Midi Sheet Music

If you are learning to play the piano or any instrument for that matter you might find it a lot more intuitive to download MIDI files as opposed to standard sheet music. Midi files generally don’t sound very good when played back since they depend on the quality of your computers sound card. However, they are a great way to learn an instrument as you can listen to the notes as well as read them. Download MIDI files from thousands of artists and genres.

If you don’t have a MIDI sequencer you can convert these MIDI files directly to ‘Sheet Music’ or score as it is otherwise known, using the ‘MIDI to Sheet Music converter’ tool at the following address. http://www.8notes.com/midi_sheet_music/

Notation Musican  - Featured MIDI sheet music software

Notation software is a US based company who specialise in providing composition and notation software to musicians.

As opposed to advanced software applications such as Sibelius, Notation Software has deliberately held back on the fancy features and has focused on simplicity as their aim is to provide for “everyday musicians”

With regards to MIDI sheet music, Notation Software has a new piece of software called Notation musician. The purpose of this software is to accurately convert MIDI files to high quality sheet music. You can add lyrics to any song, view the individual instrument parts of the score and play along using Notation musician for accompaniment.

The software is simple yet still does everything that you will need it to do. You have full control over the playback allowing you start/stop, fast forward/rewind, mute and solo various parts. You can loop sections, adjust the tempo, transpose instruments and more.

There are also various features to help your learn to read the notation such as providing the note names inside the note heads, displaying a “beat bar” so you can see exactly where you are in the song and a metronome to help you keep track of the beat.

Notation musician eloquently converts the MIDI files and/or parts of MIDI files to sheet music without any fuss. You can then send easily send the sheet music direct to your printer

Visit their website for more information

What is a midi file?

A midi file is a song file that can be played back on your computer. You can open these files using what is known as a MIDI sequencer. There are many midi sequencers available including some free ones but for musical scoring and notation, software such as Sebelius is often favoured.

The sounds/instruments that you hear when you play back a MIDI file on your computer come from your computers sound card so that quality of the sound can vary. Once you have opened up the MIDI file in your MIDI sequencer you can view the score. If you want you can even edit the notes and change the sounds etc.

Free Midi sequencers

There are many MIDI sequencers available which you can use to create MIDI sheet music. Below are some of the freeware applications available.

Rosegarden - Only for Linux

Rosegarden is a free audio sequencer and musical notation editor. Using this software you can record, arrange and compose music. This software would be particularly useful for creating MIDI sheet music as it contains sophisticated notation editing capabilities and can produce high quality printed output. The interface is accessible and user friendly.

Anvil Studio - Windows 7 / Vista / XP / 2000 / 98

Anvil studio is a free MIDI sequencer which allows for an unlimited number of MIDI tracks. It is useful for importing MIDI sheet music as you can hover your mouse over a note on the staff and it will display the highlighted note on a keyboard. Like most MIDI sequencers you can record, arrange and compose music using an external MIDI keyboard. Additionally Anvil studio has the ability to automatically fix badly formatted MIDI files.

Music Studio Producer - Windows 95/98/Me/NT 4.0/2000/XP/Vista

Music Studio producer is a shareware MIDI sequencer which allows you to record, arrange and compose music. The sequencer can host virtual instruments which you can plug in to the sequencer. For example, your sound card will come with various instruments which are used to play back MIDI files but most of these sounds are terrible. Virtual instruments (VSTi) can essentially replace these sounds with better ones. After importing a MIDI file into the sequencer you change the playback speed, loop the playback, solo and mute individual MIDI tracks.

Quartz Audio Master - Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000

Quartz Audio Master can perform MIDI sequencing, audio mixing, recording, processing and sound editing. It comes in four versions, Freeware, Promise, Project and Professional. There freeware version allows for up to 16 MIDI tracks where you can display and edit musical score. The software has a virtual keyboard and a karaoke lyrics viewer.