Goodbye World Goodbye: A gospel music duet with Freil Thrift

 

    This was a long time in the making.  The photo in the video is of Freil and myself playing, when I was 2 years old... in 1962!  The music is from a 1996 family reunion.  Freil had already played several songs.  It was a recurring theme for him.  Every time he went to any church, or anywhere with a piano, people knew him.  They'd keep asking him to play, and when he did, it was rarely one song.  So many people had favorites that they'd ask for.  No matter how long he played, people always wanted more.

    We all loved to hear him play, but looking back, it must have been difficult.  He never just "went to church."  No matter how far afield he went, someone knew him, word spread, and he'd wind up playing for the church that day.  I've heard that he went to the library in Nahunta to check out a book and had to sign up.  When the librarian asked him for his photo ID, he said "I'm Freil Thrift."  She replied "I KNOW who you are, but you still have to have an ID to sign up!!!"

    That was Freil.  Everybody knew him.  So at this particular reunion, he tried to take a break and asked me to play.  Someone asked for a duet.  Goodbye World Goodbye was my all-time favorite Freil Thrift song, and I'd spent a long time trying to learn it in his style.  A really long time...

    We sat down, and it was magic.  One of the most joyous moments in my life.  Everything went perfectly.  Every singer, every musician, who ever worked with Freil will tell you he made them sound better.  It's the gospel truth.  No matter how good they were, Freil knew how to bring out their best, and raise them to a level they couldn't reach alone.

    It was the same for me.  I've never sounded better, before or after that day.  When you're listening to the video, pay attention to the high notes.  That's him.  I had the mid-range.  We never practiced this song, and I know he preferred to play in the key of 'G'.  But I'm best in 'C', and pretty weak in other keys.  So I played in C, and he matched me on the spot.  Without a single missed note, he played in my key, at my pace, and every note he played enhanced my own.  

    Finding this footage, even an edited copy of a copy, being able to hear us play together after all these years, is beyond amazing.  It means more to me than I can express.  Like Camelot.  For one brief shining moment the world was clear and perfect.  Hearing this again brought that moment back for me.

    Still searching for the original Hi8 footage, but in the meantime, this will do most excellently. :^)

The Singing Chapmans: Something I Can Feel, & One Day I Will

    "Something I Can Feel" is the fourth song on side one of The Singing Chapmans "Redeemed By The Crucified One" album.  The song was written by Elmer Cole. For lyrics, click HERE.

    I've tried learning about Elmer Cole's life, and what else he wrote, but nearly every mention I can find is in reference to an article about someone else.  If you can point me to any website or article that has authoritative information, please leave the link in a comment.  It's hard to believe how little there is, when he's written songs like "I Found The Answer", I'm Looking for Jesus, and the fantastic "Ten Thousand Years." (This info, and a little bit more, were on the blog Southern Gospel Tidbits.)

    I found multiple mentions of him being with Willie Wynn and the Tennesseans, but again, his name was included, but no further information.  I'm not so familiar the most of the songs I can find for him, but have heard "Ten Thousand Years" all my life.  It was one of the songs Aunt Elsie Mae sang (and Uncle Freil played) as a special in church.

    "One Day I Will" is the fifth song on "Redeemed By The Crucified One."  It was composed by Walt Mills and John Stallings, or perhaps written by John Stallings, and performed by Walt Mills.  What little I could find seemed unclear, none of it from an authoritative source.  The lyrics can be found on Bluegrass Lyrics.com.

    Again, there's not much available other than their names being included/listed on a large number of websites.  Certainly no life stories, inspirations, or quotes.  There are some Youtube videos if you search, but again, nothing I'd consider a reliable source.  This is starting to look like a trend.  I'm not sure if it's more modern gospel, less-known gospel, or if the nature of online information has changed.  

    Over ten years ago, it seemed there was never a shortage of information about gospel composers and musicians.  This blog, "Grace Notes", is a recreation of a blog I kept from around 2012-2022.  Actual life got in the way, the site languished, and eventually I let it go.  This is a recreation of the spirit of that blog.  Years ago, there were Wikis, active forums, personal accounts, historical sites, all kinds of sources to help paint a picture of the songwriters that influenced my childhood.  Now, it's a desert.  Maybe I'm just not using the best search terms.  

    Whatever the case is, I'll leave you with these two songs for now.  For future posts, if I can't find enough information about the writers, or the song, I'll just give whatever brief details there are, and include multiple songs per blog.  No sense filling up all my pages with "I don't know, and can't find out."

It's been a busy week at work, to the point several friends from other offices are chipping in and helping to get the work done.  Tomorrow's Friday.  I'm off to see my parents on Saturday.  Something to look forward to.  I can't wait!

Off Topic - Roger Zelazny's Unicorn Variation As Read By Rene Auberjonois

     I'm going off the beaten path today.  Usually I'm all about Southern Gospel Music, or things that have some bearing on getting this blog where I want it to be.  Today, it's still about audio, but not about music.  It's about searching for one thing, and finding another.  It's about synchronicity.  It's about searching the shed for a 35 year old audio tape of my Uncle playing the family piano, and in the process, finding a 28-year old audio tape that I wasn't even thinking about.

    One of my favorite writers, Roger Zelazny, wrote several of my favorite stories.  That includes "Unicorn Variation", and to a lesser extent, "Angel Dark Angel."  Both of these stories are on an audiocassette, and read by Rene Auberjonois.  The tape was produced by Durkin-Hayes in 1995.  If you don't know who Auberjonois was, you'd probably recognize him as Odo, in Star Trek: Deep Space 9.  If you like niche sci-fi (syfy), you may recognize him as Hugo Miller, from Warehouse 13.  Numerous other things, but what you may not know is that he "read" for a large number of audio book productions.  And that he could breathe life into his readings with majestic ease.  When you listen to him, the characters came to life.  Each had their own voices, and mannerisms.  I've always loved to read, but listening to Rene read the stories out loud, added another layer to my enjoyment.  

    I've intended for years to find that tape, and transfer it to an MP3 file.  Because tapes wear out.  They degrade, the audio fades, the tapes stretch.  28 years later is stretching my luck.  Recently, I've been on a related quest to upload old audio recordings of my Uncle Freil on piano.  In the process, I've had to buy a new tape player, and re-learn how to use Audacity, something I haven't worked with in over a decade.  So finding "Unicorn Variation" might have been unintended at this exact moment, but it's been in the back of my mind for years.  And this was the perfect time to find it again.  For the most part, the audio quality is still nice and clear.  There was one section that had some trouble, but the words were still clear, so I'm okay with a bit of hiss and clicking.

For anybody not familiar with Zelazny, I usually think of him as a fantasy/sci-fi writer.  But that's like saying the sun's hot.  Zelazny wrote concerts with words.  He's not for everybody, and I'm not thrilled with everything he wrote.  But he used words like Leonardo da Vinci used paints.  Like Michelangelo used a chisel.  Everything he wrote was a work of art.  In Unicorn Variations, a lone traveler meets a chess-playing unicorn at an abandoned bar in a ghost town, with the fate of the world hanging on a single game.

    It's the kind of story I love;   nobody is 'the bad guy.'  The story is full of charm, wonder, and wit.  I've read it many times, and listened to this tape off and on since the mid-1990's.  Angel Dark Angel is also a "read many times" story, but it lacks the wonderful whimsy of "Unicorn."  

    So now I have both stories, read by the remarkable Rene Auberjonois, as mp3 files.  I'll back them up on a few hard drives, download them to my cell phone, and never lose it again.  PLUS, at the end of the tape, Rene mentions he's also recorded Zelazny's "Last Defender of Camelot."  Now that one... that one is arguably my most favorite short story in my entire life.  

    Monique and I both spent some time today trying to track down a copy.  Not on eBay, not on Amazon, nor AbeBooks.  Not on any niche sites I ran across.  Not on Youtube (I searched, in case another fan felt like sharing).  Youtube did have an old Twilight Zone episode base on it, but it didn't live up to the book.  Not even close.

    So, still hunting for an audiobook of "Last Defender of Camelot."  If you know how I can get hold of one, I'd appreciate a comment or email.  :^)

Progress Report: I have "New" Old Music from Long Lost Audiotapes

 Just the small stuff for now.  There were two cassettes in a box in the shed.  Also a videotape.  Still looking for the Hi8 video.  The cassettes were both home recordings of my Uncle Freil playing the piano.  One was dated 26 March 1988.  The other doesn't have a date, but is probably from the same time frame.

    Finished scanning the first audiotape last night.  The first side was done a few days ago, and had 14 minutes of Freil's music.  The rest was off-the-wall stuff, mostly commercials and old tv theme songs.  On the other side, it was a lot of Floyd Cramer music.  It makes sense, seeing that his style is very similar to Freil's style.  I used to have a lot of Cramer's albums, this was probably just a mix tape for the car.  Thank goodness it went into storage before it got old and brittle in the car.

    So, it was fun listening to Floyd Cramer last night.  There was even one song by Cramer that wasn't available on YouTube - Back On My Mind Again.  I know, it's a Ronnie Milsap song... but Floyd made it into a fun, up-tempo song.  I like the style.  Converted it to a WAV and added it to the "Songs I Want To Play" directory.  There are a lot of songs in there I can already play, but if someone does one song in a way I haven't heard, or that appeals and I want to learn their way of playing it... it goes in the directory.  Also, there are plenty that are beyond me.  Someday, maybe... or maybe I'll just enjoy listening to them now and then.

    The 14 minutes of Freil playing are digitized in one big WAV file.  I'll do some work with it later.  For now, the goal is just to get all these songs backed up.  One more tape to try.  Assuming the tape still plays, it'll be like opening Christmas gifts.  Who knows what wonderful songs he'll be playing?

... Several hours later...

    Slightly disappointed.  The 2nd tape was a duplicate of the first one.  So, no new discoveries.  On the bright side, I have 14 minutes of music I haven't heard in decades.  Quality is pretty low, but that was expected.  Recorded on a Radio Shack shoe-box tape recorder, while it was sitting on the piano as Freil played.  35 years later, the fact that the cassette still plays is absolutely remarkable.  I'm very happy with it!

    Spent the last couple of hours tinkering with the audio.  For what little I know, Audacity has some nice beginner level effects that definitely improved the sound.  Then started saving each song out as a separate WAV file.  Now I have 8 new songs by Freil.  Technically 9, but Yackety Sax was played twice.  I don't remember why, but it's all good.  It means a lot to hear him play something "new" after all these years.  Decades later, Freil still inspires me.

    It'll take some set-up, and hunting on the computer in the hopes I still have the VHS-to-File transfer software... but with any luck the VHS of Freil playing will be next.  Again, hoping it's in great condition.  Also, still searching the shed.  There's one more recording, a Hi8 videotape, that should be somewhere out there.  If I can find it, there's a point where he and I are playing a duet at Uncle Roger and Aunt Annie's home.  We're playing Goodbye World Goodbye, and it's a very favorite memory.  I need it to still be there, and still be playable.

One last thing, completely unrelated to music; there was another tape in that last box.  It has Rene Auberjonois (Odo, from Star Trek: Deep Space 9) reading a couple of short stories by Roger Zelazny.  One of them is "Unicorn Variations", and ranks as an all-time favorite story.  Going to digitize it and load it onto my phone for trips.  Talk about serendipity... this was an amazing rediscovery!!

Transferring Audiotape Cassettes to WAV and MP3

    It's been a while since my last post.  Lot going on in real life, but also making progress on the music.  I went to see my folks a couple of weeks back, and Mom gave me some old tapes and discs that potentially had Uncle Freil's playing on them.  Got home, and hunted all over, but none of the tape players in the house were able to play the cassettes.  Monique and I both sell on eBay... you'd think with 20+ years each selling on eBay, we'd have at least one fully functional audiocassette player in the house, but nope.  None that could transfer the music into my computer.  Going to have to buy one.

DISTRACTIONS

    Then we had distractions.  A very cute, tiny dog that decided we were going to be his new home.  With three dogs already, we can't afford a fourth.  Thankfully someone volunteered to adopt him. Also, Monique and her sister spent all last week reorganizing our clutter.  eBay had taken over.  There's still work to be done, but it makes more sense now.  It feels like we have breathing room again.

    During the same week, my computer kicked the bucket.  It started by only booting in low-res and 32-bit.  Then it wouldn't boot at all.  The next morning, still not booting, but it did attempt to do a repair on the drive.  Later that day, it booted up.  Over the next few days, it would start up, but with various hiccups.  For now it's booting up and working right.  It won't last forever, but at least it's working right now.

    In that same time frame, we were told our taxes were going to be... a lot. Much more than ever before.  Last year I half-way retired.  Still working part time, and still selling on eBay.  Near the end of the year property taxes were nearly double compared to the previous year.  So we sold on eBay like never before to be able to pay it.  Now we're having to pay taxes on all the extra income we made in order to pay the other taxes.  
    As it turned out, it wasn't so bad.  Not great, but not "end of life as we know it" bad.

STILL SEARCHING FOR A CASSETTE PLAYER

    While all that was going on, the hunt was still on for a tape player.  Apparently, there are no "good but affordable" cassette players being made.  You can either go cheap/mid-range, none of which had... pristine... reviews.  Or you can go eBay with classic, expensive, decks from the 80's.  Tough call... you want the final audio to sound good, but the bank is already broke.  Cheap was the only option.
    There were three models on Amazon that seemed appropriate, in a price range from $25 to $60.  All three had a standard headphone audio out jack.  With the correct cable, you can go from headphone out, to the computer's Mic In, and digitize the audio with Audacity.

    The winner was the Semier AM/FM Radio Cassette Recorder, model number SM-138.  It could play and record audiotapes, has a 3.5mm earphone jack, can run on 4 C size batteries, or AC (power cord comes in the box, thankfully).  As you can see in the photo, the box had some corner damage, but the machine was in perfect condition.

TESTING THE AUDIO

    Did a test run, and it works!  Not perfect, but I'm playing tapes recorded 30 to 40 years ago... and they were recorded with one of those old Radio Shack shoe-box recorders.  I'm thrilled they still worked at all.  A little audio wobble under the circumstances is completely acceptable.
    One of the reviewers (don't remember which unit it was reviewing) warned of a 'hum' when you used a power cord, and gave advice on how to avoid it.  (Use batteries, or buy a $10 Noise Isolator.)  It was a well-written review with a lot of helpful info, but he made it sound like not following his advice would result in horrible audio.  I disagree.  

    When the player audio is set to the lowest possible level at which recognizable sounds are playing, and Audacity recording levels adjusted appropriately, the audio was acceptable for the circumstances.  Hum wasn't an issue.  Bad tape quality, years of tape degradation, and highly variable volumes within the same recording, those were issues.  The quality sure wasn't up to sound studio standards.  But with all the technical challenges, it was as good as could be asked for.

GOT THE WRONG TAPES

    One last issue... now that I can play the tapes, and digitize them, those first two turned out to be recordings of professionally made CDs, which I already owned.  Very disappointing.  Not the end of the story, though.  Last night, going through old boxes, I found two audio tapes that I had personally recorded of Freil playing the piano.  Only had time to check one side out.  There are 14 minutes of good enough audio, with songs I haven't heard him play since the late 1980's.  That made it all worthwhile.

    Can't wait to listen to the rest.  Hope to find more gems from the past, but it's been too long since writing a new blog.  Now you know what's up, and that I'm still making progress!

MuseScore: Midi Import Panel Project Delayed

    "Midi Sheet Music" no longer consistently reads my newest MIDI files.  I spent several days recently searching for a replacement.  The big find was Midiano.  It shows scrolling sheet music, a piano keyboard, and both parts highlight the active notes as the MIDI file is playing.  It does the job with a LOT of bells and whistles.  That solved most of the problem.

    MUSESCORE PRINTS SHEET MUSIC... ODDLY
    The missing element was the ability to print the sheet music as .pdf files that I can share.  Of everything I tried, MuseScore was the best, but the formatting was odd.  It had clef symbols sprinkled all over the pages.  I wasn't too thrilled with the dots over the notes either, but that was small stuff.   The profusion of treble and base clefs throughout the sheets confused and annoyed me.  Not that I read sheet music... 

    Actually, I can struggle through the notes, piece by piece, but the rest of it is beyond me.  In the mid-60's, I took 3 years of first-year lessons.  Yes, that means I took the same first-year instruction three times.  Every time Dad got a new assignment, or my instructors moved, the new piano teacher insisted I start over... "to learn HER way."  By the third year, I was fed up and quit taking lessons.  Now I play by ear.

WHY CAN'T I FIND THE MIDI IMPORT PANEL?

    Anyway, spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find a better alternative.  MuseScore had the cleanest output, best-looking pages.  It imports MIDI without the sustain pedal, which is a strike against, but as far as sheet music it was the best free software out there.  Some forum conversations mentioned a "Midi Import Panel".  It's supposed to appear at the bottom of the screen, every time you open a Midi file.

    Not true.  It NEVER showed up.  Searched the context menus, the preferences, all the options I could find, nothing.  So I googled Midi Import Panel.  Long story short... it's gone.  There's are a lot of sites, even Google-recommended question/answer lists, that give instructions how to access it, and how to use it.  But they all apply to the previous version of MuseScore, not the current version.

    There's a GITHUB MU4 Task, "Restore Midi Input Panel".  It was opened on June 7, 2022, and closed on Sep 1, 2022.  The end result was to push it forward to a future revision.  The task was deemed too complex, and it was agreed that the panel would be restored in a future 4.x version of MuseScore.  As of today, March 05 2023, the panel is still not restored.

    So:      MuseScore 4 does NOT have the Midi Import Panel. 

               MuseScore 3 DOES!!!

GET 3.6.2 TO ACCESS THE IMPORT PANEL
    Those options seem kind of critical.  It's hard to understand why they simple left it out.  On the other hand, it's a very complex program, provided completely free.  I can't really complain about free.

There was another forum discussion where several people opted not to update yet.  Someone mentioned using both.  I already had version 4 installed, and tried installing version 3.  It worked just fine.  As a matter of fact, the highest revision to 3 I could find was version 3.6.2, so the link above goes to the first site I found that offered it.  Let me say it again:  MuseScore 3.6.2 DOES have the Midi Import Panel.

    It did exactly what it was supposed to.  Now I'm ecstatic.  It automatically splits my piano track into a treble and bass clef, which I like.  And it no longer has the excess clefs all over the sheets.
    One minor thing, and this is my own fault.  I use a lot of keyboard real estate.  Hit the deep low notes, and often go 2 or 3 octaves up as well.  In the sheet music, there are a LOT of lines stacked up representing how far below Middle C to play.  That's okay with me.  I hope it doesn't bother anybody who tried to play my arrangements.  With my limited understanding of sheet music, this makes more sense than having the treble and bass clefs floating all over the place.

PLAY IT LIKE YOU FEEL IT!
    Last caveat:  Professional musicians have told me, and many websites I've read also state that MIDI to sheet music conversion is error prone, and inaccurate.  As far as I can tell, it shows the notes I play, the way I play them.  Anybody advanced enough to read the notation... and anybody who loves southern gospel playing... can figure out the rest.  You just play it like you feel it.

Midiano: Free Interactive Piano-App in your Browser!

     Yesterday I posted a little bit about the search for a "Midi Sheet Music" replacer.  Today, I want to go into more detail about the results of my search.  MuseScore 4, is my new favorite for printing out sheet music.  It's one narrow band of my search for a full-featured replacement.

    The real gem was in stumbling across midiano.com.  The homepage gives you two options; you can click "Start", and jump right into things, or click "About", and get an overview of the project in general.   This is the ONLY viable replacement for Midi Sheet Music (MSM).  There's nothing out there, at least not for free, that comes even close.  But where MSM is dated, hasn't been updated in years, and is no longer capable of loading all my MIDI files... Midiano goes the distance, and it does so with style.

To quote from the website:

• Midiano is an interactive Piano-learning app that runs on any device with a modern browser.
• Open any MIDI-File and Midiano shows you the notes as falling bars over a piano as well as the corresponding sheet music.
• Connect a MIDI-Keyboard to get instant feedback if you hit the correct notes.
• You can also use the keyboard as output device to play the MIDI-Files on your keyboard.

    It runs on any browser (and device) that supports the WebAudioAPI (Full support apart from Internet Explorer).

To connect a MIDI-Keyboard the browser also needs to support the WebMIDIAPI (Currently only Chrome and Edge).

    Midiano played my songs correctly.  More accurately, it played them the way I play them.  I'm not a trained pianist.  I'm a guy who plays by ear, is middling-good, and loves southern gospel style.  

    The song I play goes into Ableton in a single non-stop recording, while recording video at the same time.  If I mess up, I start over.  Once it's good enough, the audio and midi are output with no editing.  Then the audio is synchronized over the video, and the video's original audio is deleted.  The result is a nice video of me playing the song, minus the dogs barking, doorbells ringing, voices, neighborhood traffic...  

I'M A MIDIOT

    The MIDI file I create doesn't have a treble and base.  No separation for which hand plays which notes.  I don't read sheet music myself, and certainly can't write my own notation.  Midi Sheet Music used to be my go to for converting the midi files into notation that plays across the screen with the midi file.  Having found Midiano, I'll be using it from now on.  This is where it all comes together for people who want to learn to play my arrangements.  I record a video as the midi file is playing, slow once, then full speed.  It shows the notation, and the piano keys, as they play across the screen.  

    To make it more helpful, I include the midi files, plus a .pdf of the sheet music, on this blog.  All free.  

And all thanks to Midiano for making it possible again.  And for everybody who downloads my midi files, they can use Midiano to make learning the arrangements even easier.  You can easily slow down or speed up the playback. Pause, try a segment, back up and try again...  Midiano's far better than just watching a "how to" video, and I play to include a link to Midiano on every page that has a downloadable Midi file.

    Some day I'll see about using Adsense.  Maintaining this blog, a custom URL, and Google Office, costs about $12.95 a month.  If at some point my blog can become self-supporting, that would be the cat's pajamas.  Until then, at least it's affordable.  (You should have seen my BlueHost fees...)

I THOUGHT MY ORIGINAL SITE WAS GONE FOREVER

    Grace Notes, my original site, was online for over a decade.  I couldn't learn new songs fast enough to make it a profitable business, but occasionally someone treated me to a cup of coffee.  Sometimes even a banana split.  But the hosting fees were ridiculous, hundreds of dollars a year, for a site that never paid for itself.  So I gave it up.  We couldn't afford that kind of money just for fun.  

    

    Could have sworn I backed it up first, but mistakes were made...  and I thought it was gone forever.  Until recently when Monique found a mostly complete mirror of my site on "Wayback Machine."  Now I have access to many of the pages that were gone.

    I'm backing all the pages up that they saved.  Not everything was there, but a lot.  They saved nearly 100 pages of the original Grace Notes.  Now I've restarted Grace Notes in this new venue.  Writing new things, working on new music, but also plan to recreate every missing page I can.  Eventually all the midi files and sheet music will once again be available, for free download.

MIDIANO - ELEGANT, BRILLIANT, AND FREE

    Getting back to the point, there's a lot of 'step by step' processes needed to make this vision work.  Midiano is a HUGE step toward rebuilding my dream.  It's going to take years, but I see the path ahead now, and it's getting clearer ever day.

    To make it even better, it's available as a Progressive Web App!  I didn't know what that was, or how to set it up so I sent an email to the guy who wrote Midiano (He doesn't have his name on his website; for the sake of privacy, I won't use it here, either).  Within 24 hours, he sent a very nice email, with a link to instructions for my specific browser (I use Vivaldi).  And some general information to help me understand.  And an offer to help more, if that wasn't enough.  How neat is that?  

    

The instructions were beautifully simple.  Three easy steps and now I can work on Midiano any time, online or offline.  I'm immensely grateful!!

If you're looking for a learning tool that plays any MIDI file, creates sheet music notation, shows a piano keyboard, and shows them both in real-time, playing as the midi file is playing... you can't do any better than Midiano.  Go check out his site.  There's nothing to buy.  It's just a really cool utility, written by one of the nicest geniuses I've ever met.  :^)

Midi Sheet Music Stopped Working - Searching for Alternatives

     I'm barely scraping the surface with Ableton Live 10 Lite.  Recently I learned how to export Midi files.  At least, it worked that time.  Now, it's not working again.
    To be more specific, it IS creating a midi file, but my old standby, Midi Sheet Music, can't load the file.  Can't tell what's different, if the song is longer, more complex, has non-standard play-styles... 

    Backing up a bit, I've used Midi Sheet Music (MSM) for years.  The sound is a bit cheesy and the graphics plain, but it's the ONLY stand-alone program I've ever found that:

    A. Creates Sheet Music from Midi files
    B.  Allows you to print the sheet music
    C. Plays the midi file while scrolling the sheet music.
    D. At the same time, also has a piano keyboard onscreen that shows the notes being played.

    It does it all.  I play by ear, creating a midi file while playing.  Load this midi file into MSM, hit "Play", and it's perfect for someone trying to learn the song.  They can follow along at their own pace, watching the sheet music, and/or the piano, as the song plays visually on both.  If I record a video and upload it to Youtube, the viewer can learn to play it in the same fashion I play.  (Southern Gospel... I'm okay, not great, but my songs have a "Floyd Cramer" feel, and MSM let me share my style with people who have the same taste in music.)
    If the person downloads my MIDI file, and downloads Midi Sheet Music, they can practice playing and adjust the pace as slow or fast as they want.  Except that it's no longer working for me.  When I save a Midi file, and load it into MSM, the result is a lot of gibberish that basically says there's an error in the file and it can't play.

    Maybe the problem is just with this one song, some glitch in the file?  Assuming exactly that, I hit Google up for help.  Nothing solved the problem.  Next I tried to find substitutes.  There were a heap of almost-rans.  Surprisingly, they were all able to import and play my midi file.  I guess that means MSM is seriously outdated.  Some did better than others.  Several would have been excellent, except they couldn't incorporate the sustain pedal.  Others played perfectly, including use of the sustain pedal.

     MuseScore 4 solved the problem of sheet music.  It will output sheets as .pdf files, perfect for letting people download if all they need is the notation.  I'm not certain how good a job it does, since I don't read sheet music.  I can figure out enough of it to feel like it gets the gist of the song, but have always heard midi to sheet music translations can be innacurate. 
    The fine details don't bother me.  Anybody who knows Southern Gospel should be able to figure out the rhythm on their own.  :^)
As long as it gets the notes well enough for people to figure it out, it's good enough.

    MuseScore 4 flopped, though, when it comes to playing midi files.  It was one of those that couldn't hold the sustain, and it couldn't seem to understand my 'southern gospel' twang.  Couldn't find any way to fix it, so every MIDI I imported into MuseScore plays in a bad-sounding staccato sound, and with notes often out of sequence or jammed together.  Not just bad, but horrible.  I never found any free software better at outputting sheet music though, so this is my go-to for people who sight-read their music and can't afford to buy professional software.

    The big winner was an online-only solution at Midiano.com.  I dearly wish it could be downloaded to use off-line.  It's supposed to be possible, but I don't know enough to understand how to do it.  I've emailed the programmer, hope he's able and willing to help.  Anyway, Midiano does it all.  Not quite like Midi Sheet Music, but it's actually an improvement.  The piano option wasn't immediately visible, but it's there, and can be selected in the "View" options.  Lastly, it comes with a HUGE amount of choices.  You can adjust nearly every possible option.  With a bit of tinkering in the options, it does exactly what I needed.

    Midiano was by far and away the best result from two evenings worth of hunting.  It's miles and miles ahead of anything similar.  Plus, it looks fantastic.  Best of all, you get all that for free!  Not sure how he supports his website, but the least I can do is let people know how fantastic Midiano is.