midi to guitar tab converter

hello, friends! here is a little project i made over the past couple of days. it started with the idea: "i sure would like to do some computer programming" and lo, there exists no shortage of domains where data is presented in one form... but where it would be kind of interesting to convert it to a slighly different form.

this is why the gods invented python.

so here's the code for those interested:

"midi to tab" on my github

and here's my story about it

apparently, MIDI files are full of "messages" that contain byte values for pitch, velocity, and length. When i saw this, i was like: "WOW this looks just like the inside of a tracker!"

now, what may or may not be a coincidence, is that these files are organized into Tracks. each track is a like a different musician's "part" which is played simultaneously to make up a song. Something else reminiscent of tracker-culture: i found that the files i used to test on were filled with a bunch of Empty tracks, the metadata of which contained information about the song:

other than that, i gotta say that the version of this project that i ended up actually doing was not that complicated. get the note data > convert it to a guitar note > put it on the correct line of text file > fill the rest of the lines up with hyphens so the next note you put doesnt overlap.

one obvious flaw of this is that it does not account for the varying length of notes; but then again, neither do 75% of tabs on the most popular guitar websites, so maybe thats okay. besides, i wanted to get done with this quickly to move onto something else.

thank you, bye. (9/10/25)

return 2 my home page