Importing a 6-Track Midi file into a guitar tablature
Well I've a Midi-file that was probably recorded by a Midi-Guitar or something like this.
Each of the 6 strings of the guitar is recorded as a separated track.
Musescore Midi import looks like this:
Well after using Edit/Tools/Implode and copy &pasting it into a new create tablature track and some manually fiddeling the tones to the right strings I end up with this:
I've two tablature tracks (one with only 2 Strings)
That how it show look like:
The problem here is that Musescore 2( as well as version 3) still only allow 4 voices, but I need 6 voices to be able to fill all the strings of the tablature.
Another solution would be if there were an option to merge 2 voices into one or If there were something like a merge paste. A normal paste (of the same voices) always overwrites what's there.
And well was I little careless and now got trapped inside Musescore 3 with 'LickByNeck-SambaDeOrfeo1.mscz'. I did no backup and just opened it in Musescore 3 and saved it there so the original got overwritten. Now there seems to be no way to get it back into Musescore 2.
Opening the mscz is a just a mess:
Exporting it to MusicXml and then import it to Musescore 2 even looks worse.
Copy and paste from Musescore 3 to Musescore 2 doesn't work eighter.
... and I disable the windows file recovery on the drive a save the document - so I can't go back to an earlier version.
Well I see that I made a error and also understand that Musescore 3 is still heavily under development. However I'm still I little disappointed that ya developers seem to so less care for backwards compatibly.
I mean at least the music XML should work!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| LickByNeck-SambaDeOrfeo.mid | 5.85 KB |
| LickByNeck-SambaDeOrfeo.txt | 12.59 KB |
| LickByNeck-SambaDeOrfeo1.mscz | 24.62 KB |
Comments
A couple of things:
1) you would get better results from the attempts to combine the six tracks into one if you quantized first, especially note lengths. There really is no reason 6 voices should ever be required for guitar music just because there are 6 strings, and indeed, that's almost never the right way to notate it. As the most trivial example, playing the 6 strings all together or one at a time in eighth notes requires only one voice. Lething the bass string ring for and then strumming the other 5 together on beat two still requires only a single voice, because really, the different between a quarter note and a whole note is not terribly relevant for pluvked stringed instruments.
2) regarding MuseScore 3, indeed, as the warnings should have made clear, it's for experimentation not for real use. That means many features may not work correctly, including MusicXML export. We do care about compatibility, but not so much on experimental nightly builds that are clearly labeled "use at your own risk". The official release will doubtless be far more stable.
In reply to A couple of things:… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for replying.
![voice-assign-problem.png]( "voice-assign-problem.png")
Okay I see that its possible to unify the two tabulatures but it seem to be a lot of work.
Main problem here is that I can't freely assign voices. Here is a simple example:
Musecore doesn't allow me to make the 2 green notes(voice 2) to change to blue (voice 1).
I don't get why this is not possible. Maybe a bug or some constrain I don't understand.
Anyway I give up. Maybe Musecore isn't matured enough or not the right tool for the task.
![gp7_midiImport.png]( "gp7_midiImport.png")
Since yesterday I tried the new version of Guitar Pro 7.5 and it seem that they finally done their homework on importing midi files.
I just downloaded it from the official homepage
http://alt-downloads.guitar-pro.com/gp7/stable/guitar-pro-7-setup.exe
... and it is full working. The only limitation - without license it'll refuse to start after 30 days.
However there are many ways to solve/avoid this.
* You may set back time or login as another user to windows to start a fresh trial
* Or directly clear the trial marker by deleting
%AppData%\Arobas Music\guitarpro7\icon.png and registry key
HKCU\Software\Arobas Music\guitarpro7\application\product applicationGUID or deny / block access rights to these resources
* what also works is to just set time forward 3 years on first run - set back time to normal and now you 3 years + 30days for evaluating.
In reply to Thanks for replying… by Djamana
Change the 1st green note to a minim, then change it to voice 1
In reply to Change the 1st green note to… by Jojo-Schmitz
@Djamana.
1. Do not wait for an ideal solution when importing a file into the MIDI format, which is really not the best format to get satisfactory results immediately or quickly.
2. Your MIDI file is particularly bad, or necessite extra work to be usuable. And despite the appearances, the import by GP7.5 (I own it, I bought the version 7, and please, respect the developers's work by avoiding the kind of recommendations that you make in your message about the license), so, this import, after checking, does not solve all the questions as you believe, far from it.
3. The first thing, if you really want to stay in this MIDI format, is to find a better source.
Here's another one, which I found quite easily: Bonfa,_Luis, _Samba_De_Orfeo.mid
After a little work (I began in the first two lines / systems to review voices and durations), we can get an encouraging result: Samba 1.mscz
In reply to Thanks for replying… by Djamana
The reason you can't combine voices 1 & 2 in your example is that rhythms differ - in particular, the note durations are incompatible). That is the whole reason multiple voices are required in some music. But again, the nature of the guitar is such that much can almost always be represented in fewer voices than might otherwise be needed by taking advantage of the fact that note duration isn't as meaningful for guitar.
So in your simple example, as Jojo says, just by changing the voice 1 half note to a quarter, now the rhythms are compatible. Writing for guitar is full of this sort of thing, it's part of the art / craft of it. My guess is that Guitar Pro is doing some of this sort of thing behind the scenes, because it is taking advantage of very specific information about the nature of guitar and the fact that 6-channel MIDI files are a thing, whereas MuseScore is more of a general purpose notation program doesn't have as many special hacks optimized just for guitar.
Anyhow, MuseScore is actually quite mature as a notation program, but indeed, was never intended to be a a MIDI editor. Which is why I suggested quantizing your MIDI first, then importing. Then your rhythms would be more compatible, and it would be easier to combine the voices.