newbie - changing midi song into printed music

[drumsb]

Hi, newbie here. My daughter as a friend who has given her a "song" that was recorded on a Roland Fantom G8 (I think). The song has 4-5 tracks with a different instrument for each track.

 

My daughter would like to take this and feed it into software on a PC to generate printed music. I have a wintel laptop.

 

That's about as far as my knowledge goes so I need some guidance on the software I need and and specific info that the files form the Roland need to be in to be read by the software on the PC.

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

[nerol1st]

This is designed to do EXACTLY what your trying to do.

 

However I have no idea if it's possible to notate every instrument on like a conductors score, I am not that familiar with sibelius. But I know you can do different scores with it in different clefs etc...

[Mr.Grumpy]

Yep, you'll need to buy software. Some programs can do the inverse opertation and "read" a scanned image of sheet music and turn it into a MIDI file. MIDI files have the " .MID" extension. Musitek "Smart Score" is another commercial software package available that does this. I bought a copy at my local Micro Center store.

 

FYI - MIDI files are analogous to a player piano roll. There's no actual sounds in a MIDI file, it just contains the notes being played. So it's actually fairly simple for the computer to convert the MIDI data to a score.

[drumsb]

thanks for the info.

[nerol1st]

Finale is another piece of software that does what you want.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Most DAW programs, such as Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase and Sonar, can import and record MIDI data, display it as notation and then print it out too. If all you want to do is work strictly with notation, then a notation program like Sibelius or Finale is excellent, although not inexpensive. For general purpose stuff, the notation capabilities of most audio / MIDI (Digital Audio Workstation - "DAW") software is probably going to be fine for your needs.

 

Assuming you have only one song, and this isn't going to be a regular need that would justify buying a DAW or notation program, you might want to contact a local studio and see if they'd be willing to do it for you, or if they could recommend someone local to you who could print out notation from a MIDI file. Heck, it you asked here, I bet someone would be willing to do it for you for a reasonable fee.

 

As far as what you need from the Roland, it's a standard MIDI file. .MID file extension. Specifically, a Type 1 .MID file. Any DAW or notation program should be able to import that as individual MIDI tracks, which will make doing the conversion and notation easier.

 

I'm not sure if the Roland has a USB port, or floppy drive or CD burner, but you'd want to use one of those to save the data to if it's available. Anything it can export to that your daughter's (or a studio's) computer could read / open - floppy, CD, USB thumb drive, etc. The files are usually pretty small, so anything can hold it, and it can be easily sent as an email attachment. If you can't export things that way with the Roland, then your next option is to connect a MIDI cable to the Roland's MIDI output port and the other end to the MIDI input on a computer, and record the data in real time from the Roland to the DAW. Then you can print from there. It's a bit more hassle to set up and takes a bit longer, but if you do it right, the end results are the same.

 

A simple MIDI interface for your computer can cost as little as $20-30. DAW and notation software is usually going to set you back at least a couple hundred dollars though.