Sheetz - Midiz versus Sheetz
So far, we've been lucky enough to find our songs in midi files.
That's a luxury that may not always happen for you :(
Often, the BEST rendition of a song is only available in sheet music format.
And if you want to call yourself a musician,
you'll =HAVE= to be able to read sheet music fluently.
If sheet music is all you got, PianoCheater can STILL
- organize it on disk (no running to "the big shelf" and searching)
- turn pages for you
- play backing tracks
But, no fancy shmancy piano roll.
Unless you wanna Txt2Mid the WHOLE DANG SONG? Didn't think so ;)
You can find tons of scanned sheet music on the web, just like midis.
BUY it if you play it !!
You'll need .bmp (bitmap format) pics... But at least that's pretty easy:
open mspaint ([windows shift]+R, mspaint, enter),
maximize pdf or pic window, press printscreen key,
alt-tab to mspaint, ctrl-v to paste,
ctrl-a to select all, drag top left of pic to trim top/left junk,
click pencil tool, drag bottom right corner of pic to trim the rest,
save! next!
Using a scanner is a pain. (as is searching for sheetmusic you misplaced:)
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Setting up a song with sheetz:
- open songlist window and click button for "Create new song to practice"...
- name the song and check the SheetDir box. Hit ok.
- put the .bmp files into ...\PianoCheater\Practice\Learn\{songname} dir.
name each page like 0002_0008.bmp
where bar 2 is the first on the page and
bar 8 is the 1st bar fully showing in bottom half of page.
(If you want a count in bar, number your sheet music bars starting at 2)
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Turning the page:
If your .mid has associated .bmp files, you'll see
SheetSync= at the top of the screen with either y or n.
Click to toggle it.
If SheetSync=n, you turn pages manually with command keys mapped to sheet>
and sheet<
(and you won't need to play to PianoCheater's timer)
If SheetSync=y, PianoCheater turns pages for you at the right bar.
...a video might help :)
The right bar?
Sheet music usually has repeating sections.
So you'll usually need to tell PianoCheater which bars things repeat AT.
You've already numbered the bars per sheet.
This is not yet easy, I'm afraid. To be remedied SOON :/
(And you DON'T need to do this if you'll just be turning sheets manually.)
Load the song into Tinkerer.
- check only "DrumTrack" in the track droplist.
- check "Mark" in the Ctrl droplist.
- pick "1/2" in the Snap droplist.
- scoot Bar to where each repeating section starts and ends.
- at these bars, click in the Mark area (bottom of screen) and
put in a marker "name":
Use names like chorusA, verse, verseB, coda, etc.
- SAVE !!
Unfortunately, Tinkerer does not yet put in a
"section" for each new Marker. It just names the marker...
PianoCheater's "edit section list" window is the only way to MAKE sections
After you do THIS, you'll want to "unroll" the song.
If you leave a song with repeating sections in it,
PianoCheater will play the SAME section over again
(where you ALREADY HAVE recorded notes.)
You want to record FRESH notes in each section.
Tinkerer has an "unroll" toolbar button.
This dups every repeating section and gives it a new marker name
with a #2 suffix. Or #3, etc depending on which repeat it is.
(This time sections are automatically updated)
SAVE !!
NOW your song is ready for piano practice in PianoCheater.
The second repeat can now be recorded with different "expression", etc.
Again, this will become WAYYY easier soon...:/
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Sheetz