Connect MIDI piano to Excel

[RishiA]

Hi all,

This is my first post.

I want to be able to play a single note on my piano and have Excel play it and show me which note I'm playing in real-time (e.g. a C or G etc).

As I see it, this would require the following steps:
1. Have Excel recognize my piano MIDI signals
2. Store the MIDI info sent from the piano in Excel
3. Convert this info to sound and text (i.e. the note to be displayed)
4. Display the note in a cell on the spreadsheet

I'm hoping that this can be done, but have no clue as to how. Also; I have no experience with VBA or MIDI processing, but some experience with programming. If you post any code, would you mind making your explanation noob-friendly?

Thanks,
Rishi

 

[AhoyNC]

Not sure how you would do this with Excel, but have you looked at the open source program Musescore.
Take a look on their home page under getting started Part 4 enter notes with MIDI.

MuseScore | Free music composition and notation software

 

[L. Howard]

This might be a place to start.

Record audio and video notes - OneNote - Office.com

I once created a slot machine in Excel and when ever a jack pot was won there were some flashing cells and a audio I recorded of coins falling into the slot machine tray.

I used a plug in mike and recorded me pouring a large amount of loose change into a coffee can. That was stored in a sound-wave thing (not sure that is the correct name) and it had an icon like do-dad with a likeness of a speaker in it. This icon was numbered or named similar as a shape may be and you could call with code.

If you want Excel to "hear" your note and then recall the proper sound-wave to match with C or G and then display a C or G, I don't know if that can be done.

I believe I was using Excel 2003 at the time, the version that had the world mapping feature. Long gone now. So, if you have 2010 or 2013 who knows.

Regards,
Howard

 

[StephenCrump]

Sorry, can't resist ....

There are some very smart people on this forum, and I can only aspire to acquire some of the detailed technical knowledge on display.

But Howard, you're in a super-league of your own, beyond my ken I'm afraid!

sound-wave thing

icon like do-dad

 

[RishiA]

Thanks for the replies.

AhoyNC: I actaully have Musescore, but this is something I would like te have in Excel.

L. Howard:

 

[RishiA]

Thanks for the replies.

AhoyNC: I actaully have Musescore, but this is something I would like te have in Excel.

L. Howard:

Clicked on submit by accident.

Howard: Pre-recording is cool, but not what I'm looking for. From what I've read so far a MIDI signal contains information about the note being played on a device (in this case my MIDI piano). If I can get Excel to filter out this info from the signal, then there is no need for Excel to actually "hear" the note. But that's the second step in my first post. The first step is getting my piano to communicate with Excel. I've been searching my brains out and the only lead that came up is using the MIDI API. Does anyone know if (and how) this can be done with VBA? If not, should I resort to learning C++?

 

[Cool blue]

Yes, it's not about capturing sound it's about midi event messages. There is a section in MSDN which might be of use

 

[RishiA]

Hi Cool blue,

In my last post to Howard, I was referring to the Microsoft Win32 API on the page you linked to. I have a feeling that this info could be useful if I know how to actually implement it.

Do you know how this is done?

 

[RishiA]

Hi everyone,

For those interested; I may be one step closer to my goal of making Excel read MIDI input from my piano.

My thought at first was that my piano should communicate with Excel. Finding info on the web about how to do this is near to impossible as you probably can imagine (otherwise I would not be asking for help on this forum

Today I realized that it's not the piano that I want Excel to communicate with, but the USB port! Quite obvious of course, but I somehow forgot this link between the piano and Excel. A short search on how to do this with VBA yielded the following result, which I think could be quite useful.

I'll try to implement and post back with my findings.

If anyone else manages to get this working before I post back, please let me know.

Thanks,
Rishi

 

[RishiA]

Hi all,

I've followed the instructions on the page I linked to in my last post. Created the spreadsheet with buttons, inserted the code and connected the piano with a midi interface cable to my usb-port, but can't seem to get it to write data to the worksheet. I'm not getting any error messages so the macro's must be working. Could this mean that when I press a key on my piano there's no data being stored anywhere? Or does the code not operate like that?

Would appreciate it if anyone who's proficient at VBA could enlighten me about what this macro actually does.

Thanks,
Rishi