py_midicsv
A Python library inspired by the midicsv tool created by John Walker. Its main purpose is to bidirectionally convert between the binary MIDI format and a human-readable interpretation of the contained data in text format, expressed as CSV.
If you found this library, you probably already know why you need it.
Installation
py_midicsv can be installed via pip:
$ pip install py_midicsvAlternatively you can build the package by cloning this repository and installing via poetry:
$ git clone https://github.com/timwedde/py_midicsv.git
$ cd py_midicsv/
$ poetry installUsage
As a Command Line Tool
Usage: midicsvpy [OPTIONS] INPUT_FILE OUTPUT_FILE
Convert MIDI files to CSV files.
midicsv reads a standard MIDI file and decodes it into a CSV file which
preserves all the information in the MIDI file. The ASCII CSV file may be
loaded into a spreadsheet or database application, or processed by a program
to transform the MIDI data (for example, to key transpose a composition or
extract a track from a multi-track sequence). A CSV file in the format
created by midicsv may be converted back into a standard MIDI file with the
csvmidi program.
Specify an input file and an output file to process it. Either argument can
be stdin/stdout.
Some arguments are kept for backwards-compatibility with the original
midicsv tooling. These are marked as NOOP in this command line interface.
Options:
-n, --nostrict Do not fail on parse/validation errors.
-u, --usage Print usage information (NOOP)
-v, --verbose Print debug information (NOOP)
--help Show this message and exit.Usage: csvmidipy [OPTIONS] INPUT_FILE OUTPUT_FILE
Convert CSV files to MIDI files.
csvmidi reads a CSV file in the format written by midicsv and creates the
equivalent standard MIDI file.
Specify an input file and an output file to process it. Either argument can
be stdin/stdout.
Some arguments are kept for backwards-compatibility with the original
csvmidi tooling. These are marked as NOOP in this command line interface.
Options:
-n, --nostrict Do not fail on parse/validation errors.
-u, --usage Print usage information (NOOP)
-v, --verbose Print debug information (NOOP)
-z, --strict-csv Raise exceptions on CSV errors (NOOP)
-x, --no-compress Do not compress status bytes (NOOP)
--help Show this message and exit.As a Library
import py_midicsv as pm
# Load the MIDI file and parse it into CSV format
csv_string = pm.midi_to_csv("example.mid")
with open("example_converted.csv", "w") as f:
f.writelines(csv_string)
# Parse the CSV output of the previous command back into a MIDI file
midi_object = pm.csv_to_midi(csv_string)
# Save the parsed MIDI file to disk
with open("example_converted.mid", "wb") as output_file:
midi_writer = pm.FileWriter(output_file)
midi_writer.write(midi_object)Documentation
A full explanation of the midicsv file format can be found here.
Differences
This library adheres as much as possible to how the original library works, however generated files are not guaranteed to be entirely identical when compared bit-by-bit. This is mostly due to the handling of meta-event data, especially lyric events, since the encoding scheme has changed. The original library did not encode some of the characters in the Latin-1 set, while this version does.
