I have a small MIDI driven street organ.  It is fully chromatic, so it
can play orchestral music and swing found on the Internet really nicely
(at least to my ears).  This music is much richer than arrangements
made for traditional street organs which are often necessarily limited
by the roll or book music player, the absence of many sharps and flats,
and the stop concept.

The problem is that it takes hours to rearrange even a few minutes of
music by hand.  I got 'round this by writing some software to do the
tedious work semi-automatically.  The software can rearrange MIDI music
scored for any instrument, ensemble, or orchestra, making it suitable
for playing on another MIDI driven instrument, such as an organ or a
piano which is MIDI driven, or a MIDI-driven roll punch.

So I wonder if there would be any interest if I polished up the
software to make it usable by other enthusiasts?

This is how it is used.  You define a map of your instrument; what
notes it plays; on which MIDI channel(s); any percussion; registers
(stops); bandmasters; mechanical monkeys or anything else you need to
operate.  Maps for some organs are predefined.  You also define which
instruments of the original score should play on which channels or with
which registers.  Piano or forte stops can be selected according to the
volume (MIDI velocity) through the piece.

The melody, picked out by the software, can be added to a separate
channel if needed.  This is useful when the original score is for
a single instrument.  Bandmasters, monkeys or percussion can be made
to beat the bars, and there are a few other bells and whistles.

Having defined the rules for the rearrangement, you load MIDI files,
and can transpose them before the computer does the rearrangement.
The original and the rearrangement are shown in a window on the music
staves, coloured to identify MIDI channels and with the MIDI velocity
shown too.  You can change the definitions and re-rearrange the piece
again and again if needed.  The output is on a single MIDI track as
required by most MIDI controllers.

If you could use such software for your instrument, or if it comes
close to what you might use, please speak up and say if there are any
additional features that you would find helpful.

John Heath