How to Write Sheet Music on a Computer
Deciding to use your computer to display and playback sheet music is a wise choice. Not only will you have access to a large online library of sheets, you can quickly compose music with either a MIDI-interfaced instrument or a computer mouse, which would have taken you much longer, without a computer.
- Open your sheet music program and decide how you want to input the notes. You can write your own sheet music with any source that your program supports, including musical instrument input (most often a keyboard), computer keyboard input, as well as computer mouse input. If you would like to attach a keyboard to your computer, you will need a MIDI to USB interface to translate the music notes to your software. Other ways of inputting music into your program include importing MIDI files, as well as having it listen to recorded music, either through the computer system’s internal sound mixer or through its microphone.
- Decide if you are writing for many instruments or just the one instrument. This will determine what clefs the sheet music uses, as music that is written for the piano will look much different than a piece conducted for a chamber ensemble. Different instruments will also handle musical notation slightly differently, and may have variations on how dotted notes, quavers, semiquavers, crotchets and semibreves are displayed. Musicians use many different note variations and pauses.
- Have the computer playback your music. The sheet music program will read your score and output the result through your computer’s soundcard. The higher quality of MIDI instruments that your software has available, the better the quality of playback will be.