One of the Mudcat regulars has developed a program called MIDI2text, which converts midis into a text form which allows people to post their midis to the forum in ASCII and abc. The abc part was just a quick and dirty add-on. The counterpart program is Text2MIDI, which converts the red ASCII back into a binary midi. The abc conversion bit has three main drawbacks:
  • non-printable note values - but it's usually of the simple A7/4G5/4 variety
  • barlines in wrong place (takes no account of anacrusis) leading to many ties across barlines. These are rendered as G|-G rather than G-|G
  • initial rests before anacrusis are added to pickup note length - hence the A301/30 at the start of Alexander's Hornpipe.
This means that almost anything acquired this way has to be re-edited before it is much use. But the midi re-conversion seems to work satisfactorily.
If you want to find more of these go to the main forum page http://www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm and type some text from the midi header  into the DIGITRAD AND FORUM SEARCH box - Timebase: or microsec/crotchet. Be prepared for a long wait - there are loads of them in the forum.
 
There are also plenty of conventional hand-made abcs too - here for instance: http://www.mudcat.org.thread.cfm?ThreadID=23672 Again you could search for them by typing say X: in the search box 
 
MIDI file: alexhor1.mid
 
Timebase: 120
 
TimeSig: 12/8 12 8
Key: D
Tempo: 175 (342857 microsec/crotchet)
Name: Melody
Start
0539 1 69 100 0060 0 69 000 0001 1 71 100 0060 0 71 000 0000 1 73 100 0060 0 73 000 0000 1 74 100 0120 0 74 000 0000 1 69 100 0060 0 69 000 0000 1 66 100 0120 0 66 000 0000 1 69 100 0060 0 69 000 0000 1 62 100 0120 0 62 000 0000 1 69 100 etc
0120 0 79 000 0000 1 76 100 0060 0 76 000 0000 1 73 100 0120 0 73 000 0000 1 74 100 0060 0 74 000 0000 1 76 100 0120 0 76 000 0000 1 74 100 0060 0 74 000 0000 1 74 100 0120 0 74 000 0000 1 73 100 0060 0 73 000 0000 1 74 100 0180 0 74 000
End

This program is worth the effort of learning it.
 
To download the March 10 MIDItext 98 software and get instructions on how to use it  click here www1.tpgi.com.au/users/afostes/miditext.html"
 
ABC format:
 
X:1
T:Melody
M:12/8
Q:1/4=175
K:D
A301/30B14/15c31/30|-c/60d119/60A21/20F119/60A14/15D119/60A21/20d119/60e61/60| etc
 
Wassail! V 
----- Original Message -----
From: John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 4:10 PM
Subject: Re: [abcusers] non-standard note-lengths

> | ... How about this one I got from the =
> | Mudcat Cafe? It has been automatically converted from a midi (allegedly =
> | entered from notation, not played on  a MIDI keyboard). abcMIDIfier =
> | plays it without any qualms, but I've got nothing that would even =
> | attempt to print it.
> |
> | X: 164
> | T:Alexander's Hornpipe
> | M:12/8
> | L:1/4
> | Q:1/4=3D175
> | K:D
> | A301/30B14/15c31/30-|
> | c/60d119/60A21/20F119/60A14/15D119/60A21/20d119/60e61/60-|
> | e/30f119/60d14/15c21/10d14/15A91/30e119/60f-|
> ...
>
> That's pretty funny.  It's also obvious what's going on.   Most  midi
> input  programs  have  ways  to avoid this, basically be rounding the
> time values to the nearest multiple of a time unit, but  whoever  did
> this obviously didn't bother with such niceties.
>
> Meanwhile; I've looked around on www.mudcat.org,  and  couldn't  find
> any  abc  tunes at all.  Where did you find this one?  It sounds like
> they might be a good source of pathological abc for testing purposes.
>
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