Karaoke Midi Files With Lyrics
Vinnie Frevert
If you are using the Choir instrument then the 'voices' are controlled by the MIDI notes the same as any other MIDI instrument - these you can either create manually in the MIDI Editor or by playing a MIDI keyboard.
This is not entirely true. There are ways to add lyrics to Midi Files, something which is done with files intended for karaoke. A number of DAWs can do this - Cubase, Sonar for instance). I've no idea if this is possible in "Music Studio". Perhaps more likely in Samplitude Music Studio.
I can see that it can display them and you can add a lyrics marker but I can't see any way of actually adding or editing lyrics. I guess a karaoke program would be needed although I believe that Sonar is quite good at this. At least you'll then be able to see the lyrics in Music Studio.
So the answer is - put lyric markers in and then go to the marker manager where you can then create and edit the lyrics. I will be looking at other programs to do this though as seems a little bit cumbersome in Music studio.
Unfortunately, lyrics export has not been implemented for MIDI yet, nor is it likely to be soon because the format is so limited (as soon as you add lyrics to a second voice or verse the export becomes nontrivial).
However, MuseScore is the best karaoke machine there is, and it's free, so why not send them the MSCZ files and a link to download MuseScore? Even if they can't read music they can still follow along with the lyrics. They can control playback with the Play Panel and use the Mixer to mute other sections of the choir.
I have been creating MIDI files, so members of my choir can use them for practice purposes. MIDI has the advantage that the format has been around a long time, and most devices can handle it. (MP3 is OK but, of course, doesn't include the lyrics, and the files are a lot bigger.) For each song, I prepare five MIDI files - one for each voice, and one for the whole song.
A few of the choir are musically and technologically literate; they can import the files into whatever music software they prefer, and I have been urging them to try MuseScore. Some are reasonably competent with music notation, but less so with software; they incline to use e.g. Notation Player.
The largest number are both technophobic and have poor music-reading abilities. Given that the choir's average age is nearer 70 then 60, it's an uphill struggle to try to get them to use anything but the simplest software. For them, I recommend vanBasco's MIDI player.
The ideal software, for our choir, would display the score with the lyrics, as well as allowing control of playback in the manner of vanBasco's MIDI player. I realise that MuseScore does just that, but getting a bunch of technophobes to install it isn't easy. I can give MSCZ files a try, but not many will use them, I'm afraid.
I'm part of a choir too so I understand your problem! I used to export MP3s with the relevant voice emphasized, but that was too much work so now I tend to upload one of the files to MuseScore.com and send out a link to the video score (like this one) so that the less technologically minded people can get used to the idea of following along on the computer without having to go to the trouble of downloading and installing a program. I send the MSCZ files along with the link and tell them that they can download MuseScore if they want to mute individual voices.
I use Synthesizer-V for virtual singing of MuseScore scores, too. MIDI is intermediary between the two apps. My problem is that MuseScore MIDI does not include lyrics, so I have been manually re-entering them in Synthesizer-V. However, apparently, this problem may be solvable. Namely, the problem of MuseScore and MIDI lyrics is that it is not implemented the ability to embed lyrics into MIDI, yet. However, I heard that Sibelius and Encore MIDI files do contain lyrics and they ca be opened in some other apps that require Lyrics, such as, Synthesizer-V. Similarly MIDI exported from Dorico apparently does not, either. However, the solution has been suggested in case of Dorico. Apparently, Dorico can export MusicXML, that contains lyrics. So, the user used some online services to convert the Dorico MusicXML to MIDI that contained lyrics. Then, Synthesizer-V was able to import the lyrics from the MIDI file. I haven't tried the method, but, since I know that MusicXML exported from MuseScore also contains lyrics, I think that this method using MusicXML as intermediary must work??? However, I think that the ability of MuseScore automatically embedding lyrics into MIDI is a well-deserved new feature request.
MIDI files can be imported into NoteWorthy Composer song files using the FileImport command. However, MIDI files are not notation based files. They generally contain raw performance data that represents exactly how a song should be played, but not really how it should be notated.
MIDI files can optionally include text events, including text identified as Lyric Text. Text that is included in a MIDI file is not associated with any particular note pitch or duration, and can appear anywhere in the file, even if no instrument/note performance data is present. Lyric text in a MIDI file simply identifies a chronological sequence of syllables that should be sung with the song, and the time at which each syllable should start to be sung. The actual length of time that each syllable is sung is not specified in the MIDI file (although it obviously does not extend beyond the start time of the next syllable). These syllables might correspond to note events that are also included in the MIDI file, but there is no rule that it must be this way.
So, what does this all have to do with NoteWorthy Composer? Well, since lyric text is not bounded/framed by any other MIDI performance data, NoteWorthy Composer imports each lyric track into a separate lyric-only staff when importing MIDI data into NWC format. Each lyric-only staff imported into NoteWorthy Composer has the following properties:
All fake notes entered on the staff will appear in hidden treble clef, although technically the notes themselves have no significance, except as a medium for attaching the lyric syllables found in the file (you can change the hidden clef without having any effect on the lyric staff)
In addition, NoteWorthy Composer will try to layer an imported lyric staff with the corresponding note data that matches the lyric. This does not always work very well, due to the inherent limitations described earlier in this article. NoteWorthy Composer uses the following scheme when layering a lyric staff with a notation staff during import:
if no matching import instruction is found, or no note events are in the track that contains MIDI lyrics, then the lyric staff will not be layered within NoteWorthy Composer; it will appear at the bottom of the score, after the notation staves
lastly, you can optionally enable layering on the notation staff directly above the lyric staff so that the lyrics will appear to belong to this staff when printing or displaying in NoteWorthy Composer Viewer.
You now have these lyrics attached to the notation staff. You will probably find that some tweaking of the lyrics and note properties will be required in order to match the lyric syllables with the correct notes on the staff. In some cases, this effort might be enough to convince you to use the layered lyric staff instead. If you decide not to keep the original lyric staff, you can remove it by making it active, then pressing Ctrl+D.
Hello , does anyone know of (or have made) a tutorial on using the "lyrics view". I do know that this view gets Very little attention. I would like to be able to add typed lyrics that scroll in time with the main vox track in a project. I've been thru a google search with no good results , and the CbB documentation . The PDF file got me somewhat in the right direction , but a hands on tutorial would be nice. I think this could be well suited for collaborations , or screen captured videos . Thanks .. mark
What do you want to know? I often insert lyrics and they seem to scroll in time to the song correctly.
I don't know where a tutorial might be, I just went by the Help files for SONAR Home Studio 6 many years ago and that worked.
Search forum member John Vere AKA Cactus Music; he wrote a bunch of tuts and maybe he has one for lyrics.
@57Gregy Thanks for that. I actually have home studio 7 installed , and will check there. I'll also check out @John Vere as well. @User 905133 Yeah .. I caught those during my searches. They helped , but I still have questions. According to the CbB documentation , the timing of the typed lyrics are driven by midi. I was thinking I could drag the vocal track (in the correct sections) into a midi track , and use the lyrics view from "there" for the timing ?? These are the type of things I am questioning .. I would prefer Not to use the staff view. It seems the Lyrics view has a Way better font size for easy viewing. This might be a Decent tutorial for someone to make to get out of the box . It seems a lot of Great "You Tube Tutorial Creators" seem to be competing for the same technical subject matter , and None that I have found have covered this .. Thanks mark
That could be a problem. I have always 'played' in the MIDI melody and then typed the lyrics. I have read here that you can drag an audio track into either Melodyne or into the timeline? and extract MIDI from that. No experience.
Once the lyrics are in the Staff View, you can open them in the Lyrics View. In SHS 6, anyway.
The lyrics view is primarily used for adding lyrics to Karaoke MIDI files. IMO it's not really suitable as a prompter.
This is how I do lyrics prompting using Melda's free MNotepad and automation:
The other thing I did is I have made music videos of a bunch of my backing tracks. They are basically my own home made Kareoke So I dropped that into the original project and if you set the zoom level just so that worked as well.
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