Problem with MIDI files.

Trouble with Synthesia, your keyboard, or adapter? Think you found a bug?
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If your keyboard has USB or MIDI ports, there is a tremendously high chance (>99%) it will work with Synthesia. See what you'll need on the keyboards page.
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megatron38
Posts: 2

Post by megatron38 »

Hello,

When I download some MIDI files, by viewing the song on Synthesia, sometimes I don't have the same notes and not the same partition. There is the same sound, but the partition is different from the original.

I don't understand why some songs have this problem, and some not. I have the latest version of Synthesia.

Thank you for your answers.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

MIDI doesn't contain any information about how the sheet music (or partition) should be displayed. So, Synthesia has to guess at things like "staccato quarter note" vs. "eighth notes with eighth rests".

The upcoming Synthesia 11 release will be adding support for MusicXML files which contain much more of the original musical intent. Playing songs in the MusicXML format should retain virtually 100% of the information from the original sheet music.
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

Nicholas wrote:Playing songs in the MusicXML format...
Just so no one gets unrealistic expectations, Nicholas means "playing songs from files that are in the MusicXML format". I think Synthesia 11 will be improved in how it guesses at deriving sheet music from MIDI files. But the best sheet music display will require that you have a MusicXML file that includes the additional sheet music presentation information. As long as you only have a MIDI file, the sheet music display is not going to equal a hand crafted piece of printed sheet music.

Nicholas, based on the overwhelming number of complaints about the sheet music display not putting all the right hand notes on the treble clef and all the left hand notes on the bass clef (even if we can come up many examples of that not being right), I would suggest that Synthesia 11 look at any hand information that has been added and put all the right hand notes on the treble clef and all the left hand notes on the bass clef when doing a sheet music display from a MIDI file. If you want to be a bit more sophisticated, you could look for "excessive" numbers of ledger lines (more than 3? or 5?) and then try to figure out if there is a better choice, e.g. ottava notation, change of clef, or, as a last resort, moving the notes to the other staff.
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Your suggestion (including the "more sophisticated" part) has been at the top of the list for sheet music "improvements" and one of the driving forces for Synthesia 11's sheet music theme for years now. "That note showed up on the wrong staff" is probably the most frequent complaint we hear now (after general hardware/driver connectivity trouble).

It's funny thinking about how it might be done with MusicXML. With information like actual notated name, staff position, up/down stem, etc. coming in from that format, trying to do something smart with the additional hand-split information would create a sort of conflict. With MIDI, Synthesia already has to make all the former stuff up as it goes along, so changing it is no big deal. With MusicXML, the whole point is that those things are very particular. I like that your suggestion was already "when doing a sheet music display from a MIDI file". The right(?, easiest?) answer for MusicXML is to leave it as-is, regardless of the additional context provided by the hand-split data.
megatron38
Posts: 2

Post by megatron38 »

Thanks for the answer

So, there isn't solution ?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Today, no.

In the next major update, yes.
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

Nicholas wrote:The right(?, easiest?) answer for MusicXML is to leave it as-is, regardless of the additional context provided by the hand-split data.
Absolutely! If you mess with the presentation I have carefully baked into a MusicXML file, I am going to be a very unhappy camper.

But if all you have is a MIDI file, then you are making something from nothing. I can forgive just about anything under those circumstances. Well, not really. I don't even bother trying to read sheet music created from MIDI files. If you know what sheet music should look like, it is just too painful. If you can make half-way decent sheet music from a MIDI file, then you are a miracle worker.
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
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