Digital Mastering Studios

If you are working with a pre-existing MIDI file, start by printing the Tracks that contain the Melody and Bass Accompaniment from a MIDI file to use it as Sheet Music.  Open a MIDI file, click the M on each Track except for the first Track, select Transport, Play, and listen to the Track to determine whether or not the Track contains the Melody or Bass Accompaniment.  (If you don’t hear anything when you press Play, you can disconnect your MIDI cables from your computer, then on the Output field of your MIDI track, select Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth; this may require closing and reopening Cakewalk and your file.)  Now, mute the first Track and unmute the second Track and repeat this process until you have identified the two (2) Tracks that you’ll need to use to print the file as Sheet Music.  After the two (2) Tracks have been identified, highlight them by hovering over the first Track and left-click, then hold down the CTRL key and hover over the second Track and left-click; both Tracks are highlighted.  Select Views, Staff, then select File, and at the bottom of the menu, scroll across the arrows to the right and select Print Preview. Select a format from the Configure button, then select Print.

Once you have printed from your MIDI file, if the music you printed is easy to read, you’re finished.  If you find that it is very cumbersome to read, you can edit the music to make it more readable.  After you finish reading this article and decide on a method for making the sheet music more readable, you’ll want to read my article, “Music: How To Write A Song – Midi And Sheet Music–Structure Of A Song,” to help you understand the structural dynamics of preparing sheet music.

There are at least 4 methods to to create sheet music, but be prepared to work for it!  Briefly described, here are the four (4) methods I suggest in this article:

Enter Sheet Music Manually – If you’re only looking to enter sheet music manually, visit my article, “How to Edit MIDI Music Notation in Cakewalk Products,” but don’t abandon this article because you may discover some easier methods to create sheet music here.  Additionally, if you’re new at creating sheet music, you should also read the information in my article, “Music: How To Write A Song – Midi And Sheet Music–Structure Of A Song,”
Record With Structure – even though you may have recorded the song before, use a metronome and record (or rerecord) your song, being careful to keep within the boundaries of the metronome’s timing – if you mess up during recording, leave some empty space and start playing again from a good starting point (overlaps are okay and even encouraged because they help you to blend your data) – you can edit out the errors and combine the MIDI pieces after you are done.
Edit Your Performance MIDI Tracks – review the MIDI tracks you have already recorded and edit them using Cakewalk’s automated editing tools along with manual edits to make the MIDI music score more readable.  Be sure to edit each track in congruence with other tracks that play parallel to it.
Review Your Performance MIDI Tracks And Produce Sheet Music In Another Program – by reviewing the MIDI tracks you have already recorded, you can identify measures that over-run and enter a simplified version of your music score manually into another MIDI track or program.

The remainder of this article describes these four (4) methods in greater detail.

PREPARATION: Before you begin, open Cakewalk, and in Staff View, set the MIDI Timing Resolution (timebase) to 048; select Options, Project, Clock, Ticks Per Quarter-Note, click on 048, then click OK.  Now, hover over the icons until you find one that indicates it is the “Snap to Grid” icon–click it to make sure it is On.

METHOD 1: Enter Sheet Music Manually

Step 1.1: My article,”Music: How To Write A Song – Midi And Sheet Music–Structure Of A Song,” provides a good foundation for understanding the format that your sheet music will need.

Step 1.2: Once you have gained that knowledge, my article, “How to Edit MIDI Music Notation in Cakewalk Products,” provides a good tutorial on how to properly manipulate MIDI music notes into the necessary formats within each measure in Cakewalk products.

Please note that I find it very cumbersome to enter music notation into Cakewalk products manually, and I prefer to use one of MakeMusic’s products for this task.

Advantages: MakeMusic’s products produce more professional-looking Sheet Music.  The biggest advantage is that when you enter a note, it isn’t affected by adjacent notes to the point of changing the value of the previous note you entered as can happen in Cakewalk products.  The biggest advantage these programs have is that they will execute repeats correctly and they allow you to enter more than one Lyrics line (verse 1, verse 2, etc.).  These programs are designed more like word processing programs, but ithey have the integrity to keep your data true to what you entered, and they will save your Sheet Music as an expressive MIDI file.

Disadvantages: The only problem I typically encounter in MakeMusic’s programs are, if I forgot to count the values of the notes in a measure as I am entering notes, they can push a pre-existing rest into the next measure, and when this happens, it is virtually impossible to remove the shifted rest.  If this happens, it is best to Undo your change, delete the rest first (by erasing), then re-enter your notes.  The instrumentation provided in these programs are limited, but if you’re using the product primarily for Sheet Music, that souldn’t be an issue.  I highly recommend taking really good notes when reviewing the video tutorials for these programs, and you should exercise the pause function so that you can be thorough with your notes.  If you are thorough, you shouldn’t have to look for many more answers once you’ve completed the tutorial series.

METHOD 2: Record With Structure

Step 2.1: Replay your performance from a MIDI keyboard into a Cakewalk MIDI track using the correct Timing, Tempo, and an Audio Metronome.  Select View(s), Track, then select File, New, Normal, and click the R on the MIDI track until it turns Red; then select Options, Project, Clock, make sure it is set it to 48 Ticks Per Quarter-Note, then under Metronome, General, click Use Audio Metronome, then click OK.  Lastly, make sure that the Snap to Grid icon is active.

Step 2.2: Set up as many MIDI tracks as you think you will need (at least one per instrument, possibly two for your piano [one for treble clef and one for bass clef]).  To insert additional MIDI tracks, select Insert, MIDI Track.

Step 2:3: In order to synchronize your keyboard/piano to Cakewalk MusicCreator 4 or 5, click on my article, “How to Edit MIDI Music Notation in Cakewalk Products,” and follow the instructions in Steps 9 and 10,

Step 2:4: Before you begin recording, select your first MIDI track by clicking it to highlight it, and on the Track Properties block, click the little Triangle in the upper right-hand side of the Track Properties block to open the block, or position the cursor between two MIDI tracks and click and drag downward in order to expand/open the block.  Change the Input field to MIDI, change the Channel field to 1 (or appropriate channel), change the Bank field if you know what Bank you prefer (these are contained in the Instrument Definition Files [*.ins] that you used to synchronize your instrument, but should also be defined in your instrument’s instruction manual), and change the Patch field to the instrument of your choice.  Select Transport, Record, to start your recording session.  Save your work frequently.

Step 2.5: As you hear the audio metronome (4/4 timing would produce a beat like this: CLICK, click, click, click, CLICK, click, click, click), play the tune of your song on your MIDI keyboard / piano to the timing of the metronome the best that you can — if you mess up, don’t stop the recording, just wait a few measures and start playing at the beginning of the next measure.  Although this would be ideal, it’s actually better, when you make a mistake, to replay a measure or two prior to your mistake in order to “lead in” to the next measure because you can make sure that you even out your tempo prior to where the mistake occurred; afterwards you can edit  out the extra material in order to pull the music back together so that it is correct.  I recommend recording with overlapping measures when there are mistakes because you can go back and edit your performance to eliminate poorly played extra measures and then push the measures back together as they should have been, and it allows you to capture data more quickly than if you stop and start a recording to try to capture your performance.  As long as you manage to capture each measure within the calibrated metronome timing properly, editing will be easy to remove any errors or gaps.

Step 2.6: Record A Piano Track–When recording the piano, you should record the piano performance to one track by playing both hands on the piano into one track.  For advanced users, highlight the track, select View(s), Staff, and find the Layout button by hovering over the icons until you find it, click the icon, and select your clef as Treble and Bass Clef.

After you edit your recorded data, you can highlight the Piano track and select Track, Clone Track, then you can delete the Bass Clef from the first duplicate track and delete the Treble Clef from the second duplicate track.  The reason I suggest this is because sounds become easier to modulate their volumes from reaching their peaks [and clipping] when the tonal frequencies are separated into high, medium, and low ranges [Hertz/kiloHertz], and Treble and Clef are an easy points of separation that are comparable to medium and high frequencies (a Bass instrument would qualify as a low frequency).

Step 2.7: Record A Flute And/Or Violin Track (Optional)–When recording any other instrument, record the instrument into its own track – unless you tamper with the settings, it should automatically carry the same Tempo, Timing, and Metronome settings that the previous recording had. Step 2.8: Preserve Your Original MIDI Tracks Before Editing (Optional)–Once you have recorded your MIDI tracks, select the first MIDI track by highlighting it and select Tracks, Clone, OK, then go to the next MIDI track and repeat this process until all of your MIDI tracks have been copied.  Double-click the Track Names to rename them (Example: “Track 1 original”, “Track 1 copy”). Go back to your “original” MIDI Tracks, and perform another clone, highlight the “original” MIDI Track and select Tracks, Clone, and under Clone Tracks, unclick Clone Events; this will produce an empty MIDI Track to which you can copy your music notation in order to weed out the errors that occurred in the process of playing your instrument and recording the performance.  You are now ready to edit your performance. Step 2.9: Edit Your Performance–Visit my article, “How to Edit MIDI Music Notation in Cakewalk Products,” to learn how to manipulate the MIDI data you capture from this procedure. Step 2.10: Prepare Titles/Credits For Sheet Music–Select File, Info, and fill in the Title and Subtitle of your song. In the Instructions field, type any text that you would like to display on the left side of the page just above the music score, you could put Allegro here, or anything else you’d like to appear in this position on the page. List the Authors of the Music, Arrangement, and Lyrics in the Author field similar to this:

Music by John Doe, Arrangement by Sally Doe, Lyrics by Jane Doe

In the Copyright field, remove the word “Copyright”, leave the symbol “©”, and remove the word “by” because the correct copyright declaration does not include both the word and the symbol, and it also does not include the word “by”.  Type © with the year and with your name as you want it to be for the copyright-the result should look like this:

© 2010 John Doe, Sally Doe, and Jane Doe

Step 2.11: Print Your Sheet Music–Select Views, Staff, then select File, and at the bottom of the menu, scroll across the arrows to the Right and select Print Preview. You can select some formats from the Configure button. Select Print and then click the Properties button to select the quality of the printout, click OK.  Unless you’re printing a sample copy for which you would want to select Draft-quality printing, select the highest quality printing available – choose “Best” if available, and select 600 dpi (dots-per-square-inch) or greater, if available.  Make sure you have the correct printer selected.  Enter the number of pages you would like to print and click OK. Cakewalk does not offer the ability to place any other notices on your music.  It would be wise after printing to add words at the bottom of each page that give information on how to contact you, as well as stipulating “All Rights Reserved,” although this notation is not required by copyright laws.  You can print your sheet music and then scan your sheet music and edit it in Microsoft Paint or Paintbrush in order to add words to the bottom of your song, then print again.  This also gives the ability to imbed your file into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint so that you can submit your copyright application electronically.

Another alternative would be to print your sheet music from Cakewalk, and then use another program to type words that you know would be in the correct position below your music if you run your printed music back through your printer to apply a second printing to add words at the bottom of each page that give information on how to contact you, as well as stipulating “All Rights Reserved,” although this notation is not required by copyright laws.

When choosing a format to save your scanned images, the best choices are *.BMP or *.TIF because these formats carry higher resolution and don’t allow degrading on saving/resaving like *.GIF or *.JPG does.  For *.BMP, save at the highest level available, 24-bit is best, 256 colors is 2nd best, and 16 colors is the lowest quality *.BMP available.

METHOD 3: Edit Your Performance MIDI Tracks

When a musician plays a MIDI instrument and records the performance into a MIDI recording program, the music may sound wonderful, but the music notation is usually impossible to read.  This is preplexing, especially if you wanted some Sheet Music from your efforts.  Since the MIDI recording program renders an absolute duplicate of the actual performance with all of its nuances, inflections, subtle, and not-so-subtle delays, you’re usually left with such a mess that you don’t know what to do, and your inner demon tries to convince you to stay with your factual recording because you can read it (let’s face it, you’re playing from memory and it’s very hard for even you to read), but the angel on your shoulder tells you to simplify it into a more readable score – but how?  And the devil usually wins this battle.

If you’ve been caught up in getting the song produced, you probably already have MIDI files that could be edited into sheet music.  If this is the case, you can:

Step 3.1: Double-check to make sure that the Snap to Grid icon is active, and check Options, Project, Clock, Ticks Per Quarter-Note, and ensure that it is set to 048.  Edit your performance MIDI tracks by following Steps 2.8 through 2.11 in Method 2 of this procedure.

Step 3.2: Try some of Cakewalk’s automated editors such as Fill Durations, Trim Durations, and Quantization.   For comparison on what these functions will do to your music, make a copy of your original MIDI Track(s) before you try this.

Step 3.2.a: To use these functions, select View(s), Staff (only the track[s]/staff[s] you wish to change), and for Fill or Trim Durations, hover over the icons until you find two that indicate they are the Fill and Trim Durations icons and click one of them to try it; click once and it performs its’ function, click a second time to restore the track(s)/staff(s) to their original state.

Step 3.2.b: For Quantization, highlight the specific portion of music by dragging the mouse and selecting/highlighting, then select Process, Quantization, select the attributes you’d like to try, and click OK; select Edit, Undo, if any of the changes yield undesirable results.

METHOD 4: Review Your Performance MIDI Tracks And Produce Sheet Music In Another Program

Be sure to read my article, “Music: How To Write A Song – Midi And Sheet Music–Structure Of A Song,” so that you understand the techniques you need to use when preparing Sheet Music, then study your Cakewalk MIDI tracks that you have already recorded (your performance MIDI tracks) and use another program to enter your sheet music manually, or you can save your Cakewalk file as a MIDI file and pull that into another MIDI program, then edit the music more easily in the other program.  Personally, I prefer entering the notes manually in one of MakeMusic’s programs (although editing MIDI in these programs would definately be easier than in Cakewalk programs), and I don’t consider it cumbersome like entering notes into Cakewalk products; refer to Method 1, Step 1.2, Advantages and Disadvantages.

See my relted article:    Music: How To Write A Song – Midi And Sheet Music–Structure Of A Song

See my related article:  How to Edit MIDI Music Notation in Cakewalk Products

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