MIDI to MusicXML

One of the problems of sharing music with people who prefer some other music notation software is that until recently the best available way to do it was MIDI. MIDI has many fine qualities, but it doesn't save the same information that printed notation needs.

There's a fairly well-thought-of standard exchange format called MusicXML. Lots of programs (including lilypond) implement an import of MusicXML, but export is a lot less common, so most people (including me) who put their work up on the web can't give you MusicXML from their source. Finale users could, but mostly don't.

The reason I call it an exchange format is that while it captures all or most of the information any of the notation programs save, it doesn't do it in a way anyone would want to work with. For instance, here's the information for one note (a g quarter note in the second octave above middle C) in MusicXML:


<note>
<pitch>
<step>G </step>
<octave>5 </octave>
</pitch>
<duration>96 </duration>
<voice>1 </voice>
<type>quarter </type>
<dot/>
<notehead>normal </notehead>
</note>


In lilypond, you would normally enter that "g4" (or just "g" if it were in a string of other quarter notes) and in ABC it would usually be "g". So you can see why people would rather type ABC or lilypond.

Earlier this week, I wanted to transcribe a piece by Antony Holborne. The whole book this piece is in has been transcribed, and is on the web at the Werner Icking Archive. But the person who did this did it in a notation program called Capella 5, which I don't have. He did provide sources, as well as PDF and MIDI files, so I tried importing the MIDI file into lilypond, and decided it would be easier to just enter the lilypond.

One reason I decided this was that midi2ly had decided to spell all the MIDI pitches that are a half note below B and a half note above A as A♯ instead of B♭. (The MIDI format only records what the pitch is in terms of how many half steps from 0 (roughly the bottom of the piano) it is, it doesn't know anything about how a notation system would want to write that pitch.)

So I was excited when I read in a newsletter from Noteflight that they now have MIDI import. Noteflight is a web-based notation system that seemed promising when I looked at it a few months ago, but hadn't yet implemented anything I was particularly interested in using.

So I ran the next of the Holborne MIDI files through it, and was gratified to see that it spelled the notes between B and A as B♭ instead of A♯. Unfortunately, it spells the ones between F and G as G♭ instead of F♯. But you can import the MIDI file, export the XML file, and import the XML file into lilypond and get something you can work with more easily in several ways than the direct import of MIDI into lilypond, which is fairly orphaned. And it may well be that some of the manipulation you're going to have to do to the score can be done more easily in noteflight than in lilypond, although I can't tell you that from personal experience.

So if you're looking for a web-based music notation software, or a fairly clean way to get MIDI files into MusicXML, look into noteflight.

Here's the Holborne Galliard as I imported it from the MIDI file. I think the only thing I did was to change the key signature and edit one G♭ into an F♯.

Related posts:

1. More about converting MIDI to lilypond
2. Tablature and lilypond
3. Same MIDI file with three diferent temperaments