .mid format to .song/.trak format which it
prefers. Well, I prefer.)

Eventually, these files will be convertible back to .mid once
I get around to it.

I'll take a look at midi2abc, but my 1st prio is ditty's
todo list...
I only get 3 hrs a wk to program (i'm a dad).
And I'm using up some of that time now...
Gotta go

....Steve