I have music that was composed in a MIDI software environment to begin with (as opposed to being played live on a keyboard, for example). Hence, note durations and so forth are already the way I want them. I’m interested in displaying it and printing it as sheet music. (The original composition software has a piano-roll interface instead).
Downloaded a demo of a product called Finale 2014. Installed. Went to open file. Crashed. Restarted. Went to open file. Crashed. Repeated enough times to convince me next time wasn’t gonna be the charm. Found an old downloadable copy of Finale 2007 demo. Opened file. It changed my tempos all round — “quantizing” them. Poked around, found a setting for “minimum note duration”, another batch os settings for whether or not to reduce rhymical complexity, eliminate grace notes, etc. Adjusted them. Set minimum duration to 4 (somethings… some three letter acronym starting with E)… started to open file, didn’t crash but hadn’t opened it as of 2 hours later, killed it, retried with that setting set to 32 (the default is 256). Better than original time that it opened, but it’s still mucking around with my timing, and it now comes to an abrupt halt long before the end of the piece. (That may be a limitation of demo mode, somehow affected by the low setting for minimum note duration, don’t know for sure).
Opened GarageBand (despitenot having much affinity for it).
Dragged MIDI file into the window. Ten minutes later, force-quit GarageBand which was spinning a beachball and showing up as unresponsive in Force Quit Applications dialog.
Musescore can open the MIDI file. It wants to know a minimum duration, defaulting to 1/64; there’s only one finer option, 1/128, I choose that, only to find that it is rendering each individual note as if there were three of it (2 32nd notes followed by a 64th). Close file, import at default setting of minimum dur = 1/64. Now I am seeing it correctly as indiv notes, 16th notes, interrupted by an unfortunate barrage of 32nd and 64th rests (I’d prefer it to think of the notes as staccato eighth notes). It has the weirdest damn array of key sigs imaginable for a D# minor piece. Change that…hmmph, it’s still expressing that note as an E flat Default time sig is 4/4, I want 6/8 (or 18/8 but let’s go with 6/8 for now). That changes easily enough. The measure is cut after 7 notes play; I want it to change it’s sense of how long a measure lasts (I want 6 of these notes to constitute a measure, not 7). Can’t figure out how to instruct it to do that. Leaving that for now.
Play the piece… it’s made a complete hash of what’s in the original MIDI file, changing it, it does not sound at all the same. It’s no longer my piece. Reimport at the higher setting 1/128. Play. Ok now it sounds as it’s supposed to. But the nomenclature…yeesh… If I change the time sig it changes the actual notes (not merely the way it represents them onscreen). So I have to leave it in 4/4 with approx 7 notes per measure, with one part (staff #1) in g flat minor, one correctly in D sharp minor, one in B flat minor, one in E minor, and one in C# minor.
