Getting a Midi File from Scaler

Hi all … my question applies to either Scaler for the PC/Mac or Scaler for the iPad.

I have seen some similar questions on here but not exactly.

I am trying to get a standard midi file out of Scaler. On the iPad, when I use Midi Capture I can save and download a file but the file does not have an extension. When I add .mid to the file I can open it in something like Windows Media Player and it plays the file pretty much like it sounded in Scaler. This surprised me because a midi file isn’t supposed to have an audio component, just midi data. If I try to import the file into another program I get an error message that the file isn’t the correct format. Does anyone know what format these files are in?

I am beginning to think that the only way to get a true midi file is to take the captured midi from Scaler into a DAW and then export it as a midi file. Does anyone know a better way?

Thanks in advance.

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‘SMF’ MIDI files confirm to the 40+ year old standard, and are normally either type 0 or type 1.
If you select a song and drag it to section C in Scaler, highlight it all (or just one chord) you can then drag it to the desktop.
a

It should have the extension .mid - if not something went wrong.

If you look at the file with a hex editor it will look like this


(You can see the ‘header’ MThd and the name of the file as given to it by Scaler).

If you drag that from the desktop into a compatible DAW it should appear in a track. Here it is with Cakewalk.

Mids don’t makes any sound until they are input into a synthesizer plug in (such as TTS in Cakewalk), but it could be any VST.
If you get a sound when you double click a mid, it is because the extension has been associated with a program, and this might be a ‘player’ which has some facilities for rendering and playing audio. This normally only makes much sense if the file is so called ‘General Midi’, but most people here won’t be using that.

If you right click in file explorer on the mid and then ‘Properties’ it will show you the linked file (here Midi Yodi)

d

So in answer to your question, you shouldn’t need a DAW to capture a Mid (and remember DAW’s don’t hold them as MID’s anyway) juts drag and drop selected chords from Section C to the desktop and you’re done.

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How are you saving this file?

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@panda Thanks for all of this great information. I had no idea you could just drag a midi capture out to the desktop.

@jamieh your question led me to the answer of how I was saving a midi file with no extension. I was doing a midi capture in the normal way but when Scaler asked me if I wanted to rename the file, I just typed in a filename with no extension.

I am beginning to suspect that my problem may not be with Scaler’s midi files. It may be with the program I am trying to use to read the midi file being very particular about the format of the midi file.

Hi @OldTimerBill,

We have noticed when you perform a midi capture and rename before exporting that Scaler is currently dropping off the .mid extension. We can confirm that this is not the expected behavior and that the team is looking into this.
The workaround for now is to either add the .mid extension as you are renaming it inside Scaler or to add it to the filename once exported.
This bug should be rectified shortly.

Hi James … I didn’t even think about this renaming a file dropping the extension being a bug but it is impressive to me that you picked up on that. Thanks for all the Scaler team does. You really do produce a great product.