I would like your advice regarding transcribing film scores to midi
Hello everyone.
I have just been referred to this forum, so hopefully you will be able to give me some opinions or advice. I hope that this is the right place and forum section to ask suchs question. Before I continue, perhaps I should tell you that, even though I have always been wildly enthusiastic about music, I don't know anything at all about how sheet music and software can work together (or not).
I have always been a big fan of the film music written for Harry Potter. Sadly, Warner Brothers only chooses to release a limited amount of music on the commercial market. However, the complete sheet music for five of the eight films has been 'floating around' on the Internet for some time now.
In the past, I have suggested to a few people to transcribe this music into a format so that computers with soundfoots can handle them. I've often been told that this is impossible because three of the five scores are hand-written, and I know that OCR can be a painstaking process as I often have problems OCR'ing subtitles.
However, yesterday evening, I came across something that makes me seriously doubt whether transcribing Harry Potter to midi is really as impossibleas they claim. On the Internet, there is literally a massive amount of classical music midis available, and even some limited film music midis. So I was thinking, if you can make midis of Bach's Orchestral Suites and Mozart's complete symphonies using different instruments, why wouldnn't Harry Potter be possible? What I find really interesting is that all the classical midis I found in that collection have one general though very minor glitch: they often miss sharp notes and use flat notes instead, which makes me believe some kind of automatic tool was used.
My second epiphany came when I found an impressive soundfoot online, which almost sounds like a complete orchestra, and the idea of hearing Harry Potter in all its complexity being played by this soundfoot has been on my mind ever since.
I also came to this forum because there are a few issues I cannot hope to resolve myself.
1. I have been blind since birth and have no idea if my braille display would produce sheet music in braille, and I forgot everything about sheet music in braille anyway.
2. Because I am blind, I am using a screenreader which converts lots of software into braille, but all the professional sound editors are too 'visually' focussed, and most of the time I cannot even render the menus, which makes experimenting slightly problematic.
So my question now is:
1. Are there people here who think that transcribing the HP sheet music to MIDI is possible without too much trouble? I simply cannot believe it is as difficult as some have claimed, because if the classical music collection I found online had to be typed over manuallly, that would probably have taken him or her fifty years or more.
2. Are there any people who would be wanting to do this for me, in return for things I would be happy to discuss privately?
For those of you who are wondering why I am so interested in having Harry Potter midis when orchestral versions exist, the few midis that I have heard have made me re-discover some music all over again, because lots of instruments are 'drowned' in the bad orchestral mixes. For example, the end titles of Jurassic Park 1 apparently contain an impressive flute part which I only discovered by listening to a midi.
Also, having the midis would make it possible for me to enjoy film music that cannot be extracted from the DVDs without hearing voice echoes or sound effects, and I simply c an't wait to find more soundfoots to try the music on.
I don't know if this is relevant, but for me it is nt a necessity to have midi files which contain instruments which play at different volume levels, simply having all the notes and instrumentts would mean the world to me already.
Midis are only meant for private use!
Comments
but try to have a look:
http://musescore.org/en/services
In reply to I do not know if you are interested, by Shoichi
Sounds interesting, but do they want money? Should I contact them individually?
In reply to RE: by bollemanneke
Most probably and yes
You do realise that you would be in breach of copyright law by performing this action?
And Warner Bros are well known for being paranoid about this sort of thing.
It is unlikely that you would find a professional prepared to do this for this reason.
If you are thinking of doing so yourself my advice would be not to.
The fines involved if you are caught are just not worth it.
In reply to You do realise that you would by ChurchOrganist
Wait, wait... I'm only planning to listen to those files on my personal computer. I'm not publishing them. If WB doesn't like that, well, I can't say I care. People resort to such activities BECAUSE WB refuses to cooperate with their own fans. Also, it wasn't me who leaked the sheets, that's their problem... But again, I'm not planning to make them publicly available to just anyone.
Taking printed sheet music and turning it into MIDI *is* a complex process. There is software that can take a PDF and attempt to convert it to a form (MusicXML) that notation software can read, and the notation software can then turn it into MIDI. But the process of converting sheet music to MusicXML is very difficult and quite error prone. It works about as well as speech-to-text conversion if several people are talking at once :-). So usually a lot of manual correction is needed to make the results usable.
Most likely, the collections of classical music you found online were not done by one person, but were contributed by many people over the course of many years. And very likely, they entered at least some of it by hand as opposed to using software to convert PDF to MusicXML.
But there is a free / open source program called Audiveris that can at least attempt the job of converting a PDF to MusicXML, and MuseScore can then render this as MIDI.
BTW, as a blind person, you might be interested to know that this summer, we will be working on accessibility improvements for MuseScore - making it more friendly to keyboard and screenreader. Once you have music in MuseScore, it is possible to export it as MusicXML and then use another program like FreeDots to convert it to Braille. Or, you could "read" the music in MuseScore using your cursor keys with the aid of the screenreader (once the accessibility improvements are in place).
In reply to Taking printed sheet music by Marc Sabatella
Ah, thank you very much for that reply, though it raises a few questions, and I'm dreading the answer to one of them. :)
If I convert these pdfs into xml, would that software keep track of the instruments? The digital scores have instruments on them, because I am able to read things such as 'flute 1, flute 2'. Or would it be up to someone else to tell the xml/midi which instrument is which? How long would it generally take an 'experienced' transcriber to convert two-hour scores to midi if he or she were helped by software?
Also, if this classical music was done by hand... then it would be really very impressive. It sounds like an impossible job to me to do this (nearly) manually.
In reply to RE: by bollemanneke
That's a good question regarding the instrument names. In principle, that doesn't seem hard. But it might depend on where exactly the score had the names written.
As for doing scores by hand, no, it isn't really particularly hard. That's the whole point of MuseScore - it is software that allows you to create your own scores. You enter notes by typing the letter names on the keyboard (or by playing the notes one at a time on a keyboard), using various commands to control the length of the notes, add other markings, etc. It's certainly no harder to enter the music into MuseScore than it was for whomever first published the music you are scanning. They had to enter the music by hand to into whatever software they were using - or write it out with pen or pencil, which takes even longer to do well.
Of course, a two hour movie score is a *lot* of music. Without knowing the specifics, chances are pretty good someone just played the parts on a MIDI keyboard and never bothered to enter into notation software at all.
In reply to That's a good question by Marc Sabatella
Oh, I see. I have never actually been able to appreciate MuseScore's functions because right now my screenreader refuses to convert any kind of text in the programme, so I'm looking forward to the upcoming plans.
As for transcribing the music... If I were to find someone here who would be willing to take on the challenge, are there any 'rules' about how much they will charge for you what or how long, or will I have to review each reply I get from would-be transcribers and compare the offers myself? I even have no idea what someone could do in one hour with this music.
Also, does the fact that two of the five scores are digital make it possible for people to OCR the music in such a way that they only have to transcribe every note once? I'm thinking of the procedure I use to OCR subtitles, and usually if you tell the programme that a certain image is a certain letter, it suffices. Would this apply to the digital scores? I imagine the hand-written scores are slightly more difficult. God knows why John Williams insists on writing with pen and paper.
However, I'm happy to read that it's not a completely lost cause. The people I talked to gave me the feeling that transcribing the scores to MIDI files was more impossible than, say, buying a house for ten pounds in London.
In reply to RE by bollemanneke
If you are in the UK, you might want to talk with the folks at RNIB http://www.rnib.org.uk/. They have a service of transcription of scores to braille. I guess they could also do MIDI.
In reply to If you are in the UK, you by [DELETED] 5
This is a very interesting technical discussion but surely the best solution for you is to buy the soundtrack CDs or DVDs or legally download them. The performance and sound quality will be superb and much more musical than a software version unless the transcriber has the time to tweak almost every note of the transcription.
MuseScore is primarily a tool to aid composition and arrangement in order to produce excellent print layout for musicians to perform from. Its playback capability is very good but it is mainly intended to be used to proof-hear the composition or arrangement. I much prefer to hear live musicians performing my compositions.
You may not agree with all the details of copyright and performing rights, or the price of a CD or concert ticket, but they do provide the income for people to compose, musicians to perform and publishers to record and in many cases produce printed scores of the music.
If you want to play the music there will be arrangements of many of the pieces for sale from solo flute to full orchestra and band. If you own the printed music I presume there are copyright rules which will allow you to produce braille versions for you to perform from.
If cost is a factor then surely buying 8 CDs will be cheaper than commissioning someone to transcribe approximately 16 hours of music into MuseScore.
In reply to Interesting technical discussion by Myer
Talking to the RNIB is indeed a good iea. I'm not in the UK, though I've been a long-time member and their services have always been excellent.
Please allow me to clear up a few points. I do own the CDs, but I want the transcriptions for the following reasons:
1. The CDs are affully incomplete. The sheet music is complete, while the CD only has 25% of the recorded music.
2. As I mentioned earlier, the transcriptions would allow me to examine cue by cue, meaning I could listen to the strings, brass, choirs, etc. seperately.
3. The CD quality is not that good, lots of instruments are drowned in the mix, and transcriptions would make everything audible for me.
I am aware the sound libraries do not sound as good as an orchestra, but I would love to hear its 'interpretation' of the music, which is why I started this topic. Someone told me I should consult this forum to find out what can be done, and I have indeed received some very helpful replies.
Regarding legal issues... I am only interested in listening, not in performing. The sheet music comes from the Internet, so its legality could be detable. However, this is not my concern. Warner Brother's insane protectiveness is not going to scare me away. If they would not like transcriptions, well, then it's up to them to make sure their sheet music remains hidden. Please know that I do support musicians, orchestras and that I admire composers, I am simply not a big fan of Warner Brother's methods of dealing with the Harry Potter franchise, more particularly the horrid treatment of the music, and I am certainly not alone.
In reply to RE by bollemanneke
Yes, huge of corrections after OCR, manually edit, voice1, voice2, voice3 combinations,
need a big monitor open pdf and musescore side by side. Most of printed scores
without bar number.
highly recommend Sharpeye software from UK, good results, below $200, worth to buy,
scanned some original printed score, it got 95% correct, that means
a very big time saver.
for some thick score books, you need to cut-off page by page and insert to scanner,
the best result will get.