Re: MIDI Input/Invoke

[D Josiah Boothby]

Not being a windows user, I can't really help you with the matter of 
invocation. However, on the matter of midi2ly and translating midi files 
to lilypond, there has been considerable discussion on this list. 
Regarding midi2ly:

> I need to know everything there is to turn a MIDI file into a Lilypond 
> file.

This is something that I, also have found confusing. Part of the problem 
is that midi is a glorified piano roll punch card. Midi is very badly 
suited to music notation, since it's designed -- specifically -- to be a 
set of instructions for the production of sound. Translating this to the 
(relative) simplicity of typography is difficult. I have personally never 
gotten a midi file adequately translated. As mentioned by Graham, many 
people --including me -- find that starting from scratch is probably 
easier than dealing with translation software (such as midi2ly).

However, if you have a substantial body of work, and typing it from 
scratch would be far too time consuming, I would encourage you to evaluate 
MusicXML. I think Recordare has plugins or something of that nature that 
allow Sibelius to output MusicXML. It is probably much easier to go from 
MusicXML to Lilypond than from Midi to Lilypond. Further, there are two 
tools available for this job, both of which seem to have generated 
positive results. I have never used them, but I think they're called 
musicxml2ly and xml2ly. I'm not positive, so search the archive for 
MusicXML.

Good luck,

Josiah