[ILUG] music..

[John Gay]

On Friday 11 January 2002 15:43, ilug-admin at linux.ie wrote:
> Message: 18
> Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 14:32:05 +0000
> From: "John P. Looney" <john at antefacto.com>
> To: Irish LUG list <ilug at linux.ie>
> Reply-To: ilug at linux.ie
> Subject: [ILUG] music..
>
>  Are there programs for displaying Midi files as sheet music ?
>
> Kate

Actually, I've been through this for quite some time now. Here's what I know:

1) RoseGarden. For editing midi files in notation, I.E. sheet music. It is 
very buggy and prone to crashing quite often, far too often for my liking. 
Also, it can only 'print' in musixtex format, which then needs to be 
converted manually to a printable format that I've never had any luck with.

2) KDE multimedia now includes noteedit, which can not import midi, but can 
export midi. You can write you music in sheet music and export midi, 
musixtex, which I have had success with, lilypond and ?PMX? This also has a 
tendancy to crash, but not as often as RoseGarden. But if you allready have a 
midi file, this does you no good.

3) NoteWorthy Composer. Yes, this is Windows. Also, it displays music with a 
custom font so it does not like to play nicely with wine. I have managed to 
get it working on my system and one you get the fonts package installed and 
wine to reconise the fonts then it is quite well behaved. It can open midi 
files as well as it's own music file format. For writing your own midi files 
from music it is quite easy and intuitive. The only problem is you can not 
print with it at all. It sends the music, in it's custom font to the printer 
and cups very nicely subsitutes a regular font instead. So you get really 
nice music with lots of scrambled letters in place of all your nice notes.

4) For playing a midi file, timidity++ is the best option. Timidity++ is 
software-based and can use regular instrument patches rather than your sound 
cards instruments. I've got one of hte cheapest crystal sound cards, but 
timidity++ make my midi files sound allmost real! I've never got my generic 
midiplay to work properly in Linux, but back in the old days when I used to 
have Windows installed and played midi files, they sounded awful.

This is only my limited knowledge, but from my experience, if you have a midi 
file and want to see the sheet music, RoseGarden can import the midi file and 
display the sheet music. But any editing can lead to crashes, often. If you 
are editing music, you really need to save about every 5 notes. It's that 
bad. Teh creator promised a new 3.0 version, about 2 years ago, and has not 
done anything with it since.

If you have music you want to put into midi format, noteedit from KDE is 
slightly better. I feel safe only saving every 5-10 bars with it. Also, the 
printing freature is 'slightly' better that RoseGarden, but only slightly.

For playing midi, timidity++ is your only man. Anything else is a compromise, 
unless you have a very weak system.

Cheers,

	John  Gay