"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?
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.
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.
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