Midi2lua _best_ May 2026

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

If you are tired of guessing note timings or hardcoding arrays of integers, give it a try. Compose in the piano roll. Code in Lua. Let midi2lua handle the handshake. Have you used MIDI with Lua before? Are you building a rhythm game or a synth tool? Let me know in the comments below.

-- main.lua local midi_data = require("song") -- A simple scheduler local current_tick = 0 local bpm = 120 local ticks_per_beat = midi_data.ticks_per_beat midi2lua

If you’ve ever built a rhythm game, programmed a generative visualizer, or tried to sync a light show to a backing track, you know the pain of manually transcribing note data. You have a beautiful melody in your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), but your Lua script just sees a list of numbers.

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,

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.

-- 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. Code in Lua

# 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.