CMVC Practice Media

BY PHIL TALMAGE

When we start learning a new song, we rehearse each of the four parts, separately and together with the others, so that, by the time we come to perform it in public – without the music – every­one knows it thoroughly.

Choir members often choose to practice by them­selves. (Everyone has to learn the words at least!) Those who can read music and have a keyboard will not necessarily require any help, beyond the sheet music we provide.

To help members, we produce three other media besides the basic sheet music:

1. We prepare and circulate MIDI files which members can play using a computer. There is a file for each voice, and a file for all voices together; once a member has learned his part using the single-voice version, he can practice singing it alongside the others.

The individual MIDI parts are to help only with learning the notes. Unlike the MIDI for the whole song, they do not have any dyna­mics - that is, your part is loud all the time.

2. From time to time, we produce CDs for practice purposes. These are especially useful for members who like to play them while driving, and, of course, those who do not have computers with speakers. The tracks on these CDs are usually made from the MIDI files.

3. We also circulate PDF files which contain the individual parts. These can be printed using Acrobat Reader (free download from Adobe).

About MIDI files

MIDI files can easily be recognised by the file­name extensions .MID and .KAR (for "Karioke" files which include the words). You can think of a MIDI file as an electronic version of a musical score. That is, it's a set of instructions which a computer can read (if equipped with the right software and hardware) to produce audible music. Most computers made in recent years will have built-in software and hardware capable of playing MIDI files.

A MIDI file is not itself the music, and a CD player or equivalent can't play it. Simply copying MIDI files to a CD will not enable you to hear the music in the car (unless you have with you a computer which has an optical drive). But you can make a CD, starting with MIDI files, which will then play on a CD player.

We include the words in recently-created MIDI files. No computer will "sing" these words, but, with the right program, you can see them on the screen and /or print them.

Playing MIDI files on your computer

The quality of the music you hear will depend on the capabilities of your computer hardware. As for software, Windows Media Player, which came with your computer - you can update it free from Microsoft's website - does a good job. But it displays neither the notes nor the words.

The free Notation Player displays MIDI files as sheet music that you can view on the screen while the notes play, and also print. If the file includes words, these will also be displayed. Free download from:-

http://www.notation.com/DownloadNotationPlayer.htm

When importing a MIDI file, Notation Player does not reproduce changes of key signature in the middle of the score. This results in lots of acci­dent­als which may look like errors, but will nevertheless play at the correct pitch. You can edit the file yourself, to put in the correct key signatures, which might be worth doing if you wish to print the score. (But generally you would have the sheet music anyway.)

There is no clef information in MIDI files. When Notation Player reads a MIDI file it will generally use the bass clef for tenor parts. Tenors who prefer to read music in the treble clef can change it, as follows:

Click the "Edit" drop-down menu, then select "Add Clef". You will see a + symbol added to the pointer. Now click the clef at the start of the song for the tenor stave. A small window appears. In this window, click the down arrow until you see the clef you want (a treble clef with a figure 8 below it to signify that the notes are to be sung an octave below) and click OK.

Making CDs (and tracks for MP3 players)

Before you can burn an audio CD (or a DVD) you will need music files in WAV or MP3 format. The latter is more highly compressed, but of course you need a player that will play MP3 tracks. If yours doesn't, then burn WAV files.

There are plenty of shareware programs, and Switch is a freeware package that will convert MIDI to WAV or MP3:

http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html.

You can burn CDs using free software such as Windows Media Player. You might find it helpful to edit the audio files before you burn the CDs, using e.g. the WavePad editor that comes with Switch.