Tutorial: Opening a File from the Internet

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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.

prcarrow To search for and download MIDI files from the Internet, using Composer's built-in Internet browser:

1.If you have a dial-up Internet connection, establish that connection now.
2.If no song is currently opened, then click the following icon or text displayed in Composer's front panel:

       FrontPanelSearchInternet

       -- 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.

TutorialBrowserInternetNotationMidiFilePage-7

3.At the bottom of the left margin of the "How to find MIDI files" page, you will find a link for "Find example MIDI files referred to in Notation User Guide". Click this link to go to the following second page at Notation Software's web site:

TutorialDownloadTwinkle-7

 

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).

TutorialDownloadSaveAs

4.Click the Save button.
5.Because the Twinkle.mid file already exists in the Notation\Songs directory, Composer will ask you whether the downloaded file should replace the existing file. Reply with 'Yes", unless you have some reason otherwise, in which case you should rename one of the files.

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.

6.In the Recommend Corrections dialog box, click the OK button.

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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