Bars & Pipes

File Format
Name	Bars & Pipes .song
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Bars & Pipes .song
Extension(s)	.song

Bars & Pipes .song is a proprietary file format used by the Bars & Pipes Professional MIDI sequencer software originally developed by Blue Ribbon SoundWorks for the Commodore Amiga platform. The file extension .song encapsulates project data such as track information, MIDI events, tempo maps, patch changes, and user-defined "tools" and configurations.

History

Bars & Pipes was released in the early 1990s and became well known among Amiga musicians for its graphical, modular approach to MIDI sequencing. The .song file format was designed to store the entire state of a Bars & Pipes project, allowing users to save and resume complex musical arrangements and MIDI processing chains.

After Microsoft acquired Blue Ribbon SoundWorks in 1995, development of Bars & Pipes ceased, but the software remains popular among Amiga enthusiasts. The .song format is still used in emulated environments and has been partially reverse-engineered by the retro computing community.

Structure

The .song file format is a binary format containing:

• A list of MIDI tracks, each with timestamped MIDI events.
• Routing and configuration of virtual "tools" (software processors or modifiers).
• Tempo and time signature maps.
• Track names, channel assignments, and other metadata.
• Information on device configurations and user preferences.

Due to its tightly integrated nature with the Bars & Pipes system, the format is not natively compatible with other MIDI sequencing programs.

Compatibility

The .song format is only supported by Bars & Pipes on AmigaOS, including emulated environments such as WinUAE. There is no official support for .song files in modern digital audio workstations (DAWs), but enthusiasts have developed some tools to extract MIDI data or convert projects for archival purposes.

External links

• http://www.amigaforever.com/ Amiga Forever – Emulation suite for running Amiga software
• http://aminet.net/package/mus/midi/BarsPipes-demo Demo version on Aminet
• http://aminet.net/search?query=bars+%26+pipes Bars & Pipes download on Aminet