One of the easiest starting places for arranging a solo midi is a song arranged for solo acoustic guitar. Most likely, unless the guitar song is really fancy, the vast majority of the notes will be in the range of C2-C5, perfect for playing in-game on the lute.
For our very first example, we’ll use a song that we have to do practically nothing to it to make it playable. Our first example will be “The Moon Represents My Heart” by Teresa Teng.
♫ 月亮代表我的心 The Moon Represents My Heart (Solo Guitar Arrangement - 吉他)
When we open up the midi file for this song, the first thing we should do is use ctrl + a to select all the notes in the song. On the left side of our screen, we’ll see all the notes being played visualized on the keyboard.
What luck, all the notes are played in the range of C2-C5, with no notes going above or below it! This makes it perfect for playing on the lute in-game, so we will select that as our instrument.
Our next step is to go to the track list. There are two tracks, but the second track doesn’t actually have anything playing on it, so we can safely delete it. We then take the first track and give it a name.
We’re giving the track the name “Lute+1”. We’re doing this because we intend to use the lute instrument, and the “+1” signifies that all the notes need to be shifted up 1 octave to be in the ‘standard’ range of C3-C6. Refer to Volume 1, Chapter 3 for the recommended track names for each instrument, as well as what octave range they play in.
And with that, we’ve finished our very first arrangement. Go to File > Save as… and save your midi file in whatever folder you put your finished midi files.
That was way too easy, though, so let’s switch to a different song, one where we actually have to do something. Our next song will be “Canon in D” by Johann Pachelbel.
Canon in D - Pachelbel - Guitar Tab
Once again, the first step is to get an idea of the octave range of our song, so we use ctrl + a to select all the notes in our song, and we see the following…
There’s some notes being played above a C5, which means not all of our notes can be played on the 37 note range that FFXIV gives us. We’re going to actually have to do some work. Our next step is to scroll through the song and find the offending measures that go too high.
In our case, we have a single measure that has only three notes that are out of range. If we can fix these three notes, then we’ve got ourselves a playable midi! The question is HOW should we fix these notes? This is not an easy question question to answer, and depending on who you ask or the specific situation they might do any of the following: