Turn a MIDI file into sheet music.

Most converters show you a staff and nothing else. This page shows the file's own header first, because that header is what decides whether the staff is trustworthy. Three values matter:

Ticks per quarter note (PPQ). Every note in a MIDI file is stored as a whole number of ticks, not seconds. Without the PPQ value those numbers mean nothing, and every duration on the page would be a guess. If the report says 480 PPQ, the file counts 480 ticks per quarter note, and a duration of 960 ticks is a half note.

Format and track count. A format 0 file is one single track holding every event in order. A format 1 file has one tempo map plus separate tracks per instrument. Both engrave fine here — but a format 0 file that was written by a simple generator usually carries no more than note events.

Tempo and time signature — present or absent. These are optional meta events. When the report says None, the file genuinely does not state a tempo or a meter, and this page falls back to 120 BPM and 4/4 so it can draw anything at all. That fallback is stated in the table instead of being hidden, because it is the single most common reason a MIDI file looks wrong once it reaches a notation app.

The MIDI file format makes tempo and meter optional. A tempo change is a meta event with the type byte 0xFF 0x51; a time signature is 0xFF 0x58. A writer that only cares about notes can skip both and still produce a valid file that every DAW will open and play at its default 120 BPM in 4/4.

We know this from our own code rather than from documentation. The converter on this site writes its files by hand, and this is exactly what it emits:

4D 54 68 64  00 00 00 06  00 00  00 01  01 E0
MThd         header len 6  fmt 0  tracks 1  480 PPQ

00 FF 51 03 ...   tempo event          not written
00 FF 58 04 ...   time-signature event not written
00 FF 2F 00       end of track         written

So a melody exported from an audio-to-MIDI tool arrives with note-on and note-off pairs, an end-of-track marker, and nothing else. Open it in notation software and the software has to invent a tempo, a meter, and a bar line placement. That is why a phrase that sounds like it starts on a downbeat can end up straddling a bar line, and why the same file can look different in two different programs.

You can confirm it in ten seconds: open the file in any hex viewer and search for the bytes FF 51. If they are not there, the tempo is not in the file — no converter can recover it, and anything that claims a specific BPM read it from somewhere else.

Notes are placed on a sixteenth-note grid derived from the file's own PPQ. Notes that sound together become a chord. Repeated notes are kept apart by their event boundaries rather than merged by pitch, so a run like E–E–F–G stays four notes instead of collapsing into a long E.

The key signature is inferred from how much each pitch class is used, then written into the score — change it in the dropdown above if the guess is wrong, and the accidentals are recalculated. The clef follows the register: a part sitting below G3 is drawn in bass clef instead of trailing ledger lines under a treble staff.

Not included, because a MIDI file of this kind does not carry them: dynamics, articulations, slurs, lyrics, instrument names, and part layout for more than one staff. Dense polyphony will engrave, but it will also be hard to read — that is a limitation of one staff, not of the file. Files using SMPTE timecode instead of PPQ are refused outright, since a musical grid cannot be built from frame counts without guessing.

A recording has no notes in it — only pressure over time. Something has to estimate the pitches before any staff can be drawn, and that estimation is the part that decides how good the sheet music will be.

Step one: run the audio through the audio to MIDI converter on this site. It works on one clear melodic line and produces a .mid file in your browser. Step two: bring that file back here and it becomes notation. Both steps run on your device, and no audio or MIDI is uploaded at either stage.

Be clear about what the second step can and cannot fix. It engraves what the MIDI says. If the pitch estimate put a note on the wrong beat, the staff will show that wrong beat faithfully — so check the note events in a DAW first, then engrave. For a full mix with several instruments, neither step is enough; that needs a polyphonic transcription tool and manual repair.

Audio to MIDI converter →

Convert a WAV melody to MIDI →

Need only the tempo? Use the BPM counter →

Coming from a scanned score? Why the MIDI you got back has no meter →