/********************************************************************************************* * * MIDITONES: Convert a MIDI file into a simple bytestream of notes * * * MIDITONES converts a MIDI music file into a much simplified stream of commands, so that * the music can easily be played on a small microcontroller-based synthesizer that has * only simple tone generators. This is on github at www.github.com/LenShustek/miditones. * * Volume ("velocity") and instrument information in the MIDI file can either be * discarded or kept. All the tracks are prcoessed and merged into a single time-ordered * stream of "note on", "note off", "change instrument" and "delay" commands. * * This was written for the "Playtune" series of Arduino and Teensy microcontroller * synthesizers. See the separate documentation for the various Playtune.players at * www.github.com/LenShustek/arduino-playtune * www.github.com/LenShustek/ATtiny-playtune * www.github.com/LenShustek/Playtune_poll * www.github.com/LenShustek/Playtune_samp * MIDITONES may also prove useful for other simple music synthesizers.. * * The output can be either a C-language source code fragment that initializes an * array with the command bytestream, or a binary file with the bytestream itself. * * MIDITONES is written in standard ANSI C and is meant to be executed from the * command line. There is no GUI interface. * * The MIDI file format is complicated, and this has not been tested on all of its * variations. In particular we have tested only format type "1", which seems * to be what most of them are. Let me know if you find MIDI files that it * won't digest and I'll see if I can fix it. * * There is a companion program in the same repository called Miditones_scroll * that can convert the bytestream generated by MIDITONES into a piano-player * like listing for debugging or annotation. See the documentation in the * beginning of its source code. * * * ***** The MIDITONES command line ***** * * To convert a MIDI file called "chopin.mid" into a command bytestream, execute * * miditones chopin * * It will create a file in the same directory called "chopin.c" which contains * the C-language statement to intiialize an array called "score" with the bytestream. * * * The general form for command line execution is this: * * miditones * * The is the base name, without an extension, for the input and * output files. It can contain directory path information, or not. * * The input file is .mid The output filename(s) * are the base file name with .c, .bin, and/or .log extensions. * * * The following commonly-used command-line options can be specified: * * -v Add velocity (volume) information to the output bytestream * * -i Add instrument change commands to the output bytestream * * -pt Translate notes in the MIDI percussion track to note numbers 128..255 * and assign them to a tone generator as usual. * * -d Generate a self-describing file header that says which optional bytestream * fields are present. This is highly recommended if you are using later * Playtune players that can check the header to know what data to expect. * * -b Generate a binary file with the name .bin, instead of a * C-language source file with the name .c. * * -tn Generate the bytestream so that at most n tone generators are used. * The default is 6 tone generators, and the maximum is 16. The program * will report how many notes had to be discarded because there weren't * enough tone generators. * * * The best combination of options to use with the later Playtune music players is: * -v -i -pt -d * * * The following are lesser-used command-line options: * * -p Only parse the MIDI file, and don't generate an output file. * Tracks are processed sequentially instead of being merged into chronological order. * This is mostly useful for debugging MIDI file parsing problems. * * -lp Log input file parsing information to the .log file * * -lg Log output bytestream generation information to the .log file * * -nx Put about "x" items on each line of the C file output * * -sn Use bytestream generation strategy "n". * Two strategies are currently implemented: * 1:favor track 1 notes instead of all tracks equally * 2:try to keep each track to its own tone generator * * -cn Only process the channel numbers whose bits are on in the number "n". * For example, -c3 means "only process channels 0 and 1" * * -kn Change the musical key of the output by n chromatic notes. * -k-12 goes one octave down, -k12 goes one octave up, etc. * * -pi Ignore notes in the MIDI percussion track 9 (also called 10 by some) * * -dp Generate IDE-dependent C code to define PROGMEM * * -h Give command-line help. * * * ***** The score bytestream ***** * * The generated bytestream is a series of commands that turn notes on and off, * maybe change instruments, and begin delays until the next note change. * Here are the details, with numbers shown in hexadecimal. * * If the high-order bit of the byte is 1, then it is one of the following commands: * * 9t nn [vv] * Start playing note nn on tone generator t. Generators are numbered * starting with 0. The note numbers are the MIDI numbers for the chromatic * scale, with decimal 60 being Middle C, and decimal 69 being Middle A (440 Hz). * If the -v option was given, a second byte is added to indicate note volume. * * 8t Stop playing the note on tone generator t. * * Ct ii Change tone generator t to play instrument ii from now on. This will only * be generated if the -i option was given. * * F0 End of score; stop playing. * * E0 End of score; start playing again from the beginning. * (Shown for completeness; MIDITONES won't generate this.) * * If the high-order bit of the byte is 0, it is a command to delay for a while until * the next note change. The other 7 bits and the 8 bits of the following byte are * interpreted as a 15-bit big-endian integer that is the number of milliseconds to * wait before processing the next command. For example, * * 07 D0 * * would cause a delay of 0x07d0 = 2000 decimal millisconds, or 2 seconds. Any tones * that were playing before the delay command will continue to play. * * If the -d option is specified, the bytestream begins with a little header that tells * what optional information will be in the data. This makes the file more self-describing, * and allows music players to adapt to different kinds of files. The later Playtune * players do that. The header looks like this: * * 'Pt' Two ascii characters that signal the presence of the header * nn The length (in one byte) of the entire header, 6..255 * ff1 A byte of flag bits, three of which are currently defined: * 80 velocity information is present * 40 instrument change information is present * 20 translated percussion notes are present * ff2 Another byte of flags, currently undefined * tt The number (in one byte) of tone generators actually used in this music. * * Any subsequent header bytes covered by the count, if present, are currently undefined * and should be ignored by players. * * Len Shustek, 4 Feb 2011 and later *********************************************************************************************/