How to import a MIDI file and split over two piano staves by pitch

• May 13, 2021 - 08:40

Hi,
I have some piano music in a MIDI file exported from another tool. Everything's in a single track and unfortunately there's nothing in the file that indicates which staff (LH or RH) each note belongs to, but I can approximate it based on pitch (e.g. everything from G below middle C up should be RH/treble clef, everything else in the LH/bass clef). I can't see a straightforward way to do this with Musescore, is there an option I'm not seeing?
Thanks
Dylan


Comments

Actually I figured it out - just needed to turn off split staves during import, then split the staff after importing, at which point you can choose a "split point". Though ideally I'd be able to choose different split points for different sections of the piece. Not sure why you can't choose a split point when importing though.

In reply to by Dylan Nicholson1

It is weird that you cannot set the split point at import. The handbook says you can, but I cannot find it.

The handbook says:

Split staff
This option is suited mainly for piano tracks - to assign notes to the left or right hand of the performer. It uses constant pitch separation (the user may choose the pitch via sub-options) or floating pitch separation (depending on the hand width - sort of a guess from the program point of view).

But cannot find any "sub-options" in the import panel.

In reply to by AndreasKågedal

It's odd but only a minor annoyance given you can do it post-import. What's more of an issue is how to take notes that have been automatically split across staves by this operation and beam them together, which I gather requires them being in the same voice on the same staff in the first place (then using the "shift" staff command to change which one they appear on). And even that wouldn't be so bad if there were a straightforward way to easily select all the notes I wanted to shift - but because of the way rectangle/drag select seems to work in musescore (selecting ALL notes on the staff in the given time period, ignoring the vertical limits of the drag rectangle), that's not straightforward either!

Youll most likely to discover the limitations of MIDI are such that you'll end up finding it easier to just enter the music anew - unless you other tool can export MusicXML instead, in which case you should be good to go right away.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I'd say importing the MIDI saved me at least an hour of raw note entry (esp. as I don't currently have a working MIDI keyboard to hook up!).
If I'd been able to select just the notes that were highlighted while doing a drag-select and shift them to the LH staff, the whole thing would have been done in seconds.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.