MIDI Files¶
MidiFile objects can be used to read, write and play back MIDI files.
Opening a File¶
You can open a file with:
from mido import MidiFile
mid = MidiFile('song.mid')
Note
Sysex dumps such as patch data are often stored in SYX files
rather than MIDI files. If you get “MThd not found. Probably not a
MIDI file” try mido.read_syx_file()
. (See SYX Files for more.)
The tracks
attribute is a list of tracks. Each track is a list of
messages and meta messages, with the time
attribute of each
messages set to its delta time (in ticks). (See Tempo and Beat
Resolution below for more on delta times.)
To print out all messages in the file, you can do:
for i, track in enumerate(mid.tracks):
print('Track {}: {}'.format(i, track.name))
for msg in track:
print(msg)
The entire file is read into memory. Thus you can freely modify tracks
and messages, and save the file back by calling the save()
method. (More on this below.)
Iterating Over Messages¶
Iterating over a MidiFile
object will generate all MIDI messages
in the file in playback order. The time
attribute of each message
is the number of seconds since the last message or the start of the
file.
Meta messages will also be included. If you want to filter them out, you can do:
if msg.is_meta:
...
This makes it easy to play back a MIDI file on a port (though this simple implementation is subject to time drift):
for msg in MidiFile('song.mid'):
time.sleep(msg.time)
if not msg.is_meta:
port.send(msg)
This is so useful that there’s a method for it:
for msg in MidiFile('song.mid').play():
port.send(msg)
This does the sleeping and filtering for you (while avoiding drift). If you
pass meta_messages=True
you will also get meta messages. These can not
be sent on ports, which is why they are off by default.
Creating a New File¶
You can create a new file by calling MidiFile without the filename
argument. The file can then be saved by calling the save()
method:
from mido import Message, MidiFile, MidiTrack
mid = MidiFile()
track = MidiTrack()
mid.tracks.append(track)
track.append(Message('program_change', program=12, time=0))
track.append(Message('note_on', note=64, velocity=64, time=32))
track.append(Message('note_off', note=64, velocity=127, time=32))
mid.save('new_song.mid')
The MidiTrack
class is a subclass of list, so you can use all the
usual methods.
All messages must be tagged with delta time (in ticks). (A delta time is how long to wait before the next message.)
If there is no ‘end_of_track’ message at the end of a track, one will be written anyway.
A complete example can be found in examples/midifiles/
.
The save
method takes either a filename (str
) or, using the file
keyword parameter, a file object such as an in-memory binary file (an
io.BytesIO
). If you pass a file object, save
does not close it.
Similarly, the MidiFile
constructor can take either a filename, or
a file object by using the file
keyword parameter. if you pass a file
object to MidiFile
as a context manager, the file is not closed when
the context manager exits. Examples can be found in test_midifiles2.py
.
File Types¶
There are three types of MIDI files:
- type 0 (single track): all messages are saved in one track
- type 1 (synchronous): all tracks start at the same time
- type 2 (asynchronous): each track is independent of the others
When creating a new file, you can select type by passing the type
keyword argument, or by setting the type
attribute:
mid = MidiFile(type=2)
mid.type = 1
Type 0 files must have exactly one track. A ValueError
is raised
if you attempt to save a file with no tracks or with more than one
track.
Playback Length¶
You can get the total playback time in seconds by accessing the
length
property:
mid.length
This is only supported for type 0 and 1 files. Accessing length
on
a type 2 file will raise ValueError
, since it is impossible to
compute the playback time of an asynchronous file.
Meta Messages¶
Meta messages behave like normal messages and can be created in the usual way, for example:
>>> from mido import MetaMessage
>>> MetaMessage('key_signature', key='C#', mode='major')
MetaMessage('key_signature', key='C#', mode='major', time=0)
You can tell meta messages apart from normal messages with:
if msg.is_meta:
...
or if you know the message type you can use the type
attribute:
if msg.type == 'key_signature':
...
elif msg.type == 'note_on':
...
Meta messages can not be sent on ports.
For a list of supported meta messages and their attributes, and also how to implement new meta messages, see Meta Message Types.
About the Time Attribute¶
The time
attribute is used in several different ways:
- inside a track, it is delta time in ticks. This must be an integer.
- in messages yielded from
play()
, it is delta time in seconds (time elapsed since the last yielded message) - (only important to implementers) inside certain methods it is used for absolute time in ticks or seconds
Tempo and Beat Resolution¶
Timing in MIDI files is centered around ticks and beats. A beat is the same as a quarter note. Beats are divided into ticks, the smallest unit of time in MIDI.
Each message in a MIDI file has a delta time, which tells how many ticks have
passed since the last message. The length of a tick is defined in ticks per
beat. This value is stored as ticks_per_beat
in MidiFile objects and
remains fixed throughout the song.
MIDI Tempo vs. BPM¶
Unlike music, tempo in MIDI is not given as beats per minute, but rather in microseconds per beat.
The default tempo is 500000 microseconds per beat, which is 120 beats per minute. The meta message ‘set_tempo’ can be used to change tempo during a song.
You can use bpm2tempo()
and tempo2bpm()
to convert to and
from beats per minute. Note that tempo2bpm()
may return a floating
point number.
Converting Between Ticks and Seconds¶
To convert from MIDI time to absolute time in seconds, the number of beats per minute (BPM) and ticks per beat (often called pulses per quarter note or PPQ, for short) have to be decided upon.
You can use tick2second()
and second2tick()
to convert to
and from seconds and ticks. Note that integer rounding of the result might be
necessary because MIDI files require ticks to be integers.
If you have a lot of rounding errors you should increase the time resolution with more ticks per beat, by setting MidiFile.ticks_per_beat to a large number. Typical values range from 96 to 480 but some use even more ticks per beat.