Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

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Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

16 years ago

Hi, I recently installed Finale 2007. Since NWC doesn't have the greatest sheet music printing system, I am trying to convert some of my NWC piano pieces to print in Finale. The obvious answer is to export as a MIDI, but every time I re-open the MIDI in any program (either as, the time signatures, keys, rhythms, and everything you can imagine is in a horrible, un-printable state. I have tried every combination of syncing both staves to one channel or separate, muting, and exporting as MIDI Type 1 or 0 and the results are always the same. Yes, I could spent countless hours rewriting these pieces in Finale, but if possible I was wondering if anybody knows a trick or scripting code I can utilize to convert my NWC files into untouched MIDI files. Thanks in advance.

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #1 – 16 years ago

You are not very specific about what problems you are having so, I will just offer a few tips:

Insert a Playing Style of Legato at the beginning of each staff.
Remove all other Playing Styles.
Remove articulations from all staccato notes.

Use Score Review to set the Volume and Stereo Pan to -1 for each staff.

Make sure that the notes/rests in each measure agree with the Time Signature.

Remove Tempo Variations. (rit., rall., accel., etc.)

Export As 'Type 1 Midi File'

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #2 – 16 years ago

Ah, thank you so much! Adding a legato performance style added slurs and ties to the MIDI file. Also, I noticed that I made one time signature error in the middle of my piece (it is supposed to be 13/16 and I had put 12/16 and the entire piece after that point tried to compensate). Of the two, it seems that Type 1 MIDI is the lesser of two evils to go with-Type 0 meshes both channels into one, blending both staves into one (the right hand) and Type 0 splits each staff/channel into two respective staves. So now I am stuck with 4 staves for a 2 stave piano piece, but it seems to be the cleanest MIDI file I've seen yet.

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #3 – 16 years ago

13/16?!!! Is this Bulgarian dance music?

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #4 – 16 years ago

Quote from: smelin5 – 16 years ago

Ah, thank you so much! Adding a legato performance style added slurs and ties to the MIDI file.

You are welcome, but you can search MIDI files forever and find nary a slur or tie. Legato does eliminate a lot of gaps between a note off and the next note on. Import routines get confused by gaps.

Quote from: smelin5 – 16 years ago

So now I am stuck with 4 staves for a 2 stave piano piece, but it seems to be the cleanest MIDI file I've seen yet.

You might try setting the Right Hand staves to MIDI channel 1 and the Left Hand staves to MIDI channel 2.
Export As 'Type 0 Midi File'

If Finale chokes on that, import the 'Type 0 Midi File' back into NWC2, add Legato to each staff again, and export as 'Type 1 Midi File'.
This may be a bit messy where one hand is playing 2 rhythm patterns at the same time, such as:

Quote

!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.0,Single)
|Chord|Dur:8th|Pos:-1|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam=First|Dur2:4th,Dotted|Pos2:-3
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:0|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:1|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam
|Chord|Dur:8th|Pos:3|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam=End|Dur2:8th|Pos2:-2
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End

NWC2 does ex/import fairly fast. You may find that it is best to use it to thoroughly "groom" the MIDI before trying to import it into Finale. That is what I have done on a few NWC2->Lilypond conversions.

Bill: probably an n-tuplet, if snelin5's prior posts are any indication.

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #5 – 16 years ago

Quote

13/16?!!! Is this Bulgarian dance music?

What a delightful time signature! Nasty to conduct unless you played it in 4 with a hesitation on one of the beats.

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #6 – 16 years ago

Eastern European folk music - especially Bulgarian and Macedonian dance music - uses signatures like that a lot. They don't really think metrically, they think in patterns of twos and threes ("shorts" and "longs"). So a 13/16 might actually be counted as "long - long - short, short, long -" (or "onetwothree onetwothree onetwo onetwo onetwothree"). Repeated in the rhythm instruments throughout the whole dance, while the melody instruments toy with it. A lot of Bartok's music emulates this technique. So does Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo alla Turka.

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #7 – 16 years ago

Yeah, this piece is 13/16: "long-long-long-short-short" or [16-16-16] [16-16-16] [16-16-16] [16-16-8]. It took some thought placing a time signature to it. Anyway, I decided just to export the original NWC file as a Type 1 MIDI and sort through the 4 channels. For most of the piece the right hand is untouched, but the left hand is separated whenever it started to play higher notes (anything NWC considered to be a treble note vs. bass note). To be honest, this problem would be solved if NWC had 8va and 8vb clefs.

Re: Avoiding Exported MIDI Notation Mess-ups?

Reply #8 – 16 years ago

To be honest, this problem would be solved if NWC had 8va and 8vb clefs.
[/quote]

It does. Look for octave shift in clef properties.