Tutorial: Opening a File from the Internet |
A good way to prepare an arrangement of a song for your own use, or for your group of musicians, is to start with an existing MIDI file of that song, which another musician has prepared and made available for download from the Internet. Composer has a built-in Internet browser (based on Microsoft's Internet Explorertm) that makes it easy for you to find MIDI files on the Internet, download them, unzip them if they are in a Zip file, and immediately see them as sheet music -- all without leaving the Composer program. In this step of the tutorial, we will open the same MIDI file twinkle.mid, except this time we will search for it and download it from the Internet, using Composer's built-in Internet browser. To search for and download MIDI files from the Internet, using Composer's built-in Internet browser:
-- OR -- Choose the Browse Internet for MIDI files command in the File menu. -- OR -- (If at least one file is opened, you will not see the above front panel.) Type "qdf" for Quick Download File. The Composer window will temporarily become an Internet browsing window, as illustrated below. Initially, the browser window will display a web page at Notation Software's web site, entitled "How to find MIDI files". This web page provides a directory of many other web sites that offer MIDI files that you can download.
Composer will present the following File Save As dialog box, to ask you where the downloaded MIDI file should be saved. By default, the MIDI file will be saved in the directory \Program Files\Notation\Songs (or on Windows Vista, in \Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Notation\Songs).
Composer will display the Recommend Corrections dialog box, exactly as it did in the previous tutorial step, when you opened a file that was already on your computer.
Composer will then display the notes for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, just as when you opened the same MIDI file from the Songs directory on your system.
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