When “Bard Midi Player” first launched, the performance system was very different. There was only one instrument, the harp, and rather than being given a proper keyboard we were supposed to bind every note to a slot on our hotbar. That’s right, you played music by pressing buttons on your hotbar!
The harp, like it does today, had 37 notes, from C3 to C6, so users were told to arrange their midis so that all their notes were in this range. C3 to C6 was the “readable range” for BMP, and it would ignore any notes outside of it.
Over time, though, other instruments were added, some of which, like the piano and lute, played notes outside of the C3-C6 octave range. On top of that, there was a growing scene of players using multiple bards to play together. There needed to be a way to specify in your midi what the intended instrument for a part was, as well as what the intended “readable octave range” was meant to be. Thus the “BMP Format” was created.
Even as other bard performance programs started popping up, the existing library of songs being shared around were largely already in this format, so they simply adopted it rather than try to create a competing standard. This means that even if BMP is not your program of choice, you should still follow the rules of this format.
The names you pick for your tracks is the core of what makes a midi properly formatted for BMP. Each performer will have one track assigned to them, and the name of that track tells them what instrument they will be playing as well as what octave range in the midi they should be reading.
Optionally, track 0 may be a “control track”, containing no notes but all the data for things like tempo changes, time and key signature, program changes, and so on. If you have a control track, you may name it whatever you wish, and it’s a good place to add your signature to a midi if you intend to share it. Otherwise, you may use track 0 freely for the first instrument in your midi.
Properly named tracks in BMP format.
As mentioned above, the default “readable” range is C3-C6. Unless you specify otherwise, this is the range that your performance program will look for, and it will ignore all notes outside of that. What you could do is assign the instrument and then shift all your notes up or down until it’s in the C3-C6 range, but not only is that more work, but your midi will sound nothing like your actual performance.
What I would instead recommend is keeping the notes in the actual octave range of the in-game instrument you’re giving it to, and then shift the lower instruments up by adding “+1” or “+2” to have BMP shift the notes up one or two octaves before playing, or adding “-1” or “-2” to shift notes down one or two octaves.
For reference, here is a list of instruments, as well as their octave and recommended BMP track name.
| Instrument | Octave Range | Recommended Track Name |
|---|---|---|
| Piano | C4-C7 | Piano-1 |
| Harp | C3-C4 | Harp |
| Fiddle | C2-C5 | Fiddle+1 |
| Lute | C2-C5 | Lute+1 |
| Fife | C5-C8 | Fife-2 |
| Flute | C4-C7 | Flute-1 |
| Oboe | C4-C7 | Oboe-1 |
| Panpipes | C4-C7 | Panpipes-1 |
| Clarinet | C3-C6 | Clarinet |
| Trumpet | C3-C6 | Trumpet |
| Saxophone | C3-C6 | Saxophone |
| Trombone | C2-C5 | Trombone+1 |
| Horn | C2-C5 | Horn+1 |
| Tuba | C1-C4 | Tuba+2 |
| Violin | C3-C6 | Violin |
| Viola | C3-C6 | Viola |
| Cello | C2-C5 | Cello+1 |
| Double Bass | C1-C4 | DoubleBass+2 |
| Electric Guitar: Overdriven | C2-C5 | ElectricGuitarOverdriven+1 |
| Electric Guitar: Clean | C2-C5 | ElectricGuitarClean+1 |
| Electric Guitar: Muted | C2-C5 | ElectricGuitarMuted+1 |
| Electric Guitar: Power Chords | C1-C4 | ElectricGuitarPowerChords+2 |
| Timpani | C2-C5 | Timpani+1 |
The Standard Drum Map.
All the instruments above are called “pitched” instruments. A pitched instrument allows you to play certain pitched notes on it. However, not all instruments are pitched, especially percussion ones. You can play a C# on a flute, but you can’t play one on a drum kit.
How do midi files deal with unpitched percussion instruments? By simply assigning them to notes all on channel 9, as shown on the left. This way you can shove in a wide variety of percussion sounds all on one channel! This is certainly convenient for the majority of uses for midi… but unfortunately not for FFXIV, because the bass drum, snare drum, cymbal and bongo are all pitched instruments in-game, given the same 37 notes as every other instrument in the game. As of now, there is no in-game ‘drum kit’ instrument similar to how the midi percussion channel works.
Unlike all the instruments in the section above, you can’t simply check that it’s in the right range and slap a name on the track, you have to actually put in a bit more work. First you’ll need to identify what percussion notes are happening in your song, and which you want to keep. Then you’ll have to pick out a note on an in-game percussion instrument to match that to, and drag all the notes to that note in your midi file.
For example, let’s say our midi has a bass drum (note 36) and a snare drum (note 38). You may decide you want to give these notes to two bards playing bass and snare drum respectively. The first step would be to make sure you have one track labeled “BassDrum” and another labeled “SnareDrum”.
Then you’d need to pick what in-game notes you’d assign to these instruments. Let’s say you pick a low B on the bass drum and a middle G on the snare drum. So you take all your bass drum notes and drag them to a B3 (note 59) on your bass drum track, and you take all your snare drum note and drag them to G4 (note 67) on your snare drum track.
Percussion notes before editing.
Percussion notes after editing.
Of course now your instruments are playing properly, but your midi itself sounds funny. This is why this is usually the LAST step you perform when editing your midis, since you can no longer use the midi itself to properly judge what your performance will sound like.
Keep in mind since we’re missing a full drum kit, there are some drum sounds we can’t properly replicate in-game. For example our cymbals are crashing cymbals, much too loud and harsh to tap every quarter note like a hi-hat cymbal. More on this in a later lesson on percussion.