MIDICSV(1)

💖 MIDICSV — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay so bestie, this is midicsv, and it lives in section 1 of the manual (general commands, the iconic one). She translates MIDI files into CSV. That's the whole vibe. Let's get into it. 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

midicsv [ -u -v ] [ infile [ outfile ] ]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So here's the tea: midicsv reads a standard MIDI file and decodes it into a CSV (that's Comma-Separated Value, iykyk) file, and the CSV it makes preserves every single piece of information that was in the MIDI file. Nothing lost. Nothing dropped. She ate and left no crumbs. 💅

That ASCII CSV file? You can load it into a spreadsheet or a database app, or you can run it through a program to transform the MIDI data however you want — like key transposing a whole composition, or extracting one track out of a multitrack sequence. Very demure, very powerful. ✨

And because the universe is balanced, a CSV file in the exact format midicsv creates can be converted right back into a standard MIDI file using the csvmidi program. Round trip, bestie. 🦋

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -u — prints how-to-call information. Just the lil "here's how you use me" moment. 🫶
• -v — prints verbose debugging information on standard error. It dumps the MIDI file header, plus the length of each track in the file. Perfect when you need to snoop on what's actually going on in there. 🔍

💜 FILES 💜

If no infile is specified, or if infile is `-`, midicsv reads its input from standard input. If no outfile is given, or outfile is `-`, the CSV output is written to standard output. 🌈

The input and output are processed in a strictly serial manner — one after the other, no games. Which means midicsv can be used in pipelines without restrictions. Go off, pipe queen. 👑

💀 BUGS 💀

Okay so, real talk: midicsv assumes its input is a well-formed standard MIDI file. Some error checking is performed, yes, but gross errors in the input file may cause midicsv to crash. 😭 Not a vibe, but it's the truth.

Please report problems to bugs@fourmilab.ch.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• csvmidi(1)
• midicsv(5)

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

John Walker http://www.fourmilab.ch/

This software is in the public domain. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, without any conditions or restrictions. 🫶✨

This software is provided `as is` without express or implied warranty. (so like, no promises, bestie, she's giving what she's giving 🙈)

and that's the whole page, fr fr — this was the 4th Berkeley Distribution, dated 9 FEB 2004. slay, mwah, drink water, and go transcribe some MIDI 💖🎀🦋