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[cmspice]

So It's like spring break and stuff. I'm trying to learn some new languages (though I find myself doing everything in java again) and make myself a keyboard simulator (like guitar hero style, or really more like keyboard mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboardmania). There's already one out there called doremi that's rather poorly done and rather Japanese. It uses .pms files and offers a midi to pms converter.

In any case, I'm wondering if midi files are appropriate to convert directly into rhythm game data? I was hoping using midi files would easily give me a huge depository of songs to play.  But even the simplest song I've looked up so far have been horribly complicated and span a huge range of pitches (I assumed a change of one in pitch  in the midi files corresponds to one note on the C scale). Moreover, I haven't the faintest idea which pitch corresponds to what note on what scale.

Anyone have any thoughts about this?

[David Pittman]

I messed around with MIDI files a couple of years back with the goal of eventually writing a procedural music generator. It never materialized, but I enjoyed learning about the format.

You'd probably want to store some additional metadata about any given MIDI song, like which channel represents the main melody that the player would be performing; but other than that, I don't see why the format wouldn't suffice for your purposes.

The range of notes is 0-127, where 60 (or 0x3C) is defined as middle C. As you correctly surmised, each increment is a semitone or half-step, so 61 is C# above middle C. (Make sure you're not looking at pitch bend events, where the range is 0-16383 and maps to a variable range depending on the instrument, usually +/- 2 semitones.)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

"Moreover, I haven't the faintest idea which pitch corresponds to what note on what scale. "

The interesting thing about the scales is that they aren't linear, but kind of logarithmic. Here's a chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Music_frequency_diatonic_scale-3.svg

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

You may also want to look into the freeware program formerly known as Piano Hero, currently known as Synthesia.

[cmspice]

Hey thanks. That helps.

I was not aware of Synthesia. Oh well, I shouldn't let that discourage me. It's really (another) learning project anyways.

[Core Xii]

Midi sounds like crap. If you wanna go that route, go with modules instead.