User manual

569
Transcribing MIDI recordings
About this chapter
In this chapter you will learn:
• How to prepare your parts for score printouts.
• How to use the Display Quantize tool to handle “exceptions”
in the score.
• How to resolve parts that contain mixed notes and triplets.
About transcription
This chapter assumes you have a MIDI recording that you
want to transform into a printable score. However, if the
parts are fairly complicated, you probably need to perform
some manual editing of the notes. This is described in the
chapter
“Entering and editing notes” on page 573.
Getting the parts ready
1. Record the music.
You must definitely play in time with the click.
2. Play back to check that the music was recorded as in-
tended.
If not, you might need to re-record or perform some editing.
3. Decide how much permanent alteration to the record-
ing you can accept to make the score look good.
If the answer is “none”, you should prepare your score from a copy of the
track. See the section below.
4. Select all parts (on all tracks) that you want to work on.
5. Open the Score Editor.
6. Activate Page Mode.
Preparing parts for score printout
Below follow a few tips to note when preparing a score for
printout:
• If a part is complex, you may have to do some “manual”
editing of notes, like moving them or changing their lengths
(see the chapter “Entering and editing notes” on page
573). This means that the recording does not play back ex-
actly as it originally did. If this is a problem, we suggest you
work on a copy of the recording. Use the Duplicate Track
function on the Project menu to create a version of the
track for scoring. Rename the track and mute the original
track while you are preparing the score. You can of course
also work on a copy of the entire project file.
• For reasons described in the previous chapter, quantizing
the track might be a good idea. This reduces the amount of
detailed adjustments needed in the Score Editor.
• If you need to quantize, always play back your tracks af-
terwards to make sure timing was not disrupted due to in-
appropriate quantize settings. You might have to quantize
some sections with one value and others with another.
• If the project contains many repetitions, it might be
quicker to record just one instance of each to start with. If
you then finish the score work on each section, you can
assemble the entire project by working with parts in the
Project window. This might save you some time since the
detailed adjustments to each section have to be per
-
formed only once.
• A similar approach can also be used when you create
sections where several instruments play the same rhythm
(a horn section, for example): Record the first instrument
and make adjustments so that it looks like it should in the
Score Editor. Then copy the part to the other tracks, and
change the pitches of the notes using MIDI input. Finally,
go through the copied parts and make fine adjustments,
change display transpose settings, etc. This can be a very
fast way to create polyphonic parts with complicated
rhythms.
• There also may be situations when the quickest way to
record a part for several instruments is simply to record it
in one go, by playing the chords on your MIDI instrument.
If you later want to split the recording into separate tracks
or polyphonic voices, you can use the Explode function,
see
“The Explode function” on page 572.
!
Before starting, make sure that you understand the
basic principles behind the score notes/MIDI notes
relationship and also what Display Quantize is, as
described in the chapter
“How the Score Editor
works” on page 551.