Music Publisher - Frequently Asked Questions

This page is mainly a reference page for users, and represents some of the questions we get asked which require longer answers. However it may well be of interest to enquirers, but this is not primarily a "selling" page.

How can I create music scores to put on the internet or send to friends by email?

How can I make audio CDs from Music Publisher scores?

Can I make rehearsal CDs from Music Publisher to help my singers learn their parts?

How do I import files from other music packages, or from PDF files of music?

How do I create booklets to fold or do double-sided printing?

How do I put musical examples inside documents?

Does Music Publisher read abc files?

How can I create music scores to put on the internet or send to friends by email?

I recommend the creation of PDF files (“Portable Document Format”) files as these are the standard form of file reading on the internet.

If you have a copy of Adobe Acrobat then this package can do that. However it’s expensive and there are a number of packages at much lower cost available which can do this for you. I recommend PDF995 which is fast and produces fairly small files. A complete page of music is liable to be about 35K, which is not bad for a picture type page.

PDF995 can be found here and costs a very reasonable $10.

If you only rarely send music to friends then you may prefer to embed a picture representing a page of music in a Word document (assuming that your target recipient(s) have MS Word). Music Publisher 6 can make a set of graphics files with File>Export all pages to picture files to produce one picture file for each page. Then open a new Word document and do Insert>Picture>From file once on each page.

In MP6 it's simpler to choose the BMP graphics file format (in Files of Type) as all versions of Word can read BMP files. If you choose PCX or GIF then these are much smaller files but you will have needed to install the relevant filters when you installed Word. But since each BMP file is over a megabyte don't forget to delete them once the word document is created to avoid wasted space on your computer.

Oh yes I nearly forgot: if your friend has Music Publisher 6 then simply send the scores. And if they haven't got MP6 then make a strong suggestion that they should have :-)

How can I make audio CDs from Music Publisher scores?

First some background:

1. Sound files on a PC are generally of 2 types: WAV or MIDI. WAV files can be anything, sound effects, voices etc, but MIDI files only cover music.
2. WAV files are large, but they are essentially the same files as an audio CD has, so all CD burning software can create audio CDs from WAV files quickly: one file to each track.
3. MIDI files can be produced by MP6 - the "Save Midi" button on the Play dialog.

So basically recording to CD is a 3-stage process.

• First you make a MIDI file from MP6 (or record the playback – see below);
• Then you convert it to WAV file;
• You then use your CD-burning software, eg Roxio or Nero to save this WAV file to CD in Audio CD format.

Stage 2 is the hardest.

Software exists on the internet (eg midi2wav) which claims to do this – I’ve not tried it myself but the web site above has sensible advice and there is a demonstration program. Registration fee is currently $25.

If you don’t use specialized software then you can do it yourself:

• you start the Recording (it asks you where to save the file which will contain the recording);
• you play the sounds (eg by pressing Play in MP6;
• you stop the recorder when the recording is finished.

In this way the recording is saved into a WAV file on your hard drive which you pass to stage 3 above.

Getting or finding a Windows Recorder may be the hard part. I use Nero 6 which has one built in. Earlier versions of Windows had them built in, but I think some versions of Windows are limited to 30 seconds of recording. However a search on Google for "Windows Recording Software" should throw up some free or low-cost offerings.

Can I make rehearsal CDs which will help my singers learn their parts?

Yes. There are 2 quite different ways in which Music Publisher customers have done this.

The easiest assumes your singers have a Windows PC. Simply create a midi file from MP (on the Play menu press Save Midi button) and put it on a CD or floppy disk. Give them – or get them to download - a copy of vanBasco’s free Karaoke Player and they will be able to pick out the parts from the staves, slow down or speed up the tempo or emphasise and quieten the various parts.

The second type of CD is the audio CD. You could simply use Karaoke Player above and a Windows Sound Recorder (see How can I make audio CDs from Music Publisher scores?) to burn audio CDs from this recording.

At least one customer is making commercial rehearsal tapes but this requires quite a lot of post-processing of the midi file(s). You would need a good midi editor to change tempo, volume and relative weight of the parts before burning to CD. But it is possible and the scanning module available for Music Publisher speeds this process if you have permission to use the music or it is out of copyright.

How do I import files from other music packages?

The only data import format which Music Publisher can read is abc files.

For direct import from other systems there’s no direct facility at the moment. Plans are in hand to read NIFF and Music XML files but most music is not in these formats anyway.

The only way to get music from Sibelius, Mozart, Noteworthy Composer etc is by scanning in the print-out using our Scanning edition.

However you may be surprised to learn that you don’t actually need a scanner, or if you have one, it’s faster not to bother with it!

Basically the Scanning edition can either interface to a scanner or it can use a BMP file directly to convert it into a music document by interpreting the picture as music.

Now there is an excellent and very simple little program called Zan Printer which creates a BMP file as you “print” which means that any program you can print from can be used to create BMP files instead. Here’s how the process goes:

You run your other music package and perform a Print, but using the Zan Printer virtual printer rather than your real printer. This creates a BMP file on disk for each page printed.

You now run Music Publisher and use File>Import from Bitmap to read the file which Zan created and interpret it as music.

Zan printer costs $50 and the Scanning edition costs £174 (£75 if you have already purchased the standard edition). (The File>Import from bitmap or scanner command is not on your copy if you don’t have the Scanning Edition.)

(An aside: This method is more reliable than using Midi files to transfer music as midi files tend to contain only notes and miss out a lot of the other on-page material.)

This Zan import route is also applicable to royalty-free music which is distributed by various web sites. They often offer their music as PDF files and the Zan Printer method works superbly on these, usually with 100% accuracy! Remember, you don't even need a scanner!

How do I create booklets to fold or do double-sided printing?

First check to see if your printer can do this automatically. Many modern laser printers can do double-sided (“duplex”) printing, and some can also do booklet printing, ie reduce the size and print 2 pages in Landscape mode with the correct page numbers opposite each other for booklet folding and stapling. If your printer can do this, the setting is likely to be in “Page setup” one the Properties button on the printer dialog.

Assuming your printer can’t do this then I can suggest software which can. I thoroughly commend Clickbooks from Blue Squirrel software. It prints the sheets as required and then you feed them back into your printer for the second sides. Clickbooks 9 costs $50, and as usual there is a demonstration copy available.

How do I put musical examples inside documents?

Music Publisher can help with this in two ways. If you have Microsoft Word then click here to download an example. You might like also to read Chapter 20 of the manual.

The example above was created by selecting the hymn tune in Block Mode and choosing “Copy to Clipboard”. Then simply switching to Word and pasting in (eg Ctrl+V or Shift+Ins or Edit>Paste). The size of the picture will be the largest that Word can get in the paper width so you will need to resize it. In Word, you can drag one of the corners (not the edges) or for more control click the picture to highlight it, select Format>Picture>Size. I set the % height at about 25% as a general rule.

Many programs behave similarly to Word using the clipboard.

An alternative to the clipboard is to save as a BMP file from Block Mode and then you can insert the picture saved into Word with Insert>Picture>From File.

Does Music Publisher read abc files?

It does. But if you wish to do this then you must enable the option on the File menu. In Options>Configure>Desktop tick the box labelled Allow ABC. Now you will find Import ABC   and Export ABC on the File menu.

abc format is readable (with practice) by both computers and people and a full description is beyond this topic, but can be found on the internet. One place is the link given below.

abc format is an evolving format, and that causes problems for programs trying to support it. Version 1 of the format was written for folk music tunes and so only handled single staves using melodies and only occasional chords (such as a fiddle part might have). But many additions were added and leading to multi-stave systems, choral music and so on. But its inherent limitations preclude it from being a full-fledged music interchange format. At least that’s my opinion!

Music Publisher 6 supports version 1 of abc format, and with some features from version 2. Notably missing from MP6 are support for multi-staves and lyrics but the (literally) tens of thousands of tunes on the internet don’t use these features anyway. As a sample, here is the UK national anthem:

T:National Anthem

C:Anon

K:G

M:3/4

G2 G2 A2 | F3 G A2 | B2 B2 c2 | B3 A G2 | A2 G2 F2 | G6 ||

d2 d2 d2 | d3 c B2 | c2 c2 c2 | c3 B A2 | B2 cB AG | B3 c d2 | ec B2 A2 | G6 |]

Once you are told that the default note length for 3/4 time is the quaver (8th note) then you should be able to decipher the main points of that format. For full information see

http://staffweb.cms.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/

(If this link is broken then be prepared to search for it as its support is completely voluntary: there is no paid organisation responsible for it.)

© Braeburn Software 2008