py_midicsv 1.13.0

A library for converting MIDI files from and to CSV format

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.

Disclaimer

This library is currently in Beta. This means that the interface might change and that the encoding scheme is not yet finalised. Expect slight inconsistencies.

Installation

py_midicsv can be installed via pip:

$ pip install py_midicsv

Alternatively 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 install

Usage

import py_midicsv as pm

# Load the MIDI file and parse it into CSV format
csv_string = pm.midi_to_csv("example.mid")

# 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)

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.