Pre-Purchase Questions

[jimmie123]

Hi All, New to the site, and will be purchasing "Composer". I'm the keyboardist for a 60's Doo-Wop group called "The Casinos". For those of you old enough to remember, we had a big hit in 1967 called "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye". At any rate, many of the charts we're using are hand written etc. and I'd like to produce something a little more professional.

I have some questions regarding "Composer".

1. The keyboard I use is a Technics KN-7000 workstation. It has built-in rhythm patterns that I use with my left hand while playing "live" with my right hand. All of the tunes we do are saved on an SD card. Would Composer "pick up" the internal rhythms and transcribe them to notation? In other words, if I did a live right hand recording, with the internal LH rhythms playing, would Composer pick up the internal rhythm section or not?

2. More than likely, I'll be using Composer's live recording capability to produce quality lead sheets for piano. Many of the bands that accompany us at the shows we do are 6 or 7 piece groups with the usual instrumentation (lead and bass guitars, drums, an additional keyboard, trumpet and sax). I know nothing about scoring for horns, but would like to have sheets for the horns. Does Composer automatically produce the correct scoring for horn parts?

I'm sure that I'll have many more questions as time goes by, but these are the main ones for now. Thanks for any help you can provide.

[dj]

Hi, Jimmie:

Welcome to the Notation Software forum.

Having a quick look at some info on the Technics KN-7000 (do you know this site: www.kn7000.net? Lots of info there), I see that the keyboard has an internal 16 track recorder and that it can read standard midi files off the SD-Card, but it doesn't seem to be able to write them to the card.

Apparently, Technics created their own "superior" file structure which died when the company died. So, I am guessing that straight forward file copying may not work.

It is also unlikely that auto-rhythms, auto-accompaniments and auto-drums are sent to the midi port. Most manufacturers don't include that as an option and I don't see it listed in the KN-7000 feature list on kn7000.net.

All is not lost, though, as Notation Composer can record anything that comes out of your keyboard's midi port (or USB/midi). At worst, most auto-rhythm/auto-drum parts are based around short patterns. You should be able to play them manually into Composer and cut and paste as needed.

Regarding horn parts, Composer has no auto-arrange functions, but can handle part transposition and part extraction. It also has a good palette of dynamic and accent markings available. You will have to ensure that the parts are playable, in range and so on.

What Composer emphatically can do is produce excellent sheet music for your musicians to work from. I recently re-scored a musical of mine for an eight-piece ensemble and the band had no trouble using the sheets that Composer produced.

All the best.

David

[jimmie123]

Hi DJ, Thank you for your reply. The KN-7000 can work with Midi files...if I were to do an "easy record", prior to saving it, the 7000 asks in which format, Midi or Technics files. I'm wondering if I made a copy of the existing SD card that I use for Casinos accompaniment, played one of the existing Technics files on it, then saved it as a Midi file as opposed to a Technics file...would Composer be able to work with that?? I called one of the bands that backed us at a recent show in Lakeland, FL and asked the leader what most groups are supplying as far as charts go. He said that both lead and bass guitars generally get a chart, as well as drums, and horns (usually a sax and trumpet). Paul's band also has a keyboard player, but of course since I always accompany the Casinos on keyboard, I'd have to work out a separate keyboard part. There is also software that was included with the 7000 whereby I can save something as an MP3, but I guess that would be no good to Composer.

The thing is, I have NEVER scored horns or drums, and don't know the 1st thing about it. If the Midi-saving trick that I've suggested above would work, would Composer be able to pick out and score those parts?

Since Composer uses Midi to do it's thing, I went to the following site: http://www.freemidifiles.biz/

I did a search there for our "signature" song, Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye. Several versions came up, including the original with Gene Hughes singing lead. Give that a listen....is this type of file something that Composer could/would work with??

Generally, when we do these Doo-Wop shows with other groups, we may do a maximum of 5 songs, so it's not like I have to score all of our tunes....when we perform "alone", I'm the accompaniment alone, so I wouldn't need scores etc. Eventually, I would probably produce a good looking lead sheet for my use alone, but that would be "down the road" lol.

Thanks for the prompt reply and I look forward to (hopefully) being able to use Musician Composer as opposed to having to pay $$ to get the scores done.

Jim Helwig, keyboardist, The Casinos, Sebring, Florida (863) 546-4483

[dj]

Hi, Jimmie:

Composer imports and exports standard midi files, so if you can save in that format on the KN-7000, there should be no problem.

Despite the name of the site (freemidifiles.biz), it seems that all the versions of Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye on the site are mp3 files, not midi files. Nice song, by the way -- I'd not heard it before.

A midi file is the "score" whereas an mp3 file is the "45 rpm record" -- the two aren't interchangeable. There are some programs now that claim to be able to transcribe from an audio file, but to my mind they are not very successful.

There are plenty of midi file versions of Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye on the net.

But, going back to the KN-7000, if you have an option to save as a midi file, you should be able to get your sequenced tracks into Composer. The only remaining question is whether the Technics saves the auto-rhythm/auto-accompaniment tracks into the file.

Hope that helps.

David