If you arrived here other than by way of my Home Page, I suggest you go there first

Introduction

I am a not-very-good Tenor - a Singer of SATB Choral Works such as Messiah and Creation - and have sung in a number of Community Choirs in and around Cambridge, including the Haslingfield Choir (in the village down the road), Histon Choir2000, Collegium Laureatum and the Cambridgeshire Choral Society. I have spent many years using the Noteworthy Composer Notation software (see Noteworthy Software Inc ) to key these Works (from the printed piano-reduction score) into my computer so that I can more quickly learn them. To assist me with this I usually employ another piece of music software, Midisoft's Session (now long superseded: however, by clicking on the following link you can download a copy), which provides a real-time Mixer Board (sadly, missing from Noteworthy Composer) allowing me readily to emphasize any "voice" so that it can easily be picked out (more easily than when listening to a proper recording of the Work). However, there is a problem with Files produced by Session: see Playing Midi Files.

And now ... I thought it would be a useful service to the world to make the basic Midi Files freely available to anyone who needed them ... and this I now do - see the Composer Lists referred to at the top of this page (back to top). You should bear in mind, though, that when you play them on your computer you won't necessarily have a wonderful musical experience! The problem stems for the combination of what a Midi File is and the hardware and software you have. If you want to know a little more about this - about what I do, and how Midi works, and so on - look at What I do. And if you really want to know all about Midi, try looking at THE OFFICIAL ALT.MUSIC.MIDI FAQ Site. And if you want to know what a Work really sounds like, go out and buy a recording of it!

Playing Midi Files requires an appropriate piece of software - typically Windows Media Player. I suggest you read Playing Midi Files, and decide what you're going to use. And if you don't fancy any of the Players I list there, try Googling "Midi Player"; you'll find there are many Players out there, some free, some merely inexpensive.

How to download these Midi Files

There is no Download option per se on the Site; you just have to rely on Windows - or whatever your Operating System is - doing it for you. You have basically two choices - either you left-click on the File Name (in the left-hand, un-emphasized, column of the Table of Files available for each Work, and selectable from the Composer List links) or on the icon in the relevant one of the Table's Voice columns, or you right-click on the Name or icon.

If you left-click then, depending on how Windows (or other OS) is set up on your machine, either you get a standard dialogue asking whether you want to open the File where it is or instead you want to download it, or - which is more likely - the File is automatically downloaded (usually into a "Temp" directory somewhere on your Root [C] drive, and often under a name that is not recognisable as the File name). If you get the "open-or-save" dialogue then, if you choose "Save" (and deal suitably with where it is to go, and what it is to be named), the File is appropriately downloaded and stored, and can later be retrieved and played by your chosen Player (such as Windows Media Player - though I recommend some other Players, and mention a few in Playing Midi Files). If you choose "Open" the File is automatically downloaded (as above) and supplied, equally automatically, to whatever piece of software is "associated" on your machine with Midi Files - typically Windows Media Player - which will pop up on your desktop and play the File. Once the File is in Media Player it can usually be saved for subsequent retrieval using Media Player's pull-down standard "File|Save As ..." routine.

If you right-click on the Name or icon then you get the standard "open-or-save" dialogue, and can proceed as noted above.

All of this is Windows-driven, so it works whatever Browser - Internet Explorer, say, or Firefox - you may be using.

If you've got a Mac ... I don't know about Macs; it's up to you!

How to use these Midi Files

This is what I recommend. First, download all the Files you need - the ones emphasised suitably for your voice - and the corresponding unemphasised versions. Since both sets use the same names you'll need to save them in two different places, and I suggest that to start with you put them one set in each of two separate (appropriately-named, and previously-formed) Folders on the Desktop (later on you can if you wish move these Folders somewhere more convenient).

Then make sure you have a suitable Midi File Player ... I recommend one that allows you to modify the tempo of the music and the emphasis (volume) of your voice. I use Session; it works well for me (a "freebie" version can be downloaded from here ... but do read the comments I've made elsewhere about its problems .

Next, use the File Player to play through each piece, and as you do adjust the tempo(s) and emphasis as necessary (you may need to slow things down quite a bit to start with, but as you become more familiar with the work you can speed the music up again). And then ... practise. There really is no substitute for it - most of us cannot even "get by" if all we do is simply turn up at the rehearsals and rely on doing a bit of notebashing. So, in between times, practise! For each piece, play the music, and sing along with it using the Score, again, and again, and ... again! And also play the music at other times, when you can't hold the score (because you're driving, washing the baby, jogging, whatever). Your notes will drive themselves into your head until, one day, when by mistake you turn over two pages of the score at once, you'll discover it doesn't matter; you can carry on singing the right notes quite happily, because you know it by heart!

And finally? The acid test. Discard those slow, easy emphasised Files, and sing the Work using the real tempo unemphasised ones. That Tenor (or Alto, or whatever) singing the wrong notes loudly in your ear will never put you off again!

It may not sound nice

Finally, remember: these Midi Files are provided as a learning aid, and are not intended to be a wonderful musical experience. If you want to hear what a work really sounds like, then go out and buy a copy of the real thing!

Other Rehearsal aids

Finally finally, if you find that my Midi Files are not what you're looking for - if they do not help you to learn the Work you're intending to sing - then you might care to try something slightly different. The Italian organization Choralia provides a complete package of both voice-emphasised and unemphasised Midi Files - which are also now available in "Virtual Singer" format, in which a synthesised voice sings the actual words - plus software to let you convert them into MP3 Files - that is, actual sound files in a compressed form - and then record these onto CDs (assuming you have a CD writer) playable on any ordinary CD Player. This is for free - though they would like a donation if you're pleased with the result.

And if you'd like to try something completely different ... you could listen to someone singing your part with a piano providing the backing. One business that provides relatively inexpensive voice-specific tape cassettes or CDs is Music Dynamics/ChoraLine. Another is Saffron Choral Prompt). Each business provides cassettes or CDs for many different Choral Works. In each you get someone singing your part, with sufficient backing to place it in context both with the orchestra and with any other voices, plus regular (spoken) indications of where you've got to in the Score; however, you do not necessarily get the whole work, nor even always the whole of any one item, just the sections where you're singing, so it may be rather difficult to fit things together. Still, you do get the words!

Back to Top, and link to the Composer List

Mistakes etc

If - as is almost inevitable - you find the occasional mistake (Notes that are Naturals when they should be sharpened or flattened, or raised up or dropped down a tone or three, or are tied but don't link to a target and so sound on and on and on ... or Soprano Files that are in fact Alto ones, Bass Files that you can't hear properly because the emphasis is all wrong, Tenor Files that should but don't exist, bits where the tempo suddenly goes haywire ... and yes, all these have happened in the past), forgive me! If you feel really bad about it you can E-mail me saying where and what the mistake is; maybe I'll put it right [:-)].

One common cause of error messages is my getting the case of a File name wrong - for example, actually calling the File "file.mid" but then carelessly referring to it as "File.mid" ... which makes a case-sensitive Unix-based Server report that the File doesn't exist! This happens quite a lot, I'm afraid, and is the most likely reason for a "page not available" comment from your browser. If you find an instance of this, please let me know, and I'll correct things - but in the interim try converting any file name in the address field into all lower case (or, if that fails, into all upper case)!

Recent corrections and additions

From time to time I make corrections and add new stuff. To see what I may have done along these lines in the past few months, click on recent changes.

Links to other Sites which may be of interest

Click here to see a number of lists of links which include - in no particular order - Sites from which you can download helpful software (such as a Midi Player of some sort), and Sites to Choirs some of whose Members are believed to be using my Midi Files to help them rehearse.

If you have comments ...

Send comments and mail to: "John" <MUSIC@THEH00PERS.DEM0N.C0.UK>
(That's been fudged so as to render it less visible to website crawlers. Don't "Control Copy/Insert" it: key it in as it looks, not as it is!)

Back to Top, and link to the Composer List

Last updated by John on 10/Jun/08