How can a MIDI file help me practice music?

If you open it in a notation editor, you can play it back while watching the notes, and adjust the volumes and tempo to suit yourself.

Where can I find a notation editor?

If you already write music on your computer, the application you use can probably import MIDI files.  Use that.

If you don’t write music yourself, I recommend starting with MuseScore.  It’s free, quite powerful, and runs on most Windows, Mac OS and most major Linux distributions.

If you don’t want to install anything new on your computer, you can also use the demonstration version of NoteFlight – a notation editor that runs right in your Web browser.

Visit musescore.org to download and install MuseScore.

Visit www.noteflight.com to try out NoteFlight in your Web browser.

Once you have the score editor of your choice open, you will need to do three things:

  1. Import your MIDI file.
  2. Adjust the tempo to match your conductor (or less, if you need to start slower).
  3. Adjust the volume to emphasise your part.

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