14. Bringing music in

MIDI files

A MIDI file holds notes but no strings or frets. When it opens, Stab makes a track for each part and works out where to play the guitar and bass parts, so they come in as tab you can read and change.

No Stab yet? Open a MIDI file in your browser, as tab, free: nothing to install.

MIDI files

Available on every platform.

Opening a MIDI file

1. Choose Open… (⌘O)Open… (Ctrl+O)Import… from the File menu, or Import a File under Bring a Song In on the home. On the home, under Bring a Song In, choose Import a File.
2. Pick a .mid, .midi or .smf file.

Tracks

Each MIDI track and channel becomes a track, named after the MIDI track (with its channel when one MIDI track holds several), with its instrument, volume and pan.

• Channel 10 becomes a drum track: each General MIDI drum sound on its piece’s lane, with the right technique (a closed or open hi-hat, a rimshot, a bell).
• Guitars and basses (and a part with no instrument set, which is taken for a guitar) become tab. Stab picks a tuning that reaches the part’s lowest note: standard, drop D or drop C, a 7- or 8-string guitar, or a 4- or 5-string bass. Then it frets every note, as Re-fret does.
• Every other instrument (pianos, organs, strings, winds, synths) becomes a keys lane, with every note kept.

Fitting the instrument

Fretting needs notes a guitar can play. A note too low or too high for the tuning is moved by octaves until it fits, and a chord with more notes than the instrument has strings is thinned. A drum sound with no lane on the kit is left out. When any of this happens, Stab says so as the song opens: how many notes were moved by octaves, and how many were left out.

What else comes in

• The tempo map, time signatures and key signatures.
• Markers, as sections.
• Lyrics: lyric events, or a karaoke file’s words (one tagged with “@”). Other text in the file, such as the app that made it, isn’t taken for words.
• Controllers, pitch bend, channel pressure and program changes, as automation lanes.

When a file doesn’t open

• It isn’t a MIDI file.
• It uses SMPTE timing or MIDI format 2, which Stab doesn’t read. Save it from your other app as a format 0 or format 1 file, timed in beats.
• It has no notes.
• The file is damaged.

To write a song out as MIDI, see Exporting MIDI.