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Hello everyone. Somewhat new here, however, with everyones reviews and commentary I just finally went from acoustic to digital after 25 years. My final decision landed on a Yamaha CLP-340. FWIW, I found the dealer knowledge and willingness to communicate played a large part, the Kawai/Roland dealer really dropped the ball in my opinion. (St. Louis, MO, USA)

Anyway to my question. I can now thankfully record my compositions and store them on the computer. The next step baffles me, is it possible to have those compositions transcribed to sheet music? From there i can go back and forth from sheet music to playing to perfect the piece. I have searched the forum, but am not certain i can find a simple straightforward answer. I am very computer literate, but a total newbie with this arena of digital music to paper.

Thanks in advance, you all are a nice community.
AJ

Hello Mcglurk. I have Finale 2009 which has a feature called hyperscribe. Click here for a little description of how it works. I have never used this method for entering notes into a score, but i'm very happy with this software in general.

If you are using a Mac and Garage Band to record (keyboard as MIDI device) you can simply Print or Print to PDF your recording in musical notation.

Just about every notation program will record from your playing. Finale, Sibelius, and Notation are a few of the higher end software versions. I use Magic Score Maestro for notation, at one time it was very reasonable, but it is currently double the price I payed for it a few years ago.

If you save the files as MIDI, then you can import it into the above programs as well as record live within the programs.

If you are saving your files as WAV or MP3, then you have a much harder process. Amazing Slow Downer, and Transcribe! will help with transcription. There are also other programs that will convert audio formats into MIDI, but they are not very accurate.

Rich

I don't own a Mac, but it seems what you sayinq sounds like miracle. Finale requires refined editing after a sound file is converted to a sheet music file. A third party plug-in is then required to convert this file into an Adobe pdf. Is it really that easy? What about multiple staves, dynamics, articulations etc? I may be wrong, but I can't believe a Mac is that smart.

Macs are smart.

James
x

Yes you can do this. There is quite a bit of software out there. Figuring out what yo lie best will require some time and effort.

If you are on an Apple Mac you are in luck because they can do this "out of the box". Garage Band should be installed on your Mac and it has a "notation view" of the recorded file. I use "Logic" which is a more advanced version of GB.

Logic, GB and the two below allow you to edit music as if it were a word processing document. You can cut and past, add and delete notes and select areas to be transposed. Then you can play it back on your computer and listen

Unless your timing is very good your sheet music will be filled with very odd things like three tied 32nd notes where you held a 16th note to long. The better software is better at guessing what you ment. It has to guess enharmonic notes and if a tie or dotted note was played.

Logic and other studio recording software.can put a "click track" (metronome) in a headset to help with the "quantization problem" and keep multiple takes of the same recording time aligned. My point is that there are a million features that you likely woud not know to ask about yet. I tell most people to start with Garage Band because it is "free" stay with in until they have reason to upgrade.

Logic and GB also have the abilty to record many analog tracks, like a 24 track tape recorder. and then mix and edit.

On the PC you will need to spend a couple hundred bucks for either "Finale" or "Sebielius". These two are very much alike and compete head on.

Finale makes a range of product "song writers is likely the one you want
http://www.finalemusic.com/

See here for Sebielius
http://www.sibelius.com/home/index_flash.html

Some music software is common enough that there are third party training materials such as books and even instructional videos. It pays to pick one with this kind of suport

Most profesionally engraved sheet music you buy was written with either Finale or Sebelius.

A software called "Anvil Studio" might be worth a look. It transcribes MIDI into sheet music. I don't use it for that purpose so I can't tell you how well it works.

http://www.anvilstudio.com/

The basic version is free. I think you need a paid version if you want to print the score but it's not very expensive.

Hi Mcglurk,

I've been using Sibelius for some time now and I'm very happy with it so far. The learning curve isn't steep and you can do almost everything with it.

.....happy Sibelius user.

They also have a very helpful forum.

Thanks everyone. i'll start researching these softwares. btw i'm on a PC.