Midi2lua May 2026

Turning MIDI notes into executable code for games, visuals, and custom DAW tools.

Want a boss in your RPG to cast spells on specific beats of the background music? Convert the MIDI percussion track to Lua. When the Lua clock hits tick 1920 , spawn the fireball. It is deterministic and perfectly synced.

# Convert your MIDI file midi2lua my_song.mid --output my_song.lua If you are working in a restricted environment (like a Roblox plugin), you can use a pure Lua MIDI parser. Simply load the binary MIDI file as a string and decode the variable-length values. midi2lua

function love.update(dt) -- Convert real time to ticks (simplified) current_tick = current_tick + (dt * (bpm / 60) * ticks_per_beat)

I use midi2lua to control DMX lights. I draw the "chase" pattern in a MIDI clip (C4 = Red, D4 = Blue), convert it to Lua, and let the script run the light show. No expensive lighting software required. A Simple Example (Love2D) Assume you have a file called song.lua that was generated by midi2lua . Turning MIDI notes into executable code for games,

Instead of hardcoding noteOn(60, 100) a thousand times, you feed your MIDI file into midi2lua , and it outputs a table like this:

-- Output from midi2lua { ticks_per_beat = 480, tracks = { { -- Track 1: Piano { tick = 0, type = "note_on", note = 60, velocity = 100 }, { tick = 120, type = "note_off", note = 60, velocity = 64 }, { tick = 240, type = "note_on", note = 64, velocity = 95 } } } } 1. Rhythm Games (Roblox / Love2D) If you are building a Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero clone in Roblox (Luau) or Love2D, timing is everything. midi2lua allows your level designers to compose in FL Studio or Ableton, then drop the exported file into your game’s asset pipeline. When the Lua clock hits tick 1920 , spawn the fireball

for _, track in ipairs(midi_data.tracks) do for _, event in ipairs(track) do if event.tick <= current_tick and not event.triggered then if event.type == "note_on" then playSound(noteToFrequency(event.note)) end event.triggered = true end end end end Most midi2lua converters are command-line tools or simple Python/Lua scripts.