My search for music that I can play as a beginner has led to some very interesting places. Once again The Fiddle Hangout proved a valuable resource.

After watching the Snowden’s Jig video over and over and over and trying to find the notes on the fiddle I was frustrated to say the least. It just goes by so fast! If only I could slow it down a bit. Or a lot 🙂

Enter the thread above which points out the advantages of a program called Notation Composer. Downloading the free trial convinced me that I really needed to pay for this wonderful bit of code.

I “wrote” Snowden’s Jig into the program, which took about 30 minutes as I didn’t bother to read the directions, and then hit “play.” The program allows you to play the song at any speed, even really-really-really slow so a total newbie can play along. It highlights each note as it plays so you know exactly where you are in the song. You can set repeats, loops, anything you can think of.

It gets even better, though. You can import any midi file into the program and it will convert it to sheet music that you can then save, print, etc. Very handy! If there is more than one instrument in the midi file, each part will be written out in a “conductor’s score” so you can see how each part relates to the others. Slick! Many, many, many, many sites on the ‘net have midi files for you to listen to or download of archived music that is in the public domain.

The program allows you to write your own music as well and play it back in single parts or with many instruments, or whatever.

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

* No Affiliation, Yadda Yadda (NAYY) which means I was not paid for this review nor did I receive anything in compensation – I just really, really like the program and think it will be an invaluable tool as I progress with my fiddle studies.