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Are there any GUI programs available on Ubuntu that can be used to edit MIDI files?

4 Answers 4

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MuseScore can edit MIDI files. MuseScore is already available in the Universe repositories, so you can install it with

sudo apt install musescore

However, the Universe often contains outdated versions of programs. If you want to have the latest version, you can add the MuseScore PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mscore-ubuntu/mscore-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install musescore

The PPA works with all versions of Ubuntu 16.04 and above.

Update: the musescore package no longer exists in Ubuntu 20.04. However, the similarly-named musecore3 package looks like it's more-or-less the same thing. Therefore:

sudo apt install musescore3

I don't know if there are any PPAs for Ubuntu 20.04, but I suspect you could install a SNAP package or a FlatPak package.

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  • You believe, or you know?
    – Anon
    Aug 12, 2014 at 1:06
  • I'm 90% sure it can. I haven't used it in a while (and I was using windows at the time), but I remember being able to do so. Aug 12, 2014 at 1:15
  • I have tested that PPA works on Ubuntu 16.04. It does work.
    – James
    Aug 2, 2016 at 2:41
  • Also, I don't think that MuseScore can edit MIDI files.
    – James
    Aug 22, 2016 at 3:28
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You may look at:

Also on the Audacity wiki page it's said that the MIDI support in Audacity is buggy, but there is a list of tools for working with MIDI provided:

  • Musescore (Cross-platform, Open Source)
  • Tuxguitar (Cross-platform, Open Source)
  • Rosegarden (Linux, Open Source)
  • Anthem (Linux, Open Source, requires KDE)
  • Red Dot Forever - very simple Windows program that just records to a MIDI file
  • Other free Windows/Linux programs
    • abcmidi - abc2midi converts abc notation to midi and midi2abc converts midi to abc notation (Cross-platform, Open Source)
    • midicomp - converts midi to text file and back again (Cross-platform, Open Source)
  • Not linux
    • Finale Notepad (Windows and Mac OS X)
    • Anvil Studio (Windows) (free version is feature-limited)
    • MU.LAB (Windows and Mac OS X) (free version is feature-limited)
    • Melody Assistant (Windows and Mac OS X) (free version is feature-limited)

List taken from http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Midi

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  • Melody Assistant works on Linux as well (natively, of course). Sep 13, 2014 at 0:36
  • Unfortunately, those links are broken after the recent push from Canonical towards Snap. Mar 11, 2023 at 17:55
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Beyond all those already mentioned tools, I'd like to cite a couple more:

  • MidiEditor - GUI tool using Qt5.
  • midicsv - Converts MIDI files to CSV, preserving all information. (As opposed to abcmidi which is a lossy conversion.)
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I used LMMS to edit MIDI files, it was easy to use unlike other tools because you can see the notes positions on a virtual keyboard. You can delete, move or add notes. It is also possible to delete or move several notes at once with the selection tool.

There is also a list of other tools here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_MIDI_editors_and_sequencers

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