Daktari MIDI -- a MIDI file dumper

Description

Daktari MIDI is a perl script that takes a MIDI file as input and gives an elaborate annotated dump of the file's contents. Track names, note events, controller settings, etc., are all included. Read the source for the gory details.

If you want to extract just the text events from MIDI files (say, for archival purposes), get my simpler and quicker MIDI text dumper.

Known Problems

Vagarities of the file-format kept me from making some of the analysis optimally helpful. E.g., the program reports "note 69" without telling you what note (A5, usually) that corresponds to; this is because the real note-number to note-name correspondence would require me tracking key-change meta-events which I don't know how to do. The case with controller names is similar.
sub read_variable_length could really use rewriting to use new unpack options for improved efficiency.

Usage

From the command line, where you'll have renamed this perl script to something like drmidi, and chmod a+rx'd it, and where you are analyzing a file named chimes.mid, for example:

drmidi chimes.mid

On a Mac (hence no command line), open the .pl file in MacPerl and save it as a droplet. From then on you can drop MIDI files onto it. Note that the output might be so long as to overflow the MacPerl's output window's scrollback buffer. My guess is that if you add this:

die "Can't divert STDOUT" unless open(STDOUT, ">stdout.txt");

as the second line of the perl script, it'll magically divert the output to stdout.txt. Good luck.

Availability & Distribution

Get your copy of the latest release here:

dr_midi.pl -- about 18 K.

This program is released under the GNU Public License:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

To see a copy of the GNU General Public License, see http://www.ling.nwu.edu/~sburke/gnu_release.html or write to the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>, 1998-03-08