MIDI Editors?

Does anyone know a good MIDI editor for making level music?

Either free or really worth the cost.

MidiEditor   http://midieditor.sourceforge.net
Sekaiju       http://openmidiproject.osdn.jp/index_en.html

Sony Acid   http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/product.asp?pid=383&pageid=119

I have a specific request regarding MIDI editors - I'm looking for one that can cleanly crop MIDI files, specifically removing the stupid loop-ruining count-in present in so many MIDI files as well as the stupid loop-ruining fadeout. It baffles me that so many MIDI composers don't realize that 99.9999999999% of the time it's better if they loop seamlessly, due to this I need to crop starts and ends of so many MIDIs to get them to work as they should have in the first place, but it seems that most editors absolutely butcher the MIDI in the process..

Additionally I'm looking for one that can uniformly raise and lower the volume on ALL tracks. I just tried MidiEditor and deleting the stupid count-in then shifting all events closer to the start resulted in the midi getting screwed up, as seems to be the case in just about every MIDI editor on the face of the planet. Everything was still in sync, but half the notes that are voiced in the original MIDI got silenced for seemingly no reason.

Can anyone give me a hand with this? Been messing with MIDI shit for like 10 years now and in all my travels "cut the beginning off and raise the volume without fucking the MIDI in it's butt" still seems to be an impossible order, which blows me away since it's like the 2 most basic edits anyone could possibly want done to a MIDI. I've used Guitar Pro (and Jazzware occasionally) which are great for starting from scratch, but yet again, they suffer from "ruins a MIDI upon import" syndrome like oh so many others.

Any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated. I think I just need to be steered in the right direction.

@Doomkid Sekaiju can do all of this and more. It's been my program of choice since I started composing in 2012/13. Between the track list, piano roll and event list windows you can comfortably map on and then edit the values of any number of effects (note on/off, program changes, end track events and so on), both collectively and individually, as well as change the displayed content of the music on the piano roll to make only the selected event type — volume control, say — visible for the tracks in question. Makes it easy to single out and edit a wide variety of important MIDI values.

To combat your first problem it'd be as simple as using the track list or piano roll window to highlight the entire MIDI and then selecting the "Modify Event's Time" option from the Edit menu to move everything back the necessary number of beats or tics. You can also drag it manually once selected, although from memory I'm not sure if this feature is smart enough to just cram all the events prior to and including the first note into the first tic of the opening bar. The events list is helpful here for picking out events that are standing all by their lonesome and shifting them back to 00001:01:000.

The volume-across-all-tracks problem? Tick the volume event box in the bottom right-hand corner of the piano roll and then single it out by hitting F11("show only current graph") followed by F10("show all tracks"). You'll then be able to highlight the volume events as they're displayed in the graph at the bottom. Once highlighted, you can visit the Edit menu once again, this time for the Modify Event's Value option, with which you can adjust everything as a percentage, as a relative shift, or with absolute specificity.

If you're having any troubles hit me up with a PM or post back here. Maybe I'm a software ignoramus but I can imagine it'd appear a little confusing on the face of it (it's in Japanese! At least until you find the language change option :)).

FL Studio is my go-to for MIDI and basic VST sequencing. It's fairly low cost and you pay for lifetime updates, but the demo allows you to still import and export MIDI files, so even though you can't "open a project" in the demo, you can still work on a MIDI file just fine. My older retro computer has some old version of Cubase on it which is also pretty good. There's a free program called Anvil which I hear is alright, but I've never used it myself. You also have Reaper, which is really cheap, and the trial just has a splash window but is otherwise the full product.

I recommend FL. The interface is easy enough to pick up quite quickly (relative to other programs)

You can download the demo fl studio, its eonugh for making midi's...

I have bought the original fl studio couple of years ago and the main different, (im meaning if you want to compose midi only), is in the demo you cant save your project, but you can export when you want to take a break and then import your midi to keep working on it.

On my laptop i have the demo and its doesnt really matter if im working with the demo or with the full fl studio

Thank you so much for the detailed write up Alfonzo, this program is excellent! Exactly what I've been looking for all this time!