The following is a draft of a MIDI Guide for Newcomers. Feedback of any kind would be most welcome. Regards, JohnFOLK MUSIC TUNES ON THE INTERNET
A Newcomers Guide to MIDI
The Internet is truly a marvellous resource for people who enjoy music. We are blessed with the facilities to listen to it, read about it, read the musical scores and it gives us lots of tools to help us sing or play music as well. What follows is a brief guide for newcomers to a popular and versatile form of Internet music known as MIDI.
This MIDI stuff lets you very easily do the following:
- Find literally hundreds of thousands of tunes on the Web, but most notably several thousand tunes to folk songs (right here at Mudcat).
- Play the tunes through your computer's existing hardware and software - this typically means that your computer needs a soundcard, but there are some shortcuts for older gear
- If you'd like to play or sing along with the tune, you can even change the key (to suit your voice or instrument) or modify the tempo of the piece (say if it's a bit too quick to play an unfamiliar tune). How about practising a harmony line in the chorus in the privacy of your own castle.
- You can view the music notation on screen and watch it scroll through as it's played - handy even if you're not an expert music sight reader. If you are sight impaired you can make the music score larger, just like the text in a word processor.
- Change the sound of the piece by swapping instrument sounds with a choice of over 120 different sounds, or change the relative volume of the different instruments to give a different feel.
- Print the music like a pro.
With just a bit of practice you can then:
- Take an existing piece of music and create a MIDI for others to share
- Compose and notate a completely new piece of music
What MIDI Doesn't Do
You'd think there has to be a catch in all of this musical nirvana .............and indeed there is. Can I take my favourite Bach/Beatles/Watersons CD and do all this great stuff? Sadly, no! MIDIs are simply computer files that provide instructions to your computer about how to play musical notes - what note, how loud, which instrument, what speed and much more. They are somewhat like the old-fashioned piano rolls of last century. The important thing though is that they are a very effective means of learning new tunes or remembering old ones. Someone has had to previously sit down and create this instructional file. Some Mudcat Cafe members such as Barry Taylor and Lesley Nelson do a very good job of creating very pleasant sounding renditions of (mostly) traditional dance tunes, but it's not the same as having real musicians on your turntable.
Windows vs Mac vs Linux
MIDI files are recognisable by their .mid extension after the file name. Windows has a huge number of utilities available to play around with MIDI files and Mac much less. Linux is anyone's guess? As a PC user I'll concentrate on the Windows environment for the rest of this document, but would invite Mac users to append further information at a later date.
Where Do I Find MIDI Files?
The best place to start is right here at Mudcat. If you've read through the earliest Mudcat FAQ's you'll be aware that you can search through the lyrics of something close to 10,000 songs, of which about half have a MIDI tune available. The tell tale sign appears near the bottom of the text and reads CLICK HERE TO PLAY. Left click on your mouse to play the tune, or right click to save the file to disc. It is probably wise to create a new Directory to store your MIDI files. Most MIDI files at Mudcat are less than 2,000 bytes, so you can even store plenty on a floppy disc.
You can search the Web just as easily by going to http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly/midi/help/midi-search.html. There are lots of search engines here but Midi Explorer is the favourite. If you're looking for 'A Hard Day's Night' you might enter 'Hard Day' into the search box. This is an easy one but if you don't succeed at first you may need to try 'beatles' or 'lennon'. By the way, 99.9% of all MIDI files on the net may be downloaded for free. There's the odd commercial site that will try and sting you for a 'special' musical arrangement. Try elsewhere!
I Just Want To Play a MIDI! What do I need?
The Microsoft Media Player (Freeware) is the bare bones utility installed on Windows PC's. It plays one MIDI file at a time and works just fine if you don't need any further smarts. There are plenty of clones of this program around, some Freeware and some Shareware. If you go to http://www.zdnet.com/swlib/ and type 'MIDI play' you'll find more choices than you can poke a stick at.
Search around and you'll find software that will allow to vary the speed of playback and/or change key for you. I won't make any special recommendations here because there is so much on the market, plus these features are almost always provided in the next category of software below.
Just two words of caution on this subject. Firstly don't be suckered to pay any loot to get a MIDI player - there's oodles of free stuff out there. Also have a look at the Karaoke Players; changing the key or tempo of playback are common features, and they will happily play .mid files.
I'd Love To Print the Music From A MIDI File
Anyone can now do this with comparative ease! Download the Freeware program MIDI Notate at http://www.notation.com/midinotatedownload.htm. This will give you quite presentable printout of your chosen music. It's easy to use and it's FREE. Before you do this you may care to read a little further on.
Printing Tablature
There is a nice program called MUSE from http://web.ukonline.co.uk/Members/laurie.griffiths/ which will allow you a 30 day trial. It has stacks of other features, but it does good job of printing TABlature for stringed instruments, with variable tuning for up to 6 strings, as well as Harmonica TABs. Does it optimise the fingering for Django's most demanding pieces? I haven't a clue, but it's just fine for helping you pick out the melody on your favourite fretboard. In a lot of respects MUSE runs a close race with NoteWorthy Composer for general features, but is clearly superior with respect to fretted instrument support. You'll read more about this subject in just a minute.
I'd Like To Do Some Other Stuff With MIDI Music Files
OK, so there's an individualistic streak in you and you're looking for the chance to rebel against the status quo! With most of the players above you'll need to modify the settings for key or tempo each time you play the tune - you can't modify the MIDI file to suit your personal tastes. Maybe you'd like to change the odd note, or add a pause after the chorus, or insert a few bars from Mozart. Then again you may want to start from scratch and enter the dots for a tune your grand-mother wrote or compose a whole new masterpiece fro a poem you've just written.
NoteWorthy Composer is a popular Shareware program at the Mudcat. Available at http://www.ntworthy.com/, it offers very generous facilities without registration, including the ability to write, edit, play and print MIDI files. There's a host of serious features that the average folkie will never need and new features are being constantly added.
I've already mentioned MUSE above if tablature is your bag.
Printed Folk Music On The Web
By far the easiest way to get printed music for a Mudcat Cafe (Digital Tradition) song is to go to the "Yet Another Digital Tradition" site at http://www.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/. It's not as current as the on-line database, but if you're happy with what you see when you get there, just print it out. It is also the easiest place to get notation for tin whistle or mountain dulcimer for Mudcat songs.
Other Forms Of Music Notation Available
ABC is a form of common sense notation that can be written with a conventional word processor and can be read (more or less) straight from the printed page. Supported by a relatively small horde of devotees there is a swag of software for it which does much the same job as NoteWorthy Composer, or parts thereof. More importantly there are huge repositories of fiddle/pipe tunes written in this format. There are programs to convert from ABC to MIDI format - MUSE as mentioned above can directly import ABC files. Otherwise there's a stack of information available at the ABC home page, (Be prepared for information overload at this site. It is not that newcomer friendly).
Can I Convert Sheet Music Into MIDIs?
You won't find universal consensus on this. I use a Shareware program called SharpEye to do this and find it quite a breeze for more complex music with three or more staves, such as choral music. Others argue that for simple tunes on one stave that it is just as easy to use NoteWorthy Composer and notate it from start to finish. If you'd like to try SharpEye it's available from http://www.visiv.co.uk/detai.htm,
Can I Convert WAVE or MP3 Files To MIDI?
No! And don't waste your money on software that claims to do it!
Caveats and Feedback
The information above is based upon what I've found useful at the least possible price. There is a stack of software available out there. If you have any questions or suggestions simply post a thread to this Forum. I for one will always be interested in new questions and opinions.
Note: I copied this from a message John in Brisbane posted in another thread. It's a great piece of work, and deserves its own thread.
Thanks, John. Because of the value of this information as a permanent reference, John and I will maintain this thread. Feel free to post messages to this thread, but note that we reserve the right to keep this thread as a reference by editing or deleting messages.
Thanks, John.
-Joe Offer