Frequently Asked Questions

About this site, and about Mabinogi MML

Do I need to install anything
Do I have to sign in
It sounds different from the game
Can I use my own sound bank
Can I lose my score
What if I am over 2,400 characters
Why only 6 tracks reach the game
How do share links work
How do I write chords
Does it work on a phone
Do triplets survive the import
Can it export mp3
Does it cost anything

Do I need to install anything

No. Open the page and it works — no download, no plugin, no Java or other runtime. All you need is a reasonably recent browser: recent versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari are all fine.

Editing, playback, MIDI import and file export all work without signing in.

Only sharing requires a Google account. The reason is set out in the privacy policy: as a content storage service, once this site receives a copyright infringement notice and removes the content, it is legally required to notify the uploader — and there is no way to fulfil that obligation without a way to contact them.

It sounds different from the game

First check which sound bank the site is using. The settings drawer (Settings in the title bar) shows which one is currently loaded.

What this site loads by default is a player-made imitation sound pack — close to the real thing, but not the game's own files, which is what keeps it clear of copyright problems. It does differ from the game's actual instruments, particularly in the release tails and the volume balance of certain instruments.

Three other common causes:

Velocity is not set. The volume balance between tracks in the game is not necessarily the same as the defaults here.
The wrong instrument. The instrument dropdown on the tab decides the sound; the @ command inside the MML does not take effect on this site.
The tempo was overridden by another track. t is shared by the whole piece — see the MML syntax guide.

Can I use my own sound bank

Yes. The settings drawer can load your own .dls, .sf2 or .sf3 file.

Once you change the sound bank, the built-in instrument definition file stops making sense. That definition file records the numbers inside the built-in sound pack; used to filter somebody else's bank it just looks broken — the list fills up with names that do not match anything. After changing the sound bank, load the matching .def as well, or load none at all and let it list every instrument.

Can I lose my score

By default it is saved automatically: after every edit the score is stored in your browser, so a refresh or a restart picks it up again. Nothing is uploaded to the server — unless you press Share yourself.

Autosave can be turned off in the settings drawer. With it off, a refresh really does lose everything, so export to .mml yourself using File.

Changing the language reloads the page, but the score survives (the undo history is cleared, and there is no way around that).

What if I am over 2,400 characters

2,400 is the limit for each track, and it is a hard limit in the game. A track over its limit turns red, but the editor never stops you carrying on editing.

Three approaches, from gentlest to harshest:

Try Lossless first. It changes only the spelling, never the sound — collapsing repeated length commands into l, turning octave jumps into < and >, and so on. Hand-written scores usually save a fair amount.
Use the three note-length rules inside Optimise in the toolbar. This is the only place in the editor that changes the sound, and what it moves is note length — holding a note so it swallows the rest after it (c4r4 → c2), or shortening it so it creates one (c2 → c4r4). No note's start time moves at all, so the rhythm cannot be broken; what changes is how legato or staccato it feels. Fill the gap saves the most and leaves the least articulation, Partial fill keeps a little of it, and Tail rest gives the tail back as a breathing point. One at a time, and it reports how many characters it saved.
Delete things. If neither of the above is enough, the only way left is fewer notes — repeated passages, ornaments that are too dense, inner voices nobody can really hear.

Only one track over, while the score as a whole would fit? There is a fifth method in the Optimise box: Regroup. It moves notes out of the track that is over its limit and into the free space on the other tracks of the same score — not a single note changes, so it sounds exactly the same. It barely saves characters (measured within ±10); its value is getting every track under its own limit. The cost is that it scrambles how the three tracks were laid out, so it is best used as the last step before exporting; its scope is "current score" only.

A score that came from a MIDI import is especially worth running Lossless on first. The importer writes things out literally — one l for the whole track, no merged rests, no rewritten spellings, so that what you get is easy to edit — which means step 1 usually does save real characters on it, measured at 1–18%.

Why only 6 tracks reach the game

Because Mabinogi's Blank Score is exactly 6 tracks: one melody plus five chord tracks.

This site's editor opens 15 tabs, and the other nine are there to work in — parking material while you arrange, comparing two versions, spreading out a MIDI import before you pick from it. The clipboard and sharing only send the first 6 tracks.

A tab's position is its identity, so drag to reorder and bring the six you want to the front; the content and the instrument move with it.

Sign in, press Share in the title bar, and you get a URL that looks like /mml/xxxxxxxx-…. Give it to a friend and what they open is your score, loaded into the editor, ready to play or carry on editing.

A few things to know:

A quota of 10 shares a day.
What is sent is the first 6 tracks, each capped at 2,400 characters.
Shared content is visible only to whoever has the URL, and is not indexed by search engines.
Sharing identical content again returns the same URL rather than creating a pile of duplicate links.
The settings drawer lists everything you have shared, and lets you delete any of it.
A share link carries no language — whoever receives it sees it in their own language, not yours.

How do I write chords

One track can only sound one note at a time, so a real chord has to be split across tracks: the melody carries the melody, and the chord tracks take one note each.

This site used to support the [ceg]4 form as a convenient way to try out harmony, and it is now retired. It is not the game's syntax and would not play once pasted back, and the price it demanded was that the whole editor had to make way for it — a track using chords could not be edited in the piano roll, transposition worked only by whole octaves, tempo changes could not be split, and it could not be merged into anything else.

When an old score is pasted in, [ and ] are dropped along with the other unrecognised characters, with a single notice; the note letters inside are read one after another as single notes — so [ceg] becomes "do re mi sounding in sequence" rather than a chord. To restore the harmony, paste those notes into separate chord tracks.

Does it work on a phone

Yes, and it is the whole editor. Drawing notes, moving them, changing lengths, inserting and deleting bars, triplets, instruments, export, sharing — all of it works on a phone. It just works differently: tap to select a note, press and hold to pick it up and drag it; once something is selected a control panel rises from the bottom of the screen, where sticks nudge position and length and the note menu lives.

The full finger-by-finger guide is in writing music on a phone or tablet. A long score does go faster on a desktop, but for a short piece, fixing a few notes, or adjusting something while you are out, a phone is entirely enough.

Do triplets survive the import

They do. Importing snaps every note to a 1/32-note grid and a triplet does not land on that grid — so the importer finds the triplets first, places those three notes on the exact thirds, and only then snaps everything else to the grid. All five bases are recognised: whole, half, quarter, eighth and 16th notes.

Hand-written MML has no restriction either — write c12 d12 e12 and you have a triplet that plays perfectly. The piano roll can do it too: draw a quarter note (or select the notes that were already there) and right click → Make triplets, which cuts each note into three equal parts. The details are in the right-click menus section of the reference page. Those five bases are exactly what the importer looks for, so an imported triplet is identical to one you cut yourself.

Triplets played in by hand are not picked up, and that is deliberate. The test is "closer to the third than to any grid cell" — anything past that line is snapped to the grid as before. Recorded performances usually wobble by a dozen ticks or more, which puts the whole file outside the line. The two mistakes do not cost the same: failing to detect one just leaves it as crooked as it always was, while a false detection moves a note somewhere the original never had it — and you would not notice. Files made in notation software or a DAW piano roll have exact triplets, and those are picked up.

One more thing: inside a triplet group, staccato is stretched to legato (each of the three fills its own third). This is not laziness — leaving the note ends on the grid would produce a 20-tick gap, and that length cannot be written as MML at all, which would empty the whole track.

Can it export mp3

Yes. In the export block of the File box there is a button marked Export MP3 mix, and what comes out is an ordinary mp3 — send it to someone who does not play the game and has nothing installed, and they can just play it.

It is not like saving the three formats: those hand over a score, this hands over sound, so it has to be rendered now, usually in tens of seconds. Saving .mid is instant; this is not.

Pressing it first opens a stage: a view from above where each instrument is a small labelled card, and the little circle in the middle is the listener — you. Leave it alone and the export sounds like what you hear in the editor; to make it sound like a real ensemble sitting spread out, drag the cards apart — further away is quieter and moves off to that side, and on headphones you can hear it as a 3D space. You can listen while you drag, and press Export once you are happy. Full details are in the reference page.

Two things worth knowing first: the mp3 covers only the first 6 tracks, the ones the game reads (if track 7 or beyond has notes, the box tells you before you press); and it can fail on a phone for lack of memory, so export long pieces on a computer.

Does it cost anything

No. This site is run by one person: non-commercial, no advertising, nothing for sale, and no third-party tracking. For the details see the privacy policy and the terms of service.

Did not find your answer? Try the editor quick start, the reference and keyboard shortcuts, the MML syntax guide or MIDI to MML — or write to the address in the footer of the privacy policy.