What do I need to notate as I play?

Question

I hope this isn’t a silly enquiry. My daughter improvises on our piano, classical style, and I would like to know if there’s a means to notate on computer as she plays. We bought Sibelius software but haven’t taken it out of the box yet! I gather we would need an electric keyboard to connect with our laptop, but do we need anything else? Is it as straightforward as that? We home educate so can’t ask for advice from music teachers.

Answer 1

Sibelius is the way to go, however, like another user here said, there is a learning curve to it. You can also use Logic Pro X and connect a midi keyboard to it and play it in. It will notate everything, however, you’ll then need to import into Sibelius or Finale. Once the notes are in the program, it’s going to look like a bunch of garbage, unless you’ve set up the time signature, key signature and quantizing. She will also need to play to a metronome otherwise the notes won’t show up for correct values. Even after that, if everything is all set up right, you’ll have to edit a lot of it to look right. There are definitely YouTube videos on how to do all of this, or you could hire someone to teach you how to do it.

Answer 2

Using Sibelius, your daughter can play and Sibelius will notate what she plays. Yes, you will need a midi (electronic keyboard) and also a midi interface (a box with midi input and output) and midi cables to connect the keyboard with your computer. That is all the equipment you will need. However, there is a bit of a learning curve needed to work with Sibelius. Since there are a number of ways to input notes and rhythms into Sibelius you will need to learn how to do this by playing directly into the program. You should know, also, that you will need to set the metronome and play exactly in time with it because the resulting notation will reflect exactly what is played and this can be a bit tricky.

However, having said all that, it is doable and many people do it quite successfully. It just requires some patience to get the hang of it.

Feel free to ask me follow questions.

Stephen