I recently discovered SID2MIDI , the GUI version, up on the Remix64 forums.  It's a great little tool that takes SID songs and converts them to MIDI format.

While the SIDs of course sound better in their natural form, if one has a tune converted into MIDI format it opens up all sorts of possibilities including playback on any MIDI compatible device, making sheet music, or using as a basis for remixing.  Years ago I used some tool that shipped with a Sound Blaster to make actual sheet music from the Ultima III - Wander tune, subtune 1 that someone had composed as a MIDI -- pretty sure that was pre SID2MIDI and manually composed by an Ultima fan as it was in the early 1990's.  Now I can do that for nearly any SID that I like!

A present for a family member this year is going to be Yamaha YPT-220, a keyboard capable of MIDI playback...and I look forward to hearing some C64 tunes come out of it!

I used the tool to make several MIDI versions of some of my favorite SID tunes.  You can download the file (compressed with WinRAR) here on my account at the file sharing site Media Fire:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/01b3quoztwt/C64MIDI.rar

SID2MIDI works best when the melody is simple and does not involve a lot of oscillating or otherwise uniquely SID-ish sounds.  I've found it to be extremely accurate on most of the songs I selected, though the "walking" sound in M.U.L.E., for example is clearly missing.  As an example of a little SID-ish strangeness, I included Winter Holiday by Matthais Hartung, a tune from my last podcast, converted to MIDI.  It could be cleaned up of course, and the foundation for a good remix is stiil there.  Some other SIDs like Ben Daglish's Switchblade were nearly beyond recognition.

Check it out and convert some for yourself, or at least give the SID files I converted to MIDI a try as they'll play on any soundcard that is MIDI capable, which should be standard.