Midi txt files

I downloaded Scala, and so far have been unable to get it to do
anything but crash and burn in a variety of ways. However, it came
with two programs to convert midi files into and out of ascii format.
Can anyone tell me where the meaning of this format is documented.

The FAQs for this group assume you may not know math, but at least
know how to get music software to work; in my case, that is backwards.

Gene,

>I downloaded Scala, and so far have been unable to get it to do
>anything but crash and burn in a variety of ways.

Sorry to hear that, I'm interested in receiving any bug reports
from you, along with the OS type you're using.

>However, it came
>with two programs to convert midi files into and out of ascii format.
>Can anyone tell me where the meaning of this format is documented.

That's an easy one: in the readme.txt file contained in the mt.zip file.

To create a music MIDI file with Scala, you can use a score in the form
of a MIDI file, or a text file called a sequence file with extension
.seq. Both functions are in the Tools menu. The explanation can be read
by browsing the help.htm file and going to "EXAMPLE", or by typing
HELP EXAMPLE in the command line at the bottom of the main window.

Manuel

--- In tuning@y..., <manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:

> Sorry to hear that, I'm interested in receiving any bug reports
> from you, along with the OS type you're using.

Thanks--I've gotten it to work now, and went through the tutorial
which was all about analyzing scales, but what I'm really interested
at the moment is how one goes about retuning a midi file.

> That's an easy one: in the readme.txt file contained in the mt.zip
file.

Thanks, I missed that. It's still not perspicuous; there really
should be something like a sla file to play with, in the form of a
set of notes used in the piece and defined at its beginning. Now I
need to understand this "pitch bend" business.

> To create a music MIDI file with Scala, you can use a score in the
form
> of a MIDI file, or a text file called a sequence file with extension
> .seq. Both functions are in the Tools menu.

When I try to open a midi file, it tells me "play.cmd" is not found.

Gene wrote:
>but what I'm really interested
>at the moment is how one goes about retuning a midi file.

Type "help example" and read the part under "/MIDI".

>It's still not perspicuous; there really
>should be something like a sla file to play with, in the form of a
>set of notes used in the piece and defined at its beginning.

What's a sla file?

>When I try to open a midi file, it tells me "play.cmd" is not found.

You must copy one of the play*.cmd files in the cmd subdirectory
to play.cmd in the Scala directory. It depends on which midi file
player you want to use. I see that I forgot putting this in the
readme file. But "opening" a MIDI file merely plays it, retuning is
in the Tools menu.

Manuel

--- In tuning@y..., <manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:

> Gene wrote:
> >but what I'm really interested
> >at the moment is how one goes about retuning a midi file.

> Type "help example" and read the part under "/MIDI".

Thanks once again. I got that to work, and that should be helpful in
testing out scales. However I had something more in mind. Is there a
way to take a midi file, extract out of it a list of the notes used,
remap the notes to other notes, and create a midi file thus retuned?
I'm not assuming I start with something in 12-et, nor that I want to
tune it to a scale.

> What's a sla file?

Sorry, I meant scl file.

Gene wrote:
>Thanks once again. I got that to work, and that should be helpful in
>testing out scales. However I had something more in mind. Is there a
>way to take a midi file, extract out of it a list of the notes used,
>remap the notes to other notes, and create a midi file thus retuned?
>I'm not assuming I start with something in 12-et, nor that I want to
>tune it to a scale.

If I understand what you mean, that's exactly what's possible.
Note that if you don't want a consecutive mapping of MIDI note numbers
to scale degrees, you will have to specify a keyboard mapping, see
"help mappings". It is a translation of note numbers to pitches, there
is no assumption of any tuning for the MIDI input file. Could you tell
me what made you assume that there was? Then I could try to improve the
help text.
I don't understand "nor that I want to tune it to a scale"; you always
need a scale to specify the pitches.

Manuel

--- In tuning@y..., <manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:

Is there a
> >way to take a midi file, extract out of it a list of the notes
used,
> >remap the notes to other notes, and create a midi file thus
retuned?
> >I'm not assuming I start with something in 12-et, nor that I want
to
> >tune it to a scale.

> If I understand what you mean, that's exactly what's possible.
> Note that if you don't want a consecutive mapping of MIDI note
numbers
> to scale degrees, you will have to specify a keyboard mapping, see
> "help mappings".

Thanks; it's getting late here in California so I will not report how
this worked until later.

It is a translation of note numbers to pitches, there
> is no assumption of any tuning for the MIDI input file. Could you
tell
> me what made you assume that there was?

I don't have a keyboard, unless you count my computer keyboard, and
it didn't occur to me that a keyboard mapping would be relevant.

> I don't understand "nor that I want to tune it to a scale"; you
always
> need a scale to specify the pitches.

But the scale may have nothing to do with the retuning in question.
Suppose I have a scale

1 - 9/8 - 6/5 - 5/4 - 4/3 - 3/2 - 8/5 - 9/5 - 15/8 - (2),

and I have written a piece of music in it. I might want to retune
this piece by sending 2^a * 3^b * 5^c to 2^a * 3^b * (24/5)^c. This
will not change the scale at all, but it will send major triads to
minor triads and vice-versa. To limit retunings to changes in the
scale is much too limiting.

Gene wrote:
>But the scale may have nothing to do with the retuning in question.
>Suppose I have a scale

>1 - 9/8 - 6/5 - 5/4 - 4/3 - 3/2 - 8/5 - 9/5 - 15/8 - (2),

>and I have written a piece of music in it. I might want to retune
>this piece by sending 2^a * 3^b * 5^c to 2^a * 3^b * (24/5)^5. This
>will not change the scale at all, but it will send major triads to
>minor triads and vice-versa.

(24/5)^5? Did you mean (6/5)^c? Wouldn't it change the 8/5 into 5/3?
Well, MIDI files don't contain frequency ratios so there's a problem.
Suppose you want to retune a MIDI file using the same scale, then
the way I see that you could go about is as follows:
Take MIDI file A, retune that with your scale and keyboard mapping A
to produce MIDI file B, which is your piece. Then figure out by hand
which scale degree becomes which under your transformation and use
this to change keyboard mapping A into keyboard mapping B. Then
retune MIDI file A with the same scale and keyboard mapping B to
produce MIDI file C which is your transformed piece.

Manuel

--- In tuning@y..., <manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:

> Gene wrote:
> >But the scale may have nothing to do with the retuning in question.
> >Suppose I have a scale
>
> >1 - 9/8 - 6/5 - 5/4 - 4/3 - 3/2 - 8/5 - 9/5 - 15/8 - (2),
>
> >and I have written a piece of music in it. I might want to retune
> >this piece by sending 2^a * 3^b * 5^c to 2^a * 3^b * (24/5)^5. This
> >will not change the scale at all, but it will send major triads to
> >minor triads and vice-versa.

> (24/5)^5? Did you mean (6/5)^c? Wouldn't it change the 8/5 into 5/3?

Sorry, I meant (24/5)^c. Changing a 5 to a 6/5 throws octaves off
wildly; we want to send 5 to 24/5 to do the major-minor
transformation. We then have

8/5 --> 8/(24/5) = 5/3, so it sends 8/5 to 5/3 (and vice-versa.)

--- In tuning@y..., <manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:

> Take MIDI file A, retune that with your scale and keyboard mapping A
> to produce MIDI file B, which is your piece.

It seems to me to do that I should first run a command which produces
an ascii file containing all the pitch values used in midi A. I then
would be in a position to map them to other values. Is there a Scala
command for this?

Gene wrote:
>It seems to me to do that I should first run a command which produces
>an ascii file containing all the pitch values used in midi A. I then
>would be in a position to map them to other values. Is there a Scala
>command for this?

Yes, SHOW, or SHOW/LINE. To put this in a file you can do
FILE notes.txt before and CLOSE afterwards.
Remapping the pitch values can be done with the PROJECT command, in any
case you can try to see if that's what you want.
Retuning "MIDI file A" could also be done with the scale in unsorted form
after doing PROJECT, in which case you probably won't need to bother
with keyboard mappings (provided you used a contiguous mapping for your
original MIDI file).

Manuel

--- In tuning@y..., <manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:

> >It seems to me to do that I should first run a command which
produces
> >an ascii file containing all the pitch values used in midi A. I
then
> >would be in a position to map them to other values. Is there a
Scala
> >command for this?

> Yes, SHOW, or SHOW/LINE.

Thanks. I tried this already, but all I got was a statement that the
scale did not exist, and the unison 1/1.