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Topic: MIDI to Piano (Read 3086 times) previous topic - next topic

MIDI to Piano

This is probably wishful thinking but... is there some way to convert a MIDI into a score for piano?

Most MIDIs just convert to orchestral scores that my pianist can not do anything with other than play the melody.

js

Re: MIDI to Piano

Reply #2 –
Actually, I did exactly that on the web and came up with exactly nothing.  I searched for something similar here and found nothing.

I sort of thought that it was not inappropriate to ask here seeing as I purchased the stuff, I would expect a little more courtesy.  What is the point of a forum if one gets sent to the archives everytime one asks a question?

Anyway, your pointer lead to some possibilities but as the thread is 5 years old, I would still come back and ask if this is the best we can do today?

What I was able to do is to get all the staves on two staves but even if I tell it only 2 note chords, it seems to ignore this and produce 6 note piles.

What am I missing?

js

Re: MIDI to Piano

Reply #3 –
I think it is a fair question Jack and perhaps the answer is not so straight forward. One usually does get a lot of good advise here and it would be nice if someone who has grappled with this could help out. Good luck, Barry

Re: MIDI to Piano

Reply #4 –
The chord interval that NWC uses on import is used as a trigger to split the staff into two parts at some middle pitch. It does not split all chords into multiple voices, only those that span across the middle pitch split-point.

There is not a magic solution for creating piano sheet music out of any arbitrary MIDI file. The MIDI file might target many instruments, including percussion, which has no parallel for piano. In the end, the only sure way to create piano sheet music from MIDI is to load up the MIDI file, then edit as needed to create what you want. This effort might be easier in MIDI sequencing software, rather than NWC, depending on the source material.

See also: https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=641 - Importing midi in NWC to piano part + vocal only!

Re: MIDI to Piano

Reply #5 –
The gist: MIDI does not think in terms of upper and lower grand staff, or left and right hands. If there is one piano in the score, than all of its notes are treated together. When you try to covert MIDI to sheet music, the interpreter (NWC or any other program) has no idea which notes should go to which staff, because that information is not contained in the MIDI file. The program has to guess. With NWC, you help it guess by defining a note that splits the instrument according to pitch. That will not be correct for every note. You must edit the rest yourself.

If you are creating a MIDI (not just importing it), you can do this: Instead of using upper and lower grand staff, treat them separately. Call them by different names, and assign them to different (non-transposing) MIDI instruments. Then, they will retain separate identities in the MIDI. If someone wants to import your MIDI into another program (or back into NWC), you can tell them that one track corresponds to the treble staff, another corresponds to the bass staff. Then, they can take it from there.

To put this another way: The information contained in a MIDI file is not the same as the information contained in sheet music.
 

Re: MIDI to Piano

Reply #6 –
I came to this thread by doing a search for the thing. I have been more lucky with google and the string "midi to sheet music"