Some of you will remember my post about getting my songs onto a carillon. I’ve been unsuccessful. I haven’t worked much with MIDI in more than 15 years.

What program or utility do you use to see and change the contents of a MIDI file? Things like SYSEX, control change, program change etc.?

Thanks.

I use the midi editing in Reaper to do essentially everything. Except for a utility called MidiView which is a free MIDI Monitor app that shows bi-directional MIDI packages that flows through your machine. This show where the midi is coming from and where its going on my PC. https://hautetechnique.com/midi/midiview/

By the way, what is a "carillon"?

Thanks.

This carillon is an automated church bell system. It can also be played live. It is programmed with 5800 MIDI songs and also plays bells tolling at noon and 7 pm that can be heard over the valley. I want to program my own music to be able to play that on a special upcoming occasion.

EDIT: Malwarebytes is blocking that site.

Norton A/V allows it to be opened without giving any alerts.

The web page text states:

"Midi View
MidiView is a simple MIDI Monitor app to that shows bi-directional MIDI packages that flows through your machine.
Setting up the app is easy. Just plug in your MIDI device and see what is going on between your software and device
Features
Easy and clear interface
Windows & macOS
View bi-direction history
Shows the package direction
Export to CSV
Custom driver technology for Windows
Perfect tool for debugging problems or investigating flows in MIDI.
View in both Note name, hex and int"

I suspect it's safe.

The web page has a link to a tutorial, also on YouTube, here:

Hi Mat.
You are a very knowledgable, tech savvy guy (I am not) , I'm sure you know this already so forgive me for jumping in here but others may find the following useful.

Powertracks Pro Audio has a very useful feature called Event List . Import your midi file into Powertracks
then go to the menu bar/Windows and scroll down to #9 Event List or simply press F2 on your keyboard.
Firstly delete those invasive Sysex files (these may be the cause of your problem Mat). They are coloured black and usually are at the top of the list.

(more directed to all)
Here in the event list you can take back control of your imported midi file.
CC's are coloured purple.Delete these. They control panning,volume,chorus,reverb etc. The only CC's that are good to keep
are the PedalCtrls which control pedal on off (mainly sustain) so try not to delete those.

Midi notes are coloured Blue so don't delete those.

Now when you import the treated midi file into your DAW of choice you will have complete mixing control.
Kudos to Powertracks for having this very useful capability.

Mat , when I import either a type 0 and type 1 MIDI file into my Daw (Mixcraft) , they remain silent until
I actually assign each track a voice within my Daw. Could that be a clue given that Corrillion is a Midi File Player.

Have you tried asking the good folk at The MIDI Association <info@midi.org>
midi.org
https://midi.org/community (forum)

good luck.

About two years back, someone asked me if I could write a script in Lua to read MIDI files and convert MIDI CC tracks into SynthesizerV timelines.

I didn't find any existing code that read MIDI files in Lua, so I went searching for C files. Back in Ye Olden Days the programs MIDI2TXT and TXT2MIDI could be used to convert MIDI files to text, which allowed them to be edited, and then converted back again.

However... it didn't handle some of the MIDI events. I think it was that SYSEX could be 0xF0 or 0xF7, but I don't remember exactly.

I ended up writing the script from scratch looking at the MIDI specs. Mind you, this was only the MIDI file reader, as I didn't need to write it back to a MIDI file after loading it. It's less than 350 lines long - really simple code.

So if you want a Lua program that dumps a MIDI file to text, you're welcome to it.

As Izzy mentioned; PT/RB are pretty easy to use and you have at least one of them.

I use MIDI-OX (free) as a monitor if I need to know what is going on. I guess it is a monitor only showing activity on the MIDI connection, no changes to a Midi File as far as I could see.
I had an editor of sorts back in the days of Steinberg 24 on an Atari. The only thing I could find serching the web that might work as a real editor is midieditor.
Have a look here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/midieditor/
The downloadlink provided is blocked by my virusscaner (certificate invalid).

I was surprised how cumbersome the search for a midi editor/sysex editor is. Seems like there is no need to go bejond the editing capabilities of a piano roll. Hard to belive.

Again, Realband and Powertracks do this. I know Matt owns at least one of them.
Anybody with BiaB also has RB.

For what it is worth, I sometimes use midig. Midi is a player, no editor, but gives information at a glance what is going on.
Back to Matts request.
As far as I can see and understand his problem, neither RB nor Studio One (tools he owns) can give the inside he needs to identify the problem.
Midi is not only a protokoll, but the "Commands" sent via that protokoll to a midi instrument can be programmed as a sequence to follow (aka Midi File).
It is sort of a programming language, and the commands can be entered not only by entering the notes via a DAW (or alike) but with a text based editor as well.
And like NotePad + or Sublime Text for many languages, there should be such editors for Midi. So he can see and examine his file with and some of the working Carilon files to figure out which midi events may cause a problem.

I've been to MIDI HeLL, and survived.
Cakewalk is the very best at manipulating MIDI... but of course. I am biased...

Update. Rharv correctly stated I have RealBand, which I had not used in many years. The MIDI Monitor in RealBand does show me the contents of the two sample files I was sent. I have printed them for comparison, along with my first attempt to make a Type 0 file (that doesn't play on the carillon) and am analyzing them all now.

Thank you all for your assistance.

Not MIDI Monitor, Event List .. more likely to find any events.

It's the big 'E' icon in the top Ribbon.
Select desired Track(s) to show in Event List and then launch it.

Ah, OK. Thank you again, Bob I will try that, assuming I can see the big E

I have to +1 for PowerTracks and MIDI editing and manipulation. I don't use it as my primary DAW but it is my primary MIDI editor, ever since Cakewalk went off the rails. When I need more than the 48 tracks (Medleys, Orchestrals), I'll use it in conjunction with Reaper---but for GM and pop tracks, Power Tracks is still my MIDI guy.

If I need to non-critical bulk renderings to MP3 or WAV, I use Switch Sound File Converter.

Paj
8^)

Paj.

i agree ...ptw is underated...as is rb viz midi.
its nice to see you appreciate it cos i feel too few users realise the value. big studios i once frequented sometimes were amazed at its features when i showed examples compared to what they wereuseing. getting older ive forgotten lots of my old midi tricks...
fun days.

om

There's an Event List Editor available in BIAB and appears similar to the image Rharv posted.

Yeah, and the icon menu items are handy but the MIDI Menu in the Edit Menu dropdown has really useful features, including a filter and subfilter in the Replace option which allow you to manipulate a lot of MIDI data quickly and conveniently. I'm editing a few MIDI sets for a band at the moment and it just makes me re-appreciate the feature. I do wish that I was able to record Macros but, still, it just works well with MIDI files.

Paj
8^)

I use Master Tracks Pro (abandoned ware).

Why?

1) Without audio, the interface is clean and quick. No menus with sub and sub-sub menus to open. Every dialog is available with a hover and click.

2) Very good global editing features. If PTPro adopted the editing features of MTPro, I'd use it instead.


Notes ♫

Thanks, Bob. Is that still even available, if I decide to go that route? I haven't had time to experiment further yet.

This website mentions it as available, but I cannot advise on the reliability of the site:
https://master-tracks-pro.software.informer.com/

Passport Music Software, the creators, don't currently list it as available, but there are hints in the forum pages that this might change.
https://passportmusic.com/

Bob might know more except he did mention 'abandoned ware'.

Thanks, Trevor. It's all coming back to me now. I was a beta tester for Encore by Passport Music for decades. I forgot that was also the company for MasterTracks Pro. I might have an EXE file kicking around, now that I know what folder to look in.

Not sure I trust that first website.

The second website link promised Encore 6, written by Don Williams the original developer, a few years ago. It's not done, but many of us still have hope. In case it is of interest to you or others, Encore was always the most user-friendly of those original notation programs but became unusable in 2013. The company changed hands to GVOX and was only recently revived. I have many hundreds of Encore scores and I hope to be able to read them and export to Music XML when Encore 6 is released. Anything beyond that will be gravy.

We're on the same page, 100%
I suspect it's probably laden with 'bloat-ware' (or worse).

MTPro hasn't been available for years. GVox bought it, rewrote it, introduced a few bugs, fixed them and then abandoned it.

Don Williams came to where we were playing. He said he's working on Encore first, then he'll get to MTPro, but the code was more messed up than he thought, so it's going to take longer than he thought.

I have an old copy on a WinXP computer. One of those ThinkPad machines that just won't die. I tried it on Win11, and it seems to work, but I can't associate the file name with it. But as long as the XP computer works, I'm fine.

I tried PTPro, but it doesn't have the editing features.

One example of many. If I decide I want to delay the snare drums on beats 2 and 4 a little more than I played them, I could highlight the track, choose the pitch for the snare drum, choose only beats 2 and 4, decide how many ppm ticks to move it, and hit enter. Done.

There are dozens of different editing features you can do with the change dialog box, that can affect the entire track, so I don't have to go bar to bar to change something that I think would improve the song.

Notes ♫

Notes.

i think it might be usefull for other users if you detailed in the ptpro wishlist forum what added midi features you would like to see because your obviously very midi experienced. this would also help rb users like myself.

happiness and respect.

om

Thanks. Sounds like a good idea.

I'm very busy doing end-of-season gigs, but as soon as they are done, I'll do it, along with screenshots of the dialog boxes.

Notes ♫