Piano Roll Transcriptions

Piano, Fortepiano and Harpsichord Music
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Tinou

Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by Tinou »

Dear Luigi,

I don't really understand what you call my "notation program", but in no way you have to work on a FTP server (everything happens on your computer).

I use 2 different programs:

Lilypond , an Internationally developped notation program that is becoming a reference for music editing. It is quite tricky to learn, but once mastered, it is extremely fast and give beautiful results.
It is free (GNU) and downloadable here:
http://lilypond.org/


My programis a script that you can feed with a midi file of a roll scan, and it returns a neat version as a lilypond file. For clockvork-roll-arrangers like Arden or Cook, this program can achieve 50 % of the transcription work in about 1 second.
The only difficulty is that it is written in Python, and you have to write the path of your midi scan in one of the file... Aniway, I plan to write a user-friendly interface one of these days.
It is downloadable on my (cold-dead) Forum:
http://www.therollingfools.comuv.com/Forum/

I hope I answered your questions.
Timtin
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Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by Timtin »

Thank you for sharing these very interesting links! Lilypond definitely looks like
it's worth experimenting with. Text-based rather than graphical music writing
could save huge amounts of time.
Tinou

Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by Tinou »

Hi everyone !

Here is my transcription of Victor Arden's awesome arrangement of Who.

That is definitely one one my favourite rolls, with a lot of tricks and a beautiful minor part.

Enjoy !
Who - 3346S.mid
Who.pdf
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Dannen
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Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by Dannen »

Tinou,

Thank you for another great transcription.

When I transcribe a piano roll, I use a program called MidiNotate, which creates a score that is useful only in identifying which specific notes are being played. Since most of the rolls I transcribe are in swing tempo, and the program quantizes all the triplets, it takes a lot of work to create the finished score. For notation, I use Sibelius 6, which does not result in scores as attractive as Lilypond, but has many more advantages. I wish there were a plugin to convert Lilypond to Sibelius, and vice versa. Maybe some day.

As for your Hindustan program, I must confess, I am a pretty advanced computer user, but I've never been able to get it to work. My friend Benjamin Intartaglia has had the same problem. You say you are working on a more user-friendly version -- I would welcome that.

Starting in mid-July, I'm going to get back into transcribing, and should be posting a number of new scores in this forum.
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iano
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Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by iano »

Does anyone here use the notation program called 'Igor'? I tried it years ago when it was first ported to Mac OS9. I seem to remember it had quite a good optical recognition plug-in.
Tinou

Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by Tinou »

Hi everyone !

@Fred
Indeed I made little efforts to make my program simple to use, up until now.
I posted a new version of it on my forum this morning, with a tutorial that should make everything simpler.

@Timtin
In fact writing music with lilypond can be veeeeery slow for 3 reasons:

1) Every time you are about to use a new command you have to look for it in the manual.

2) Every time you want a rendering of what you wrote, you have to run the program (it lasts between 20 and 50 seconds for a 6 pages file).

3) Every time you spot a mistake in the rendering, you have to find in your source file the correponding code (for a 6-pages piano score like who, the source file is 2000-lines long.

But most of these drawbacks are quite barable if you use Lilypondtools, an editor that allows text recognition, point and clic, and so on.

@luigi
I just read that some firewalls are afraid of python because they think it wants to connect to some distant server. If it is what alarmed you, it is NOT the case. Python runs without internet.

@iano
Igor looks fine, be we are more talking about semantic recognition than optical recognition here. The idea is to transform easily a raw midi file into a neat piano sheet music. Does Igor allow that ?


Coming soon: J. Lawrence Cook - Whispering
gigiranalli
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Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by gigiranalli »

Tinou wrote:@luigi
I just read that some firewalls are afraid of python because they think it wants to connect to some distant server. If it is what alarmed you, it is NOT the case. Python runs without internet.
Dear Tinou,
thanks for the information!
Yes, that was the kind of error message I received. I'll try again.
Best
Luigi
Tinou

Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by Tinou »

Hi everyone !

Here is anoter Cookie ! In the style of Fats Waller, I think - maybe just in Cook's style. Very nice anyway.
When my sugar walks down the street

By the way, does somenone here have an access to the "members only" lilbraries of midi roll scans on Trachtman's and the IAMMP's site ?
Does someone know how to have access ?

For the moment I only know terry smithe's and pianola.co.nz librairies. Has someone some other references ?
J Lawrence Cook - When my Sugar Walks Down the Street.mid
J Lawrence Cook - When my Sugar Walks Down the Street.pdf
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Tinou

Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by Tinou »

Hi All !

No one here has any midi scan source aside the IAMMP ?

I am (desperately) looking for those particular rolls:
GERSHWIN - kickin the clouds away - sweet and low down - that certain feeling / COOK - two sleepy people - tiger rag

Here is J.L. Cook's arrangement of Georgia on my mind

On my opinion modern blues has produced better versions of this standard, but this one is quite nice. Enjoy!
Carmichael arr Cook - Georgia on my Mind.mid
Carmichael arr Cook - Georgia on my Mind.pdf
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gigiranalli
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Re: Piano Roll Transcriptions

Post by gigiranalli »

Tinou wrote:Hi All !

No one here has any midi scan source aside the IAMMP ?

I am (desperately) looking for those particular rolls:
GERSHWIN - kickin the clouds away - sweet and low down - that certain feeling / COOK - two sleepy people - tiger rag

Here is J.L. Cook's arrangement of Georgia on my mind

On my opinion modern blues has produced better versions of this standard, but this one is quite nice. Enjoy!
Dear Tinou,
I have all the piano roll scans you're looking for.
In the attachment I only include "Tiger Rag", but not the other four rolls you requested for the moment. I will send them to you in a private message later.
Your transcriptions are excellent and very readable, but I hope you're not limited to Cook or these kind of people.
I had posted two interesting piano rolls in this message, since you wrote you welcomed requests: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=441&start=120#p7324
They are "Merry Widow Rag" by Eubie Blake and "Down And Out Blues" by Lem Fowler: these two rolls were really PLAYED by these two pianists and as far as I can see they seem to be free from typical note-beefing editings (which is not very common on piano rolls).
Indeed, these were actually "performed" by these two great pianists: I mean they recorded those performances on piano roll recording pianos. not the piano roll board like J. Lawrence Cook...
This video gives a good idea of the two production methods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FTaGwfXPM
Cook used the latter and in fact we can call his piano rolls arranged rather than played.
In this respect they're very useful to LEARN performance practices of these two great ragtimers!
Give a listen to them;-)
Best
Luigi
Last edited by gigiranalli on Mon Aug 02, 2010 7:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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