Using free sheet music to create your own midi music

Sheet music for many popular and classic tunes can be downloaded free from the internet. You can then just copy the note durations and positions into a midi notation editor (also free) and you have your great sounding home-made version of the tune. It's not difficult, time-consuming yes, but quite easy if you pay a little attention to detail.

Even if you cannot get hold of any sheet music online many public libraries lend sheet music books and music scores using your normal membership (totally free of course). You can then scan into your PC and save a copy or just use the music score and copy it into a midi notation editor (I suggest the free 'NoteworthyComposer')

Another alternative is to look online for the tune you would like as a midi file and download it. If you then open the downloaded file in your midi notation editor it will show you its own version of the sheet music to play with at your leisure.

Please note however that you should save the original version of the midi file on your hard-drive so that if you mess it up when editing you can still go back to the original version and start again.

Once you are happy with your unique version of the tune or your own created tune you can save it to use as you like. Oh and by the way 'Windows Media Player' will happily play mid or midi files with no alteration, tweeks or codecs.

With the right software (which you can also get as a free download) you can if you want convert your finished midi music file to 'mp3' or 'wav' to make an audio CD or enable it to play on your playback equipment.



'KaraFun' in action

 There are also a few other great pieces of free software available as downloads that will let you play your completed instrumental midi or other audio file whilst you sing into a microphone (if you think you are talented enough) and record it for playback later -a good way to realise how good or bad your singing really is. Don't worry though, if your singing is bad you can always remove it from the file afterwards. 'KaraFun' is a good free application that will do this.

Don't forget to first save the original midi or other audio file seperately first in case you mess things up!

Look out for my tutorial ebook coming soon that guides you step by step through the whole procedure.