importing files from NtEd to Musescore?

As per http://www.musicxml.com/software/ NtEd can import MusicXML, but apparently not export

I don't know the details of how MIDI files are represented in terms of percussion. This may well be a bug. However, in general, it is simply not reasonable to expect a MIDI file to retain all information about a score. I just wasn't designed for that. Expecting a notation program to be able to reconsctruct a score from a MIDI file with all information intact would be roughly like expecting a word processing program to be able to reproduce a document with all spelling, formatting, and other information intact from an audio recording of someone reciting the text. It's just not going to happen. It doesn't really matter if the MIDi file was created by MuseScore or some other program - MIDI files just do not have enough information on them to recreate scores well. They are for recording performance information, not the details of the notation that might have led to that performance.

Iit's actually not very different at alll. Te only thing MuseDcore didn't pick up on is that this was meant to be a drum track. Not sure what was recorded in the MIDI file to reprsent that, but all you have to is change the instrument on the imported file to drumset and it instantly looks and sounds a lot closer to what you started with.

But again, long term, this is a losing game. Do you seriously think any word processor is going to be able to listen to an audio recording of a speech and figure out things likewhere paragraphs breaks shoukd go, what page size was, what the margins looked liked, where words were put in italics, what kind of fonts were used for headings, etc? That,s the sort of information lost when you read a piece of text. It should be *obvious* there is no way to get it back. And there is al that *and much more* that is lost when you take a score and reduce it down to nothing more tha MIDI file. In the very simolest, msot trivial of cases, it might be possible to reconstruct something that could pass for the original. But it is just not the right approach for real music, and you wprun into limitation after limitation after limitation if you continue to pin your hopes on this working well. It is just not techi cally possible in any but very simpe cases to get usable results this way. Whereas MusicXML actually *is* a oretty viabke way of sharing scores, because it was designed specifically to do that. MIDI was not, so lacks even very basic information like whether a note should be spelled F# or Gb.

MIDI was invented back in the late 70's/early 80's and was at that time an innovation but really it is just an updated version of the pianoroll that was invented about 100 years earlier. It tells an instrument (channel) to turn on a pitch and then off again and contains some information on how loud to play that note etc. It can effectively "play" instruments that are MIDI-enabled but it has significant limitations as a file format for the transfer of information regarding printed scores.

The problem here is that it looks as though we're stuck using MIDI as a common intermediary for that file transfer so, regarding the original problem, I have in the past experimented with various music notation software - MusE, Canorus, Lilypond, Denemo, NotEd and even Nted but gave them up when I discovered MuseScore. Today I resurrected them and played about. I did the following - for a SIMPLE piece - so can't guarantee it will work for what is wanted here but worth a try:

Create a piece in Nted and Export it as a MIDI file.
Use Rosegarden to open the MIDI file and save it as MusicXML
Open the MusicXML file in MuseScore.

I did this in xubuntu 12.04 with the same MuseScore and Nted versions as the OP and version 11.11.42 of Rosegarden.

MuseScore *does* generally play MIDi files reasonably well - just not necessarily for percussion, since percussion is handled entirely differently in MDI than regular instruments. But as I observed above, just a handful of clicks to tell MuseScore that the part is supported to be for percussion, and it *does* play back correctly - did you try it?

MuseScore provides MIDI import because it is possible to do at least a crude job of it, and as a last resort, this can occasionally be useful. It just isn't anywhere near as good a choice as MusicXML for the reasons I have been explaining. Not only can it not represent the difference between F# and Gb, it also has no way of indicating thngs like staccato marks, accents, slurs, dynamics, chord symbols, text markings, what clefs to use, etc. it's really just a very bare bones record of what pitch is played when - not any of the information that is actually needed to reproduce the appearance of an actual score.

BTW, while MIDI does not represent the difference between F# and Gb, that just means MuseScore has to guess which is meant. And it should guess right half the time, of course. I just tried it with Reunion, and that's about right. I mean, look at the very first measure - should have been spelled with flats, but after MIDI export/import, they turned into sharps. Second measure MuseScore guessed right. But third measure, again, the accidentals are all wrong. And surely you noticed how much else got lost? The result does not look anywhere near how the original looked. All of the multi-voice passages have been lost, all of the markings lost, tuplets lost, etc. It's only barely recognizable as the same piece, and is essentially unreadable.

BTW, with my word processor / audio example, I wasn't talking aout *playing* an audio file in the word processor. I was talking about turning it into text. You can get the basic gist of the worss, but no way could you possible recreate the *appearance* of the original. And you have to realize, word processors are all about the appearance of the text, just as MuseScore is all about the appearance of a score. The fact that it happens to also play back the score is merely a convenience, but the point of the portram is producing sheet music.

I think you must have done something wrong. Follow the steps I described *exactly* and all should work fine - I tried it using your sample score to verify this. If you continue to have trouble, you might consider using screenr.com to record a screenshot video showing what you are doing, and then maybe someone will be able to poont out what you need to do differently.

My understanding is that the numbers for volume in the synthesizer window are actual *negative* and refer to actual relative dB levels. It's pretty much a digital audio standard that 0 is "nominal" level - which is to say, the maximum level produced normally without clipping - and that one usually operates in the negative range. Not sure why, but most audio equipment reports levels this way. So the 15 you are seeing is really -15, and 0 really is much louder. The reason some soundfonts might suggest negative levels is to avoid clipping on the loudest passages, so do be sure you don't heard distortion if you set a passage to "fff" dynamic.

Beyond that, I don't know about the other settings. They look like fairly standard reverb and chorus effects, so i assume the numbers mean whatever they might mean in a tradition digital reverb or chorus effect unit. I just leave them all at the default except for the masters, where I turn chorus to 0 (I don't understand why anyone woild want it otherwise except for special ocasions) and reverb to whatever level sounds natural to me given the speakers I am listening through, size of room, etc).