recovering a score from a midi file
I don't understand the relationship between scores and midi files. Here's how I see it.
The musicians start with a score, s1 say. They play from that score and generate a midi file, s2.mid say.
Someone else feeds s2 into Musescore and obtains a score s3 say. Is s3 like s1? In what ways do the two differ? Do the help notes say that s3 may be significantly different from s1?
Here's why I am interested. Choraline supply practice tapes. Such a tape is an mp3 of a performance in which one voice is emphasized and the others played dow; Thus a tenor can listen to s3-T.mp3 and hear the tenor voice loud and the other voices soft; a bass likewise with s3-B.mp3. If we have a muse score version of the score we can use ff and pp as required to generate an mp3 of this nature for S, A, T, and B. This is fairly painless except that we will have to examine our muse score version and remove the editor's dynamic markings. Hence I am interested in the relationships among s1, s2, and s3.
Comments
s1.mscz -> s2.mid -> s2.mscz is very likely to loose quite an amount of information. The pitches should 'survive' but not much more
The score - s1 - contains information about each and every marking. It specifies the clefs, the accidentals, the dynamic markings, the articulations, everything you see on the printed page.
A MIDI file is a piano roll, basically, It has nothing in it but information about the pitches to be played - what pitch to play (using the sometimes-convenient fiction that C# and Db are the "same" pitch), when to play the pitch (which might not be a time that can be represented in standard notation, how long to play it (ditto), and how loud to play it (ditto). So, it has nothing about the appearance of the score - nothing to differentiate C# from Db, nothing to different an eighth note from a staccato quarter note, nothing to say when dynamic marks should appear, etc. It's intended for playback, not for notation.
Removing dynamics form a score is trivial - right-click one, Select / All Similar Elements, delete. But, that's not how I'd do this - instead simply use the Mixer to keep the dynamics but bring out one part more.
In reply to The score - s1 - contains… by Marc Sabatella
Recovering a score from a midi file, in all but the simplest cases, is very, very difficult, and requires a great deal of hand editing, musical knowledge, and knowledge of the particular score. What you get when you say "import midi" is rarely usable by musicians (without many hours of work). This is even more the case when there are parts with multiple voices on one staff, or transcription of human playing. I've done this many times over many, many years (not just with MuseScore). This is not something you want to do if you have any choice. A midi file is not a score representation, but a keyboard-like representation of when notes are struck and released on keyboard-like instruments (this is hard to explain).
In reply to Recovering a score from a… by [DELETED] 1831606
Here are examples to illustrate how the "import from midi" method must be inadequate. I show
1 what the choir sing when they read the original score
2 what midi creates in response
3 what Muse Score creates after it imports the midi file
You'll see that Muse Score has two choices here; there are many others
In reply to Here are examples to… by Keith Paton
"What midi passes on.mscz" is a piano score, not a SATB one.
No idea how you got to "What_Muse_Score_creates_in_response.mscz".
None of those score stem from a MIDI import apparently.
In reply to "What midi passes on.mscz"… by Jojo-Schmitz
Oops; I should have have attached these
I don't understand. I assume that midi 'hears' the sequence DEFGABCDDEFGABCD and assigns these 16 pitches to bass clef or to treble clef as it sees fit. I've assumed it assigns the first 8 to bass clef, the second 8 to treble clef, obtaining a piano score on the grand staff. Then within the first 8 it re-assigns each note to B or T; within the second 8 it re-assigns each note to A or S; it thus obtains an SATB score on the four part staff. What have I missed?
In reply to Oops; I should have have… by Keith Paton
That's the same scores you attached earlier as fat as I can tell, none is a MIDI import.
While a MIDI import should be able to create "What midi passes on.mscz", if the MIDI is for a Piano, there's no way whatsoever any import would be able to guess that you want it on 4 staves and 4 notes each.
Any you really talking about MIDI import (i.e. opening a .mid file in MuseScore) or about MIDI Input (i.e. Nnote input via a MIDI keyboard, directly into MuseScore)?
In reply to Here are examples to… by Keith Paton
Again, though, as I explained above in some detail, MIDI just wasn't designed to capture notation information. It's like if you had a car, then took a picture of it, then tried to reconstruct the car from just the picture. It's just not going to work. The picture is simply missing way too much of the information need to actually build a working car, just as a MIDI file is missing way too much of the information necessary to create a readable score.
In reply to Again, though, as I… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks Marc, for straightening me out on midi files. I want to create practice tapes for scores of three types. It goes without saying that manual entry of the score in Muse Score is a last resort. I’d like to find an easier way.
Type 1
My choir director is an enthusiastic arranger and many of the pieces we sing are his own arrangments. If I am to make practice tapes for such arrangements I need to have the score in MusicXML format. So my next step should be to ask our choir director for that digital score so that I can create practice tapes to his specification.
Type 2
In another choir we sing from hand-written scores. Here there is no alternative to manual entry. This is not quite as bad as it sounds since the pieces are a capella and the four parts can be entered quite fast.
Type 3
Our other scores are printed and come from a variety of sources. To me the key question is
Can we obtain the score in MusicXML?
Presumably we have to write to the owner of the score and ask
In return for permission to use the digital version we’d provide the owner with practice tapes in accordance with a specification to be agreed between us.
What do you think?