Creating Sound Files for your Website

Notation Software

Creating MIDI Sound Files

In addition to creating sound files using pre-existing .mp3 or audio files in iTunes or QuickTimePro, you can create your own MIDI files using music notation software such as Finale or Sibelius. Although MIDI does not have the same high quality sound available in the other formats, it does allow you to compose examples that suit your specific pedagogical needs.

Saving as MIDI in Sibelius

• Create your musical score in Sibelius
• Go to the FILE menu, and pull down to select SAVE AS
• In the SAVE AS window, name the File. Name it slightly from your notation file to avoid confusing it with your notation file.
• Pull down the Format type arrow to select -MIDI. Notice that your file name now has a .mid extension on the end.
• Save it to the file of your Dreamweaver or Flash document.

Uploading your musical score to the Web using Sibelius

Sibelius offers the ability to load your musical score into your web page. The exciting part is that Sibelius has created a format that not only brings the visual score, but allows the user to play the score within your page. It uses a plug-in called Scorch to launch the music within your page. Viewers of your page will need to have access to this plug-in, so it is best to create a link to Scorch on your website so it's readily available.

• File/Score Info - enter information
• File/Save As
• Set SAVE AS type to Scorch Web Page and enter a file name
• Choose a Template web page - how the page will look, click OK
• Choose the location to save the file to.
• Sibelius creates two files in the location you select (an HTML file with the extension .htm, and a Sibelius score with the .sib extension)
• Be sure you include both of these files in the same folder, as the HTML points to the Sibelius score.

Saving as MIDI in Finale

The process of saving as MIDI in Finale is similar to Sibelius. In fact, the almost the same steps in the process apply. We've included the screen shots below to walk you through the same process in Finale.

• Create your musical score in Sibelius
• Go to the FILE menu, and pull down to select SAVE AS
• In the SAVE AS window, name the File. Name it slightly from your notation file to avoid confusing it with your notation file.
• Select the file type - MIDI file
• Save it to the same file as your Dreamweaver or Flash document.

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QuickTime Pro

Here we will discuss how to
   • Convert MIDI to AIFF
   • Create an excerpt from an audio track

Most computers come with the Quicktime Player, and QuickTime Pro is an inexpensive upgrade that you can quickly download from Apple's website. Once you have the program registered, when you open QuickTime Player there will be added features (in other words, it is not a separate application but an enhanced version of QuickTime Player).

Why go Pro? Apple will give you many reasons, but for us music educators, there is one ultimate reason for wanting Pro: you can convert MIDI files to sound files. Two significant reasons we need to do this are 1) you need sound (not MIDI) files for Flash MX and 2) students can copy MIDI links from a site and open them in a notation program (not such a good idea for aural skills dictations). MIDI files are not actually sound, they are a sequence of numbers that your computer interprets into sound playback. While MIDI files function in Dreamweaver by opening an external window (usually QuickTime player), Flash MX will not recognize your MIDI files. This is a drawback since MIDI files are so small in size, but in order to use sound in Flash, they have to be converted to AIFF or some other legitimate sound file (such as mp3 or wav).

How to convert a MIDI file to an audio file

1) In QuickTime, open up your MIDI file (File menu, Open Movie in New Player, and then browse for your MIDI file)
2) Once your file is open, select Export (File menu, Export)
        • If your Export feature is not active, then you have not successfully registered for QuickTime Pro.
3) Set your options (click on the Options button) to the following settings:
           

Sound Settings: Compressor NONE Rate 16.000 kHz Size 16 bit Use Mono Click OK

4) Under Export options choose Sound to Aiff.

5) Select Save.

Then you are done! We recommend that you listen to the file after you have "exported" it to be sure the sound quality is still satisfactory. If it isn't, then go back to QuickTime, export again, then change your options to a higher rate. Always test your file before you export more files with the same options.

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What if you want only an excerpt from a CD track (mp3)?

You can cut out an excerpt from an audio track in QuickTime. Open your file so that it is in a QuickTime player. Do you see those little triangles at the beginning of the track? You can drag those to cut out (NOT crop!) music you do not want included. For example, drag the triangle furthest to the right two-thirds through the player. Drag the left triangle about one-third through the player. Your player should look something like this, with a gray middle section:

If you select "cut" under the Edit menu, this will cut out the middle part of the track. "Cut" deletes whatever is gray. So if you only want the first ten seconds of the track, your arrow furthest on the right will be ALL of the way to the right, whereas the arrow on the left should be at the ten-second mark. It should look similar to below:

\

Always save before you do any major change. If your change is a disaster, it may be easiest to close your file without saving changes, or save it under another name if you aren't sure when you last saved. That way, you can always revert to any earlier copy if the damage cannot be repaired.

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iTunes

iTunes is like the CD player for your computer. If you want to extract a recording from a CD and include it in your project, iTunes is user-friendly.

Here are the steps to extracting an audio track:
   • open your iTunes application
   • insert the CD into your computer and wait for it to show up in your iTunes window (on the far left under the library and radio)
   • select this CD icon (if you are connected to the web, iTunes will already have the CD name and titles listed for you)
   • uncheck all audio tracks except the one(s) you are planning to use in your project
   • select "import" (upper right corner)

   • wait for your computer to import (timing varies depending on how long your track is)
   • when importing is complete, your track(s) will show up in your library (icon is on the left)

Where is the file? Sometimes we have found it a little tricky to find the actual mp3 files, so it is easiest to just drag the icon to your desktop where it immediately becomes a copy for you to use in other applications.

What if you want only an excerpt from a CD track (mp3)? You can cut out an excerpt from an audio track in QuickTime.

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