No longer works in macOS Catalina

[craiggrummitt]

Thanks for putting this tool together. The online tool saved the day for me, as the app appears to not work in macOS Catalina (perhaps it's not 64-bit?). Thought you might like to know.

[destroybabylon]

I would also love to see an update for Catalina, as this tool is super useful. Thanks

[kameniko]

Yes, please! It is really useful!

[scotttroyer]

Hi Lars! People love your app. I blogged about it a while ago after finding it really useful myself. I get requests probably once a week now asking for Catalina support. Just thought I'd let you know there appears to be demand. Thanks!

[hessismore]

Hey, great app, super useful. I was hoping to have it working on Catalina (64-bit). Meanwhile are there any alternatives?

[boredjames]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE UPDATE IT FOR CATALINA

[AlanYost]

Works really well on Catalina for me - Version: 10.15.5 (19F96). I used the web browser option. https://larkob.github.io/GB2MIDI/index.html

[jonblower]

If you're happy to use the Terminal, you can just use the underlying Perl script. This works fine in Catalina, as far as I can tell.

• Download the Perl script gb2midi.pl from this GitHub repo (direct link). You could put it anywhere, but maybe it's most useful in the directory where GB puts its loops
• Create the .aif loop as instructed in the README
• To extract the midi, open a Terminal window and enter perl gb2midi.pl my_loop.aif my_loop.mid

(This assumes that the .aif file is in the same directory as the Perl script.)

[Sford4]

Very useful app, Catalina would be appreciated!

[sokobania]

I agree with jonblower. The current version can work with Catalina. More precisely, here is what I did:

Note that ~ refers to my home directory /Users/jack.

• Safari: Download GB2MIDI.zip
• Finder: Expand the zip file : double click /Users/jack/Downloads/GB2MIDI.zip to create /Users/jack/Downloads/GB2MIDI.app
• Finder: Move the app : move /Users/jack/Downloads/GB2MIDI.app into /Applications/GB2MIDI.app
• Finder: Create the destination directory for your MIDI files, e.g. /Users/jack/Music/MIDI
• Garageband: Create the .aif loop as instructed in the README
• Terminal: Type : ls -ltr ~/"Library/Audio/Apple Loops/User Loops/SingleFiles/"
  • => this will list your loops (with the most recent displayed last)
• Since the Perl script gb2midi.pl (embedded inside the application) is executable and begins with the right shebang, you can then type (on one line):
• Terminal: Type: /Applications/GB2MIDI.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts/gb2midi.pl ~/"Library/Audio/Apple Loops/User Loops/SingleFiles/myPrettyLoop.aif" ~/"Music/MIDI/myPrettyLoop.mid"
  • => you get the MIDI file from your loop in your MIDI directory !

Note that, since the directory names Apple Loops and User Loops contain a space character,

• either they must be surrounded by quote characters:
  • ~/"Library/Audio/Apple Loops/User Loops/SingleFiles/myPrettyLoop.aif"
• either the space character must be quoted with a backslash character
  • ~/Library/Audio/Apple\ Loops/User\ Loops/SingleFiles/myPrettyLoop.aif.

Note that the whole app itself GB2MIDI.app is not really needed (since it does not run under Catalina). If you prefer, you can just download the Perl script gb2midi.pl as mentioned by jonblower and adapt the Terminal command.

[hariby]

The app didn't run on Big Sur 11.1 (20C69) either,

“GB2MIDI” needs to be updated. The developer of this app needs to update it to work with this version of macOS. Contact the developer for more information.

but the browser version still works well. https://larkob.github.io/GB2MIDI/index.html

[Brotuulaan]

Is this essentially an audio-to-midi converter? I had a friend play a piano part for one of my projects in Ableton, and we ran into the whole GrageBand/midi problem. The file is too complex for audio converters to handle (it takes so much work to fix the resulting file that we might as well program the midi file from scratch, and then it would still lack all the nuance of a live performance). I found this listed on a number of sites, but I keep seeing the .aif starting point and wondering what makes this any different from other audio converters out there.

[jonblower]

@Brotuulaan - I don't think this is audio-to-midi. The .aif files in GarageBand can contain audio or midi loops, but GB doesn't provide a way of easily extracting midi information to a standard midi file. That's what this tool is about. I assume any audio information in the loop would be ignored.

[scotttroyer]

@Brotuulaan @jonblower That is correct—GB2MIDI only extracts the MIDI data from the .aif file. It cannot convert audio to MIDI. There are programs that can convert audio to MIDI, but results I've seen never quite capture all the nuances. Some polishing of the MIDI is always needed.