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.