Tutorial: Opening a File from the Internet

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Tutorial: Opening a File from the Internet

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A good way to prepare an arrangement of a song for your own use, or for your group of musicians, is to start with an existing MIDI file of that song, which another musician has prepared and made available for download from the Internet.

To select whether Musician uses your regular browser or the internal browser, click on File/Choose Internet Browser.  In that window, you can choose whether Musician will use "Your system internet browser" (computer's default browser) or "Notation's built-in internet browser."  One advantage of using your computer's default browser is that you can set book marks for your favorite places to find files, and fine-tune your settings for downloading or opening files immediately. We urge you to use your system's internet browser for more flexibility.

prcarrow To search for and download MIDI files using your favorite browser (Recommended method).

1.EITHER  run your browser, and use your favorite search engine to find "MIDI" and add the song name, composer, or player that you want to find.  After navigating to the page with your desired song file(s), use your typical method to download the file(s) to a folder that you use for your songs.  (For the remainder of the tutorial, you will need to use the file "Twinkle.mid", which you can already find in your default "Songs" folder.)

   -OR-

1.In Musician's File menu, select "Download MIDI files from internet" after setting Musician to use your computer's browser as described above.

2.You will see a MIDI file directory Overview page, with a listing for "Samples".  Click the "Samples" text link.

3.On the MIDI Samples page, click the "Twinkle.mid" song title, and use your browser's typical method for either downloading or opening a file.  You may need to set a "Preference" or "Option" for the .mid, .not and .kar filetypes in your browser.

 

Alternatively,  Musician has a built-in Internet browser (based on Microsoft's Internet Explorertm) that makes it easy for you to find MIDI files on the Internet, download them, unzip them if they are in a Zip file, and immediately see them as sheet music -- all without leaving the Musician program.  

In this step of the tutorial, we will open the same MIDI file twinkle.mid, except this time we will search for it and download it from the Internet, using Musician's built-in Internet browser.

prcarrow To search for and download MIDI files from the Internet, using Musician's built-in Internet browser:

1.Make sure you are connected to the internet.
2.Click the File menu item, and select "Download MIDI files from internet."

The Musician window will temporarily become an Internet browsing window, and you will initially see a MIDI file directory Overview page. On this page you will see a menu listing for "Samples".  Click the "Samples" text link.

3.On the MIDI Samples page you will see "Twinkle.mid".  For this tutorial, click the filename.

4. Musician will present the following File Save As dialog box, to ask you where the downloaded MIDI file should be saved. By default, the MIDI file will be saved in the directory  

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Notation_3\Songs).

TutorialDownloadSaveAs

4.Click the Save button.
5.Because the Twinkle.mid file already exists in the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Notation_3\Songs directory, Musician will ask you whether the downloaded file should replace the existing file. Reply with 'Yes", unless you have some reason otherwise, in which case you should rename one of the files.

Musician will display the Recommend Corrections dialog box, exactly as it did in the previous tutorial step, when you opened a file that was already on your computer.

6.In the Recommend Corrections dialog box, click the OK button.

Musician will then display the notes for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, just as when you opened the same MIDI file from the Songs directory on your system.