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Topic: converting nwc to midi (Read 7226 times) previous topic - next topic

converting nwc to midi

I've never used this forum, so forgive me if this has been answered before.  I want to type the piano score of an old piece of sheet music (1863) as it was written back then.  I have 1.75b so the grace notes appear and sound fine...it's an old Schottiche (German Round Dance).  I also need to to print this score and provide a disk so it can be listened to.  I don't have any complicated software for making wav files and all that....I just want to make a midi file they can hear on their computers at home, while looking at the sheet music.

What I'm curious about is why after all my labor and work of copying it meticulously as it was written, it only appears that way in NWC.  The minute I save it as a midi file and view the notation.....it does all kinds of weird things with the printed music:
A 3rd line appears belows the piano music that apparently becomes the tempo marking, it removes all of the pickup notes in 4-4 time and changes them to 1-4 for that one note and creates a new time signature of 3-4 to make up the difference....only to revert back to 4-4, grace notes are forced onto the stem with other note values.....just lots of little weird changes.  If someone were to open that midi file and view it...they would be convinced I had no idea how to correctly write musical notation...and yet it "sounds" very close to correct....the forced value to the grace note throws it a bit off with the left hand, but gets through it.  Why isn't the midi "version" a note-for-note (and everything else) visual copy of the original?

Re: converting nwc to midi

Reply #1 –
G'day Robyn,
basically, MIDI is not notation.  MIDI is Musicl Instrument Digital Interface.

A MIDI file contains instructions for a MIDI device, like your sound card's synthesizer, or a MIDI Keyboard of some kind, or any MIDI device that can accept input and create a sound from the instructions sent.

It is not, and never has been, a standard for music notation.

NWC can "open" (actually import) a MIDI file and create fairly creditable notation from it, but what you see is an interpretation of the MIDI commands, NOT saved notation.

If you want to share your notation, 'tis much better to send 'em the .NWC file and point them to the Viewer available on the NWC web site: http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/nwc2/viewer.htm

The viewer will play back through their default MIDI device and display onscreen just like you originally created the file.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: converting nwc to midi

Reply #2 –
Thanks for the quick response....I didn't know about the viewer....sort of like making pdf files?   Some of us have the whole program and some just the viewer, yes?  I will visit that link and include the viewer on the disk I send.  This makes it all much easier.  Thank you so much...what a great forum...why haven't I been here before!!!  I started cruising around it last night....and learned ALL KINDS of stuff on the NWC program which I didn't know....and aren't in the little manual.

Re: converting nwc to midi

Reply #3 –
Visit and visit often.  I think NWC has always had the user forums (at least I think it has always been up since I bought the program 10 years ago).  With many active participants, someone is bound to have encountered and tried to solve your problem sometime in the past. 

Besides, it's fun to try to help with problems people encounter and to see how others would solve it.  






Re: converting nwc to midi

Reply #4 –
Quote from: robynadair –
Thanks for the quick response....I didn't know about the viewer....sort of like making pdf files?
I'm afraid it's not like making PDF files.  However, if I need to convert NWC files to PDF, I use PrimoPDF, which is software that let's you convert to PDF by file-print, and selecting PrimoPDF.