How to Use MIDIFile2Text — Step-by-Step Guide for Musicians and Developers

What MIDIFile2Text is

MIDIFile2Text (often seen as midi2text, mf2t, or MIDIFile2Text) is a small utility/program that converts Standard MIDI files (Format 0 or 1) into a plain-text, human- and script-friendly ASCII representation, and usually includes a companion that converts the text back to a MIDI file. The text format is designed to be compact, easy to parse with Unix tools (sed/awk/perl), and readable for manual editing.

Key features

• Conversion: MIDI → ASCII text (mf2t) and text → MIDI (t2mf).
• Readable format: Events (notes, tempo, meta messages) shown in an ordered, parseable text form.
• Scriptable: Intended for manipulation with standard text-processing tools.
• Cross-platform: Historical ports/tools available for Unix-like systems, macOS, and Windows.
• Uses: inspection, batch edits, diffs, automated analysis, and embedding MIDI event data into text workflows.

Typical output contents

• Track and event listings with tick timestamps
• Note on/off events with channels and velocities
• Tempo and time-signature meta-events
• Other MIDI meta events (lyrics, markers, track names)
• Machine-friendly byte representations when needed

Where to find implementations

• midi2text project on GitHub (exported from code.google.com) — mf2t/t2mf tools and docs.
• Other MIDI libraries/tools (e.g., Craig Sapp’s midifile project) provide ASCII export helpers or similar text/ASCII representations.

If you want, I can:

• show an example conversion of a short MIDI snippet to the typical text format, or
• point to the midi2text GitHub repo and give command examples to run mf2t/t2mf. Which would you prefer?