Can a song be written into MuseScore with only the roughest of beat/timing?
HI folks. I REALLY need your help and advice here. I am just still too new to music notation to understand how to proceed here.
I have converted a very melodic 4 min. MP3 piano song to sheet music, using a program called AnthemScore. I then moved it into MuseScore for concentrated adaptation and editing. Here is the problem:
The song is FILLED with rubato ... I mean filled. Listening to it, it only vaguely adheres to 4/4 time. There are lots of nuanced runs & lots of extra notes, suggestive of a pianist dancing his fingers over the keys. That is what I love about the score. It is elaborate and beautiful. However, when examining the sheet music, all the notes in the song are there but are simply not in rigid 4/4 time. There might be 14 notes with a run in 1 measure, and then 6 notes in another, then 11 notes in a 3rd with pauses, etc. As could be expected by the Anthemscore program, note duration is all over the place, with lots of 1/16th notes, 1/8th notes, quarter notes, and so on. Now, I can adjust the score to sound just fine if a player is very good reading that note duration carefully and basically ignoring 4/4 timing, but ... if I have to cut, move and paste hundreds of notes into different measures and add tons of rubato marks so that the song more or less conforms to 4/4 time, it will take me ... WEEKS!
So, simply asked, can a sheet music song kind of be a free-form nuanced piece conforming only very roughly to 4/4 time, or must I really spend all that time to make the song rigidly conform to 4/4 time?
I really appreciate your advice. Thanks so much in advance.
Comments
The person that made that recording may or may not have had sheet music in front of him. Even if he did, the recording is his interpretation, and his alone. Someone else might play that piece totally different.
Even if you could notate exactly what is played, it wouldn't be the same. There are way too many subtleties in a live performance that notation can't replicate. And that is the point. There is music (that which you hear). And there is notation (merely a starting point for the production of music). Sometimes, that is.
In reply to The person that made that… by bobjp
Bob: Thanks for the reply. The song I'm asking about, named "Somewhere in Time", is a movie theme that was released as sheet music three decades ago by its composer (Dave Barry) in strict 4/4 time. I suspect the guy who recently re-recorded the piece I'm referencing now, certainly knew the general melody of the song, but was so comfortable with playing a piano that he added some real ad-hoc flourish to it, with "dancing fingers", riffs, runs, etc. It sounds beautiful, but as I said, he added so many notes with many of them being carried over to the next measure, and so much rubato, that the original 4/4 time measure is just not very obvious. The sheet music that AnthemScore re-created from this song plays fine but in looking at it, there is only a trace of rhythm, with lots of notes present but not strictly in rigid beat.
If I understand your reply to my post, if the song is playable by a MuseScore pianist, then an improvised adaptation of it in sheet music with only a rough adherence to meter is OK, as long as the notes are all present and marked with proper notation. Their placement in specific measures within the sheet does not have to be rigidly adhered to. If so, then it will save me a LOT of time.
Is that correct?
When you listen to the mp3 can you tap your foot to some kind of beat? The foot tapping can slow down or speed up at times, but at least is there a sense of meter? You mention 4/4, but would a drummer, for instance, be able to accompany the piano?
For "nuanced runs & lots of extra notes, suggestive of a pianist dancing his fingers over the keys"
See:
https://musescore.org/en/node/117161
In reply to When you listen to the mp3… by Jm6stringer
Hi. Thanks for the reply. To answer your first question, the original song was written by its original composer in rigid 4/4 time. However, regarding the adaptation that I am working with, 4/4 time is dramatically reduced. It is more like ... 1 - 2 -3 -4, _ 2,3,4-5, 1-2-3-10, etc. The notes are all readable but the break from measure to measure is only roughly maintained. As you said, the tapping will slow way down in some measures, and not others.
You introduced me to a new term (credenza) that I did not know about. Unfortunately, I am not a musician enough to really grasp how to notate it in sheet music so that others can play the same notes in a similar manner. I can see that rigid meter/beat can drop out during a credenza riff on the sheet. That is sort of what I am talking about here. In looking at printed credenzas, I can see what notes to play but the timing, meter, beat and measure are still too confusing to me.
Anyway, as I said to Bob, I am going to ignore 4/4 timing and just finalize the notes that AnthemScore wrote so that rubato and measure breaks from one measure to another are sort of there but not rigid. Thanks.
I will post a link to the song once I am done with it.
In reply to Hi. Thanks for the reply. … by fsgregs
I didn't mean you can ignore the 4/4 timing. I just meant that the player did. The player gets to do what they want. You have rules of notation to follow. That is, if you want players to be able to follow your sheet music.
But if you use the original sheet music to figure out the notes of the melody, the rest can be marked as a cadenza. Normally cadenza notes are made smaller and joined with a beam. You can go into measure properties and make the measure include the extra beats. And turn off the "+" sign that will result, in the View menu.
In reply to I didn't mean you can ignore… by bobjp
OK, the easiest way to demonstrate my problem is with a short screenshot. Here is a short excerpt from the score. Notice that the notes are all kind of just placed into the staff without much attention to measure breaks:
So, do I attempt to fix this, moving all the notes to match 4/4 time, or do I just ignore it and work to fix the timing of each note so it matches the actual song? If its the former, it will take me two weeks or more, and when I'm done, my version of this song will join the other 30 or more versions currently on MuseScore (it is a popular song). Moving everything is not something I look forward to doing. Yet I do want MuseScore pianists to be able to play it. What do you think?
In reply to OK, the easiest way to… by fsgregs
If there are 30 scores for this already and you are inexperienced, I'd advise you to forget it. Practise more with your own work or adaptations of existing tunes and then try again 3 to 4 months later, By REALLY need help I assume that you meant honest comment.
In reply to If there are 30 scores for… by underquark
Actually,this would be a great work out. Extra on the WORK. There are four beats in every measure. All the notes are short because the software was reading percussive piano sound. I have no idea what the song is supposed to sound like. I did two versions of the first three measures. The first makes the note values make more sense. The second has a rallentando in the second measure. Which makes it more musical. Either way, I see no shortcuts to the end you desire.
In reply to If there are 30 scores for… by underquark
Hmmm! I have thought about chucking the whole thing, in part because there are already at least 15 to 20 piano renditions of the song on MuseScore and even if I ignored 4/4 time, it will take me a week to adjust all the notes to proper length (half, quarter, 1/8th, etc.). You are probably right. The song is too popular to try adding yet another version of it. I do care if the MuseScore audience doesn't give a crap if another adaptation is added or not. I will take your advice and consider another song to work on. Thanks!
By the way, I have yet to try using MuseScore 4. There is a lot about it I don't like (yet), so ... I have downloaded it and installed it, but ... I;ll use it soon.
In reply to Hmmm! I have thought about… by fsgregs
Here's a MU3 version. You will have to right click and select Open With. Them MU3.
You apparently like this song. You also knew going into it that it was going to be a lot of work. I don't know what your primary motivation for using MuseScore is. I use it for composition. I am not interested in transcription, or posting on the .com site. I do have one piece there that I had to post to be in a discussion group. Which has since folded.
You might continue to work on this piece for the learning experience that it is.
Yes, MU4 is a....challenge, to be sure.
Here you ask:
Can a song be written into MuseScore with only the roughest of beat/timing?
...and your post:
https://musescore.org/en/node/347954
seeks the holy grail -- an accurate mp3 to sheet music converter.
Okay... here's a question:
Do you wish to learn to play that mp3 song on piano; and you want to put it into standard music notation for yourself to practice from?
Maybe taking a step back to yesteryear and the days of player pianos can help.
Back then people were able to emulate the piano key presses and, through repetition - measure by measure, memorize a song. (When the movie The Sting came out, I learned The Entertainer using this method over several weeks. People hearing it thought I was an accomplished player, but that was the only piece I could play! My only other song on piano was "Chopsticks". :-)
Today there is the "cascading 'notes' falling down upon a piano keyboard" on a computer monitor -- i.e., a video player piano. I've seen such on musescore.com and also YouTube. So, instead of converting from mp3 to notation - with its timing/rhythm requirements, something like this may be of value:
https://www.nch.com.au/twelvekeys/screenshots.html
which seems like it could do an mp3 to "video player piano" conversion - no need for rigid beat/timing.
Check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCNEHuAwd4M
(cadenzas starting at 3:00)
In reply to Here you ask: Can a song be… by Jm6stringer
Thank you for the good reply. I really appreciate it and all the other pieces of advice. Is your name Jim?
Candidly, I am seeking an MP3 to sheet music converter because it gives me a written piece of music I can then edit in MuseScore for many others to listen to and play if they wish. Believe it or not, I cannot speed read music at all. Long ago, when I tried to look at sheet music and try to read the notes, I discovered that I have such good pitch that I began to memorize the song long before I could increase speed in reading its notes. In fact, I wrote four very nice piano pieces decades ago but after doing so, I could not play them because I could not go fast enough or play without mistakes. So, I just gave up. I love music and did not want to make it a real pain to play.
I enjoy listening to and watching piano cascades like those you linked, but I LOVE taking some sheet music and editing it in MuseScore to add new instruments, add chord symbols, rubato marks, etc. In fact, it makes my day. It is so enjoyable. I am 75 yrs old now and don't want to struggle to try to learn to speed read music. Its just too much work. I'd much rather discover a piece of sheet music, convert it to MuseScore using the PDF converter program, then note by note edit it so the instruments are beautiful and sublime, I've added some strings or horns or synths, adapted the timing with rubato marks ... in other words ... turning it from some sheet music to a beautiful melody. To help me along, I could really use an accurate MP3 to sheet music converter program.
As a perfect example, the link you provided in your reply above to Somewhere in Time, reveals the lush sound that a good pianist can create. I would love to take that cascading piece, download it as an MP3 file, convert it to sheet music with a good converter, work on it in MuseScore complete with its credenzas, beats and tempos, and adapt it for release that others can play. Given the fact that it is already visual as a cascade, I could watch it second by second, slowly write it as piano sheet music, and eventually do what I just described, but loading its recording into a converter program and having it become sheet music in 30 seconds, would be so much better.
Hope this has helped understand my motivation. Thanks again for your efforts. If you have encountered a converter that is accurate, please advise.
Frank
In reply to Thank you for the good reply… by fsgregs
You wrote:
I am seeking an MP3 to sheet music converter because it gives me a written piece of music I can then edit in MuseScore for many others to listen to and play if they wish.
I LOVE taking some sheet music and editing it in MuseScore to add new instruments, add chord symbols, rubato marks, etc.
Okay, so it sounds like you wish to arrange a notated score rather than perform from it.
Your quest to convert the mp3 (solo piano performance) recording of "Somewhere in Time", led me to think you may have wanted it notated for yourself to play.
Since you are interested in arranging, it was earlier mentioned that there are dozens of versions currently on MuseScore. Why not "arrange" one of those instead of trying to "fix" an audio file which is poorly transcribed into notation? Why fuss with mp3 conversion at all? Get a Somewhere in Time mscz file and "add new instruments, add chord symbols, rubato marks, etc." and so "adapt it for release that others can play."
When it comes to "others playing from" your notation, consider this:
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is played by many orchestras. The score was arranged/notated centuries ago. If you listen to different orchestras, the performances of the same score will vary. (For that matter, the performance of each orchestra will vary from day to day.) To have a recording of, say, Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and then trying to convert that recording into standard notation "the exact way" it was performed would be virtually impossible; and, even if that happened, no human would be able to perform from it - with all the "exact" note/rest durations and all the superflous ties and other complications making the score unreadable.
Here is a performance of a Paganini Violin Concerto with score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq20PeiaKZc
Observe the notation and hear how it's played. (Don't worry about the size. The full orchestra is not shown on every page, so some pages are easier to read.)
N.B.:
Listen to the fermatas over the rests in the first minute. How would those silences be "exactly" notated by an audio converter? It would probably use more rests.
Listen to and follow the soloist (top staff) at 3:22 -- also observe and "hear" the staccato markings following measure 110 (at 4:13). Staccato dots are a way of avoiding rests between each note.
Then there's the awesome cadenza starting at 16:50.
In short, notation is merely a symbolic representation of performance. Additionally, terms like "poco rit.", "dolce", "pizz." are used as instructions to the player - which has an effect on a recording; but how to "reverse engineer" that back into notation is a problem.
Here's a simple example showing some strange ways of notating the "same" thing:
Piano 1.mscz
Notation should convey the info. as sensibly as possible. When I listen to that file, I basically hear 2 measures that repeat - so 2 measures enclosed with repeat barlines should suffice.
Look carefully, though, at the last line - which is the one most readable/playable by a human. It has a very subtle difference between the first two measures, compared with the remaining two. So how "exact" does it need to be?
P.S.
![MIDI.png]( "MIDI.png")
Your quest to convert an audio recording (mp3, wav) of a performance into music notation is even more difficult than conversion of a MIDI "recording". A MIDI file is not an actual sound file but rather a set of instructions (i.e., the order of "note events") for "playing" music.
Similar to the old piano roll, MIDI specifies note pitch along with on/off time (among other parameters). MIDI instructions are "realized" by a music synthesizer for playback. This gives MIDI a head start for conversion to notation because, at the very least, pitch and duration can be determined from those MIDI instructions.
The difficult part for MIDI is to figure out how things like staccato, glissando, tremolo, dolce, etc. should be transcribed for notation. Also, because the MIDI of a solo piano "records" the exact timing of key press/release, it can produce a "too literal" interpretation with the resulting notation displaying things like extraneous ties (because the pianist held down a finger longer); or tremolos notated note-by-note; or the use of strange rest/note sequences instead of the staccato dot; or arpeggio notes splayed out across the staff (instead of the arpeggio symbol placed alongside a chord).
Yet with all its shortcomings, MIDI is nowhere near as problematic as audio conversion. Audio-to-notation software analyzes a spectrogram - essentially a graphical representation of sound waves - to determine note pitch and duration. If multiple instruments are playing simultaneously, the task is compounded.
So...
The easiest way to obtain a song you would like to arrange is to find a MuseScore file.
Next would be to somehow obtain a MusicXML file.
Then MIDI, PDF.
Regards,
John (not Jim) and cadenza (not credenza ;-)
In reply to You wrote: I am seeking an… by Jm6stringer
John:
Again, thanks much for your detailed reply. I realize that if a song is already on MuseScore, such as Somewhere in Time, I could find a version that has some flourish, download it, add instruments and nuances to it, and re-issue it with additional flair. I have in fact done that on at least 20 occasions in my stable of over 50 scores.
Sometimes, however, I find an adaptation of a song that adds some real pizzazz. Danny Wright's version of the song is just such a song. Because he is such a good piano player, his playing of Somewhere in Time becomes elevated to a rather exceptional piece that I felt would be worth my time to work on. Unfortunately, he never wrote the sheet music for it that I could buy, so if I wanted to make yet another adaptation of the song for MuseScore, I would either have to listen to his composition and add his notes one at a time, or let a computer listen to it and try to create that starting sheet music for me. Then, I could take that and add all the extra flourish I might like. I thought a computer effort might be a lot easier. There are hundreds of notes in the song and listening for them one at a time is a LOT of work.
Since this thread has convinced me that MP3 to sheet music converters are not yet up to the task, I will simply give up on the song, and find another one that is not yet on MuseScore, or is present as only a few versions, and which I could get a starting sheet music notation of.