Mucking around with MIDI

wyleu · May 9, 2024, 11:43am

Stick that MIDI in a browser and have a look at it…

And viewing Midi files as CSV so you don’t have to write that viewer you always meant to…

timwedde/py_midicsv/blob/master/doc/file-format.md

## Description
The `midicsv` and `csvmidi` programs permit you to intertranslate standard MIDI files and CSV files. These CSV files preserve all information in the MIDI file, and may be loaded into spreadsheet and database programs or easily manipulated with text processing tools. This document describes the CSV representation of MIDI files written by `midicsv` and read by `csvmidi`. Readers are assumed to understand the structure, terminology and contents of MIDI files. Please refer to a MIDI file reference for details.

## Record Structure
Each record in the CSV **representation** of a MIDI contains at least three fields:

* `Track`: Numeric field identifying the track to which this record belongs. Tracks of MIDI data are numbered starting at 1. Track 0 is reserved for file header, information, and end of file records.
* `Time`: Absolute time, in terms of MIDI clocks, at which this event occurs. Meta-events for which time is not meaningful (for example, song title, copyright information, etc.) have an absolute time of 0.
* `Type`: Name identifying the type of the record. Record types are text consisting of upper and lower case letters and the underscore (`_`), contain no embedded spaces, and are not enclosed in quotes. `csvmidi` ignores upper/lower case in the Type field. The specifications `Note_on_c`, `Note_On_C`, and `NOTE_ON_C` are considered identical.

Records in the CSV file are sorted first by the track number, then by time. Out of order records will be discarded with an marerror message from `csvmidi`. Following the three required fields are parameter fields which depend upon the Type. Some Types take no parameters. Each Type and its parameter fields is discussed below.

Any line with an initial nonblank character of `#` or `;` is ignored. Either delimiter may be used to introduce comments in a CSV file. Only full-line comments are permitted. You cannot use these delimiters to terminate scanning of a regular data record. Completely blank lines are ignored.

### File Structure Records
`0, 0, Header, format, nTracks, division`
The first record of a CSV MIDI file is always the Header record.
* `format`: the MIDI file type (0, 1, or 2)
* `nTracks`: the number of tracks in the file
* `division`: the number of clock pulses per quarter note. The Track and Time fields are always zero.

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