MIDI Song Sources

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Nicholas
Posts: 13132

Post by Nicholas »

Synthesia can play any MIDI song. MIDI songs aren't quite the same as MP3s, WAVs, or tracks on your CDs. For starters, they can only contain simple instrument notes (with a few fancy bits like guitar pitch bending) but nothing at all like a vocals track. So, they usually sound more like a karaoke version of the song (no words) than anything. It's also pretty tricky to convert an MP3 directly into a MIDI without it sounding pretty bad. So, it usually takes a music arranger to put the notes in a MIDI file by hand.

Still, it's pretty easy to find MIDI versions of your favorite songs. You can usually just search Google for the song title or author name and then just add the word MIDI to your search. You'll usually find a lot of ring-tone sites. Most cell phones just before smart phones started becoming popular used MIDI technology as their ringers.

One site offering public domain MIDI songs of classical music is The Mutopia Project. There is a lot of piano-only music there, though it's all very advanced.
roudy000
Synthesia Multiple Donor!
Posts: 15

Post by roudy000 »

I take a lot of midi from http://www.8notes.com/

There is midi and sheet there.

I have a lot more. Will be posting the rest later!

Roudy
sori
Posts: 2

Post by sori »

this site is good, tons of video game music :
http://www.vgmusic.com

a site, also featuring tabs:
http://www.videogamejam.com


other sites:
http://www.vanbasco.com
Paparazzi
Posts: 16

Post by Paparazzi »

Ok, so, I had sent this link to Nicholas and thought that maybe it would be usefull to the folks here...

A link to a site with plenty of midi and kar files (English). The files have to be downloaded individually though!

http://www.supermidikaraoke.com/index2. ... I-Karaoke/

I had download about 1135 (45MB) files from another site ... mainly the same stuff as from this site.
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mariocast
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 19

Post by mariocast »

Classical Music Archives - http://www.classicalarchives.com

Limit of 5 downloads per day without a paid membership.
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mariocast
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 19

Post by mariocast »

Just came back from the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy and learned about the Minnesota International Piano e-Competition.

They facilitate the preliminary rounds of the competition by having applicants record their audition pieces on a Yamaha Disklavier and they are saved as MIDI files. The applicants are also recorded on video, and the judges watch the videos that are synchronized to the MIDI file that is also played on a Yamaha Disklavier.

So what's neat about this competition is that they make the MIDI files of the competition participants available to download from their website for FREE!

Here's a link to the 2006 participants, but they also have links to 2004 participants, and 2002 participants.

I'm guessing most of the Synthesia users here are beginner pianists, but it's still neat to download these MIDI files and see if you can "hang" with these world-class pianists.
Pabreetzio
Synthesia Multiple Donor!
Posts: 8

Post by Pabreetzio »

I went looking for a while, trying to find something that could be sight read as if you were playing guitar hero or DDR and I finally found what appears to be a good list of simple songs and a couple levels of more complex ones at http://www.gmajormusictheory.org/Freebies/freebies.html . I think most of these should be bundled with the game. There should not be any copyright problems with these songs either.
Nicholas
Posts: 13132

Post by Nicholas »

(Welcome to the board, Pabreetzio!)

That's actually a pretty good find. I think I'll contact the owner of that site to learn more about the copyrights on those files. Even if the songs are public domain, I'd still have to get the permission of and give credit to the arranger of the pieces.

You're right that they're already organized nicely in order of difficulty and are prime to be included, in full, in the game. The couple songs that I tried out didn't have separate tracks for the left and right hand parts, so I would probably have to do some editing before including them to make them a little more useful to beginner players that want to practice only one hand at a time... otherwise though, that's a very nice collection. I especially like that a few of the songs are arranged more than once at different difficulty levels.
Nicholas
Posts: 13132

Post by Nicholas »

I can report that I've received written permission from the owner of that site to include his songs in the game. He also offered his thanks to you, Pabreetzio, for spreading the word about his site.

It's a very good collection. It will fit in nicely between the early warm-up stuff that Daniel is helping out with and the more advanced Game Music Themes material.

I suspect it will make it into the 0.6.3 release.
bigbeardale
Posts: 3

Post by bigbeardale »

There is a great program called notation composer that you can enter the music notes into and save it as a midi file. I tried it with the b flat scale and the chords in the key of b flat, and it worked fine with Synthesia. Check it out at http://www.notation.com

Dale
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

I use guitar pro 4 and i convert my tabs in midi format. There's a lot of actual songs so ex i have learn billy jean from Michael Jackson i play the bass with the left hand and chords with the right hand i like play with drums...
This songs is easy to play but mastered the grooves is very hard for the bass ;)
Jimmy801
Posts: 1

Post by Jimmy801 »

This was exactly what I was looking for! A list of all midi James Bond songs! Here is the link: http://midis.jamesbond-online.com/
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

well if u schearch from drum beat just convert gp3or4 files in midi then import them in synthesia:
here a free soft similar to guitar pro run on mac beos and windows:
http://www.tuxguitar.com.ar/
And here a link for download GUITAR PRO FILES:(they are free)
http://www.mysongbook.com/
personnally i have dl an archive on torrent and there's 50 000 SONGS

so just dl and listen and i am pretty sure u ll find a upbeat with other instruments in this collection.

Sometimes there's too much tracks in one song so i import the midi in tracktion (but u can use your fav daw)for better editing.
TonE
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/Composers.html
(You can download here any midi file for free. They seem to sell the scores.)
Anadavine
Posts: 15

Post by Anadavine »

Last edited by Anadavine on 05-31-08 12:42 pm, edited 3 times in total.
rob
Posts: 6

Post by rob »

http://www.classicalmidiconnection.com/ is another good one for classical midis. there are no download limits.
TonE
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

Anadavine
Posts: 15

Post by Anadavine »

For everyone who loves disney music: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Park/9711/midis.html
jazzedge
Posts: 1

Post by jazzedge »

If you are looking to learn Jazz Piano, http://www.jazzpianolessons.com/ has MIDI files with the membership.

Granted, they are not free, but I post this in case people are looking for some high-quality jazz piano resources.
Choul
Posts: 487

Post by Choul »

On http://parlorsongs.com/catalog/sitemap.php

you can find some old songs in midi, most of them as piano-songs between 1878-1951. Level is intermediate to (very) difficult.
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