MIDI Converters

various to MIDI converters I wrote over the years.

AKAO2MID

This tool converts PSX AKAO v1 and v2 to MIDI. It is based on the information here, but I did a lot of additional reverse engineering.

The original version had everything hardcoded, but thanks a request by FlyingGrayson you can now compile an .exe file and drop files on it.
The tool is still pretty alpha though.

Features I should mention:

• AKAO v1 and v2 support (the latter is slightly worse than the former)
• understandable tempo calculations
• portamento handling (portamentos are indicated by MIDI controller 5, with its value being the portamento length)
• full volume slide support
• AKAO "drum mode" is mapped to MIDI channel 10

AKAO_Filter

This is a small tool that I used to extract PSX AKAO files from uncompressed PSF files.

I used the tool to get AKAO files for AKAO2MID. It uses hardocded paths, so you need to use it from the VB6 IDE directly.

cotton2mid

This tool converts songs from the game "Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams" for Sega System 16B to MIDI.

It extracts and converts the songs from the sound ROM, usually called opr-13893.a11.

de2mid

This tool converts songs from MegaDrive games developed by Data East to MIDI.

It reads MegaDrive ROMs in .bin format. There is a page on Sega Retro that lists all known games that use this sound driver. It also lists the offset of the song list.

de2mid_SMS

Despite its name, this tool converts songs from Sonic Spinball on the Sega Master System/Game Gear to MIDI.

I did a quick hack of de2mid to support Sonic Spinball's sound format, which is the cause of the name. I kept the tool for historical purposes. You should use smps2mid if you want to convert songs from Sonic Spinball (8-bit) to MIDI.

dynamix_mus2mid

This tool converts music from early Dynamix games to MIDI.

I wrote this tool for "Spikey" from the Sierra Music and Memories Discord channel, for converting music from "David Wolf: Seceta Agent".

It should be noted that "David Wolf" has songs inside MUS files. Each MUS file contains the same song in multiple variants (beeper, Tandy, AdLib, ...). The format is just Dynamix' typical RES archive format, which is documented here. The tool requires pre-extracted songs. All sound variants use the same format and are supported by the tool.

eash2mid

This tool converts songs from MegaDrive ROMs that uses the EA/Steve Hayes sound driver to MIDI.

I wrote this tool on request by lordskylark. The format uses MIDI commands internally, so the format was easy to reverse-enginneer.

I tested it with songs from Might and Magic 2/3, King's Bounty, Rolo to the Rescue and Populous.

ffmq2mid

This tool converts SPC files from Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (and other games that use the SNES AKAO format) to MIDI.

The tool was developed to convert songs from FFMQ, but later I added support for Final Fantasy 5 and Live A Live. The tool uses a few hardcoded instrument mappings, which don't work with all songs.

Nowadways you shouldn't use ffmq2mid. loveemu wrote a tool called akaospc with the help of disassemblies, so its SFC-AKAO support is more complete and it supports more games. (I reverse-engineered the format just by looking at the SPC700's RAM and the raw sequence data.)
I recommend VGMTrans to convert Squaresoft SPCs to MIDI. It uses an improved version of akaospc to do the conversion.

fmp2mid

This tool converts TGL FMP songs to MIDI.

I developed the tool using songs from various GIGA and TGL games that use the FMP sound driver. I disassembled a few versions of the FMP sound driver (v2.1, v3.04 and v3.95) while developing the tool.

Currently the tool supports only MIDI FMP songs. OPN/OPNA FMP songs are unsupported as they use a different set of sequence commands.

Please note that TGL FMP is not the popular FMP format that uses files with .OPI/.OVI/.OZI extension. See fmp2mid.c for a list of games that use TGL FMP.

fuga2rcp

This tool converts FUGA Systems MIDI songs to RCP format.

You may wonder why I'm converting to RCP here. The answer is simple: The original format is just an RCP file with a simplified header.

The tool was written for/tested with Amaranth II (NEC PC-98).

gems2mid

This tool converts songs from the GEMS sound driver to MIDI.

The tool was developed with the help of the source code of the original GEMS driver, which was included with the GEMS development kit.

The tool can not just convert GEMS sequences to MIDI, but it can also dump DAC samples (to .raw files) and export YM2612 instruments to .gyb. It processes sequence, sample and instrument libraries.

For sequence data, the tool tries to detect the pointer format, which is different between GEMS 2.0-2.5 and 2.8.

The GEMS sound driver is commonly found in MegaDrive games developed in the U.S.

Note: The tool requires pre-extracted GEMS data files. (sequences, instruments, etc.) It does not work on raw MegaDrive ROMs.

gmd2mid

This tool converts songs from PC-98 games that use the GMD format to MIDI.

I wrote this tool to get MIDIs of the songs from Valkyrie: The Power Beauties. The tool should work with all games published by "Discovery" that use the CSCP.BIN/SSCP.BIN sound driver.

The sound driver was surprisingly complex. I disassembled it and reverse-engineered most of the commands. MIDI songs seem to be converted from RCP files and barely use any of the shortcut commands that the format allows. Those should all convert fine. OPN/OPNA songs were generated differently. (They even use other commands for song tempo changes than the RCP conversions.) The tool doesn't yet convert everything they use.

grc2mid

This tool converts songs from MegaDrive games that use the GRC sound driver to MIDI.

Initially I wrote this tool to get MIDIs from songs of Decap Attack, which only used FM channels. The current version supports FM, PSG and DAC channels.
The tool is written based on a sound driver disassembly of Decap Attack and Socket.

Example calls:

grc2mid -mus "Decap Attack (UE) [!].bin" 039000
grc2mid -ins "Decap Attack (UE) [!].bin" 0384C6

grc2mid -mus "Socket (W) [!].bin" 03392A
grc2mid -ins "Socket (W) [!].bin" 033214

HMI2MID

This is a quick and dirty Visual Basic 6 tool to convert HMI files to standard MIDIs.

I used it to convert HMIs from Lemmings 3. Everything is hardcoded though.

I recommend kode54's 2mid for proper HMI -> MID conversions.

hum2mid

This tool converts songs from NES Hummer Team games to MIDI.

I initially wrote this tool to convert Somari songs to MIDI, but it should be able to convert songs from almost every Hummer Team game.

The tool converts the songs directly from NES or NSF files. It was written based on a sound driver disassembly of Somari.

ims2mid

This converts IMS AdLib songs to MIDI.

The IMS was very popular in the Korean AdLib scene and IMS songs were commonly used in Korean DOS games.

The tool should also work with AdLib MIDI files (used e.g. in Vinyl Goddess From Mars), because this format is very similar to IMS.

it2mid

This tool converts IT modules to MIDI.

I wasn't satisfied with OpenMPT's MIDI exporting function, because it didn't preserve volume and panning information, so I wrote this. (There was also something I didn't like about LifeAmp's conversion.)

konamimd2mid

This tool converts songs from MegaDrive Konami games to MIDI.

The tool can export MIDIs and dump instruments to GYB files.
It was written based on a sound driver disassembly of TMNT: Hyperstone Heist. It was verified to work with Rocket Knight Adventures as well.

Example calls:

konamimd2mid -mus "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Return of the Shredder (J).bin" 0D3746 0F82D8
konamimd2mid -mus "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Hyperstone Heist (U) [!].bin" 0D37A4 0F82D8
konamimd2mid -ins "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Hyperstone Heist (U) [!].bin" 0D0348 x

konamimd2mid -mus -htr "Rocket Knight Adventures (U) [!].bin" 0D02F8 0F9A51
konamimd2mid -ins "Rocket Knight Adventures (U) [!].bin" 0D2448 x

Lem3DMid

This converts songs from Lemmings 3D to MIDI.

There are two versions - an old Visual Basic 6 .bas module (that uses hardcoded paths) and C version (which is a port of the VB6 version) with a proper commandline interface.

M2MidiDec

This tool converts songs from games for Sega Model 2 to MIDI.

This tool can convert the sequences from Model 2 sound ROMs to MIDI and export the samples to WAV or SF2 soundfonts.
It was written based on a sound driver disassembly of Sonic the Fighters.

There seem to be 3 variants of the Model 2 sound driver. The converter currently only supports "version 2". The main test cases during development were Sonic the Fighters and Fighting Vipers. Byteswapped ROMs are detected and fixed automatically.

M2_SndDrvList.txt contains a list of Model 2 games. It shows what sound driver versions they use and what ROM files are related to sound.

Notes:

• The sequences contain no tempo information, so don't expect the MIDIs to be printable.
• The speed of the exported sequences might be a bit off. I have no reference to compare it against, because emulation is pretty inaccurate in that regard as well.
• The MIDI/SF2 combo doesn't always produce perfect results. I still have trouble with certain instruments in Fighting Vipers.

Compilation note: Needs to be linked to Soundfont.c.

mdc2mid

This tool converts MCDRV songs to MIDI.

I wrote this tool to get clean MIDI rips of Super Real Mahjong PIV on the Sharp X68000. The format has a few interesting quirks regarding portamento and note chords, so I disassembled the driver in order to understand it better. Conversions should be very accurate, except that it has better event sorting than the original driver. (which puts Expression/Pitch Bend events after Note On events)

I focused on converting the MIDI songs (CM-32/SC-55), so converting FM songs will probably fail due to unimplemented commands.

MCDRV seems to be used by only a few games and SRMP4 seems to be the only one that has MIDI songs.

MI1-Midi

This tool converts MT-32 sound data from early SCUMM games (like Monkey Island 1) to MIDI.

The tool needs "RO" files ripped from ScummVM's RAM as I couldn't figure out the format of the "WA" files that you can extract from the actual game. The "RO" signature must be at byte 0x0C. (I apparently ripped some bytes from the memory block header.)
MI1-Midi_Data.7z contains the files that I used with the converter.

mid2syx

This tool extracts SysEx messages from standard MID files and saves them as a separate SYX file.

Note: The tool goes through the MID file by-track. Thus when SysEx messages are spread across multiple tracks, they will NOT be sorted by time.

mmd2mid

This tool converts M.M.D. songs to standard MIDIs.

M.M.D. is Masahiro Kajihara's MIDI driver. The music from Studio Twinkle's "Mime" was enough of a reason for researching the format.

As it turned out, MMD is basically a size-optimized version of the RCP format. And so both, disassembling the MMD driver and writing the converter tool was done pretty quickly.

mmu2mid

This tool converts Wolfteam MMU music files to standard MIDIs.

I made this tool to be able to convert the music of the 3 PC-98 Wolfteam games that don't use the MF format for MIDI music.

Just like most other Wolfteam music formats, the MMU format is based on the RCP format. This one in particular appears to just be RCP with a smaller file and track headers. ZAN3.MTN (from Zan 3 on the PC-98) is also just a .CM6 file with the first 0C4h bytes being cut off.

mps2mid

This tool converts songs from MicroProse music format to standard MIDIs.

I made this tool to get clean MIDIs of the Transport Tycoon songs. The tool works with the files extracted from ADLIB.CAT / GM.CAT / ROLAND.CAT.

So far I only tested it with the original TT and TT Deluxe (DOS). Converting the TT Deluxe (DOS) songs with default options results in MIDIs that are mostly the same as the MIDIs that come with TT Deluxe (Windows), except that they have a slightly lower resolution. (24 vs. 384 ticks per beat)

msdrv2mid

This tool converts songs from PC-98 games that use the MsDRV sound driver to MIDI.

The tool was originally called twinkle2mid and was written to convert the songs from Bunretsu Shugo Shin Twinkle Star, which uses an early version of MsDRV. It was since updated to work with more versions of the sound format.

Early versions of MsDRV have the code embedded in the main executable. Later version come with a separate sound driver executable that is usually called "MSDRV4.EXE" or "MSDRV4L.EXE". In any case you can find a copyright notice by the author "KENJI" in side the executable.

Common file extensions for MsDRV music files are MF1, MF2, and MUS. Bunretsu Shugo Shin Twinkle Star has one .MF2 archive per song. Each .MF2 archive contains all variants (OPN, OPNA, MT-32, SC-55) of a song and you need to unpack/decompress it to get the actual music file.

The tool supports all known variants of MsDRV. However only the conversion of MIDI music is fully supported. Conversion of FM music is very basic and may not work.

Version-specific notes:

• In order to convert MsDRV v1a songs correctly (games "Present" and "Sweet Emotion"), you have to pass the parameter -ForceVer v1a. The autodetection defaults to v1c, which causes some songs to get out of sync.
• For MsDRV v1 FM songs, you need to pass the -FM parameter to select the correct channel modes.

mucom2mid

This converts songs in PC-8801 Mucom format to MIDI.

Initially written to convert music from Misty Blue (for NEC PC-8801), I also did a few tests with other songs from an archive with Mucom88 music, so I think it should work with the majority of Mucom88 songs.

The main test case for this tool were the OPN and OPNA versions of Misty Blue's Opening Theme, because this song rocks. (And I wanted to make an 8-bit version of it.)

ngp2mid

This tool converts songs from Neo Geo Pocket games to MIDI.

The tool supports two versions of the NGP sound driver: The one used by the NGP BIOS (0x9B9 bytes large) and Sonic Pocket Adventure (0x9F5). These two formats should cover a majority of all NGP and NGPC games. Unfortunately you need to choose the driver version at compile time by setting DrvVer to the respective value.

I initially wrote the tool to convert songs from Sonic Pocket Adventure. It was written based on a disassembly of its sound driver. (There's no way I could reverse-engineer a format that is based on a bitstream just by looking at bytes in a hex editor.) Later I disassembled the NGP BIOS sound driver as well. It turned out to have a few major differences, so I added support for its version of the format.

nwc12mid

This tool converts songs from New World Computing's early DOS games to MIDI.

This is another tool that lordskylark requested.

The tool is confirmed to work with songs extracted from the MS-DOS games "Might and Magic III" and "Planet's Edge".

pmd2mid

This tool converts P.M.D. songs to MIDI.

P.M.D. is the Professional Music Driver written by Masahiro Kajihara. It is commonly found in games for the NEC PC-9801, but versions for the PC-8801 and IBM PC exist as well.

The tool was made with the help of the PMDWin 0.36 source code. But due to the huge number of features P.M.D. supports, not all sequence commands are supported by pmd2mid currently.
During the development process the songs from PC-9801 Rusty served as a main test case. I used the IBM PC version of Rusty to quickly test how PMD-IBM works, so the tool can deal with PMD-IBM songs as well.

rcp2mid

This tool converts Recomposer song files to MIDI.

Recomposer is a MIDI sequencer that was very popular in Japan, especially on the PC-9801 and X68000. Some games (like Granada on the X68000) even used raw RCP files in their games.

This is based on an RCP reader that I wrote for a custom MIDI player that I wanted to use under Linux. But unfortunately, all RCP -> MID converters I found were relying on RCPCV.DLL, with no source for it available. So wrote my own RCP reader, partly by using kuma4649's MDPlayer as a reference and partly by reverse-engineering the RCP format by myself.

So far the tool converts all RCP and G36 files I tested well. I haven't seen any R38 or G18 files so far, so those might or might not work.

sbm52mid

This tool converts SPCs from Super Bomberman 5 to MIDI.

There isn't a lot to this tool, actually. I was asked by Varion to make this converter and because I liked how the game sounds I quickly reverse-engineered the format and wrote this tool. If you look at the source code you'll quickly notice it's based on ffmq2mid.

seq2mid

This tool converts PSX SEQ files to MIDI.

There are two versions. The Visual Basic 6 module (.bas) is obsolete and uses hardcoded paths and hardcoded instrument mappings.
The C version instead allows for advanced options, including volume conversion and instrument remapping via external .ini files.

For example instrument maps, look at the .ini files in the seq2mid_data folder.
The first line is the PSX VAB file to use, all following lines describe the instrument mapping. Columns are separated by tabs and have the following meaning:

1. column: instrument number (in hex) in SEQ file, optionally followed by "-" and a hex number to select the "region" item (can be 0 to F)
2. column: instrument number (in hex) in resulting MIDI file OR drum note ('D' + hex number)
3. column: note transposition (for instruments) OR base drum note (for drums, in hex)
4. column: comment

The converter will use NRPNs to adjust the pitch of drum notes, so setting a correct "base drum note" is important.

sg2mid

This converts SPC files from Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos to MIDI.

I learned about this Speedy Gonzales game (and its music) due to the bootleg version of the game that replaces Speedy with Sonic. And although the music isn't amazing, there are a few very nice tunes in the game, IMO.

The game uploads "banks" to the sound RAM, so one SPC file may contain multiple songs, which are all exported.

srmp4-midi

This tool converts the one and only song present in Super Real Mahjong PIV (Arcade version) to MIDI.

I wrote this tool just for fun and because the format they used already looked quite MIDI-ish.

The game uses "SIFF" containers (like to RIFF with Big Endian values) for sound stuff. The SIFF/tone file contains the sample tables for instruments, the SIFF/seqs file contains the music. The tool can convert the latter.

Sys32MidiDec

This tool converts songs from games for Sega System 18/32 to MIDI.

This tool can convert the sequences from System 18 and System 32 sound ROMs to MIDI.
It is a slightly modified version of M2MidiDec.

So far only SegaSonic the Hedgehog and OutRunners are supported. You need to select between those games by enabling a #define at compile time. It will then try to read the respective ROM files from the current directory.

syx2mid

This tool takes SYX files (raw binary files containing SysEx data dumps) and converts them to MIDI.

It takes the actual data transfer time into account and inserts delays between commands respectively. The transfer time is calculated as follows: time in seconds = number of bytes / 3125 data bytes/second

The SYX files may also contain other commands like Control Changes.

TaitoZoom

This tool converts songs from Taito FX-1B (Zoom ZSG-2) arcade games to MIDI. Written by superctr.

Use this tool with the script TaitoZoomConv.sh, see the script source for more information on how to use.

top2mid

This tool converts SPC files from SFC Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean to MIDI.

I really love the music from those two games (especially ToP's), which is the reason I wrote this tool.

The tool allows for advanced instrument remapping. The format of the .ini files used for defining instrument maps is mostly the same as seq2mid, aside from the lack of a PSX VAB file name. NRPNs are used to change drum pitches.

top2mid_Arc

This is top2mid, but with support for Arcus Spirits hacked in.

It sort of worked, but I think Arcus Spirits' format is more similar to what Wolfteam used on most other platforms.

toutrun2mid

This tool converts songs from Turbo OutRun (Arcade) to MIDI.

The tool is written based on a sound driver disassembly of Turbo OutRun.

tsd2mid

This tool converts files for Falcom's PC-98 TotalSoundDriver to MIDI.

I wrote it primarily to convert the MIDI soundtrack from Brandish VT. It has a really nice OST.

So far the tool can convert all songs from Brandish VT and The Legend of Heroes IV. All variants (.N_ = OPN, .A_ = OPNA, .M_ = MIDI, .B_ = beeper) are supported.

This is probably the MIDI converter I spent the most time working on. From start to finish it took me two weeks of intense work almost every evening. This is because the sound driver has lots of effects (portamento, vibrato, tremolo, volume envelopes, ...) that I had to replicate accurately in the converter. Yes, even the MIDIs songs make extensive use of those effects. So I disassembled the sound driver, made MIDI logs from the original sound driver output and verified that all effects and interactions are replicated properly.

As a bonus, the converter is a bit friendlier to Yamaha MIDI synths, as it places the Expression controllers before the Note On event. (The driver places it after the note is turned on.)

wtmd2mid

This tool converts songs from MegaDrive Wolfteam games to MIDI.

I wrote this tool to convert music from late MegaDrive Wolfteam games. (The ones with PCM support.) But it can also convert songs from X68000 Wolfteam games.
Right now the tool uses hardcoded instrument mappings - which interestingly worked across all MegaDrive and X68000 games I tested.

For Wolfteam MegaDrive games with PCM drums, it can autodetect the song list and will batch-convert all songs. (compile with PLMode = 0x01; to enable it)

wtmf2mid

This tool converts Wolfteam MF/MU music files to standard MIDIs. The same format was also used by games developed by Melody (MFD.COM sound driver), as well as Studio Twinkle's "Twilight".

I initially made this tool to get MIDIs of songs from Arcus Odyssey (because its MT-32 soundtrack is awesome). I disassembled a few sound drivers during the development of this tool: Arcus Odyssey, D: European Mirage, Span of Dream.

The files begin with "MF" or "MU" and the format has Little Endian (for PC-9801) and Big Endian (for X68000) variants. It has also support for multiple songs within one file, but no game seems to use that.

In games on the X68000, Wolfteam MIDIs are usually stored LZSS-compressed in larger archives that have an .MID or .MDI extension.

YamahaDemoSongDump

This tool can be used to dump demo songs from the firmware of various Yamaha MIDI modules to MIDI. Previously called "TG100_DemoSongDump".

Currently, the program was verified to work with:

• TG100
• MU5, MU50, MU80, MU100, MU128
• VL70-m

The source code list the offsets of the demo songs in the respective ROMs.

Note that the songs have no tempo information, so the beats aren't aligned. The tempo of the resulting MIDI might also be a bit off.

yong2mid

This tool converts songs from Yong Yong games to MIDI.

Yes, it's the result of reverse-engineering the sound driver of the Game Boy games Sonic 3D Blast 5 and Sonic Adventure 7. It works with the raw ROMs.

The sound engine is very basic and has only very few features. It still doesn't justify the terrible sound of those unlicensed games, though.

ys2mid

This tool converts songs from Ys II (PC-8801 version) to MIDI.

I only wrote the tool to work with Ys II. I haven't check what other games it works with so far. (The chance for it to work with Ys I and III is probably high.)

Now what song do you think was the main test case for the tool? Right, it's To Make The End of Battle. I wanted to make an 8-bit version of the song and vgm2mid didn't satisfy me.

zmd2mid

This tool converts songs from (compiled) ZmuSiC format to MIDI.

The main focus of this tool is to accurately convert MIDI-based songs. OPM-based songs are known to not convert properly.

Currently, only ZMD v1 files are supported. The games I used for testing were Cyber Block Metal Orange EX and Magical Block Carat on the X68000. ZMD v2 (Asuka 120% Burning Fest.) doesn't work correctly yet due to unknown commands. ZMD v3 is quite different from v1/v2, so that might be done by a separate tool.

Libraries

Midi1to0.c

This is a tiny library that allows you to convert MIDIs from format 1 to format 0.

When I did format 1 to 0 conversions the first time, I merged track 1 into track 0, then track 2 into track 0, etc., but I think that didn't perform well with large files. The approach I use here is to merge all tracks simultaneously. This might perform a bit worse for short songs with a huge number of tracks, but I prefer this solution.

midi_funcs.h

This is a small header-only library that allows you to easily write MIDI files. It automatically resizes the data buffer if it gets too small.

midi_utils.h

This file contains a useful MIDI utility functions used by various converters.

Features:

• "running note" processing: add a note + its length to a list and the respective Note Off event will be written after X ticks
• balance track times: for looping tracks, modify the loop counter so that every track ends at the approximately same spot

Soundfont.c/.h

This library can help you to generate SF2 soundfont files. It only does the chunk management and file writing though, so you still need to do most of the work by yourself.

The soundfont library is used by M2MidiDec.