Transcribing MIDI Files and Recordings to Notation |
If you use Composer to record your performance on a MIDI keyboard, Composer will automatically display your performance on the screen as music notation. The process by which Composer converts your performance into notation is called transcription.. When you import a MIDI file, Composer transcribes the performance in the MIDI file to notation. The data stored in the MIDI file is basically a recording of what notes (pitches) are played at what exact times by various instruments (in staves). The process that Composer uses to transcribe your performance at your music keyboard to notation is exactly the same transcription process that Composer uses to convert MIDI files to notation. A good way to understand transcription is to think of the MIDI performance as a piano roll used on player pianos that were popular in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The holes in the piano roll determine what notes are played at what times. If you unroll the piano roll horizontally, you will observe that the holes mark the beginning and ending times of played notes. The vertical position of the holes determine the pitch of the notes. Here is an example of a piano roll:
Basically, the above piano roll is all that Composer is given when it must transcribe your recording at the keyboard, or a MIDI file, to notation. Composer is able to transcribe the above piano roll information into notation. This example happens to be the Bach Minuet file, minuet.mid, that is installed in the C:\Program Files\Notation\Songs (or on Windows Vista \Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Notation\Songs)directory. The result of the transcription looks like this:
In Notation Composer, you can see the Piano Roll Notation that underlies the notation. This is particularly useful when you want to edit the exact timing of notes without changing the notation. Here is what the above example looks like when you click the piano roll button in the main toolbar:
Composer must make many decisions about how to transcribe any given MIDI performance to notation. These decisions are similar to those that a trained musician would make when he or she hears music and writes down the notes on paper. (Very few musicians have this special training in "music dictation".) Some decisions about how to transcribe the music are closely related to the style of the music. Composer does not attempt to determine what the style of music is, in order to make the appropriate decisions in transcribing the MIDI performance to notation. Instead, Composer lets you make a few simple choices about how to transcribe the music. In particular, you can instruct Composer to:
The options described above are offered in the Transcription Options dialog described in the next topic. Composer offers you the opportunity to specify the transcription options in several circumstances:
Also, after you have imported a MIDI file, or recorded a performance at your music keyboard, you can request Composer to transcribe the performance using a different set of transcription options, by using the Re-Transcribe command. About Quantization
|