No.

There are however, lots of free music theory sites where you could learn to read and sight read.   emusictheory.com is one I send students to regularly. 

Learn key signatures,major/minor scales and major/minor triads and you're well on your way to singing almost 90% of all choral music you will likely encounter in most ensembles.

 

Teach a man to fish....

  I am constantly amazed and dismayed by the extreme measures people who do not play piano and/or don't read music take to avoid simply learning to play piano. They will climb every mountain, ford every little puddle, beg, borrow or steal anyone who can teach them their part or be willing to lay waste to entire continents while wasting time, treasure and  E_F_F_O_R_T to avoid the simple expedient of learning to PLAY THE PIANO!--of actually becoming a MUSICIAN!

 I have a friend with only three fingers on one hand who can get around a keyboard just fine. NO EXCUSES!

S

Thanks for the replies.  End of thread.

 Hello, Roger.

 

Since it will take time to perfect your sight reading or keyboard skills, and you need something now for your at home practice, you might consider picking up a little digital recorder & taking it to rehearsal.  You can then sing along with your choir on your iPod.  Your accompanist or a fellow chorister might even be willing, every so often, to play or sing a few tricky parts slowly for you - I'm thinking like 4-8 bars of a trouble spot - to help you out as well.  That can be done in less than a minute.  This method of learning has been quite successful for a few of my singers who don't read as well as others.  In fact, some of my worst readers are my best singers because they know how to listen.

 

Just a thought.....  I hate to completely discourage someone who is eager to take time to rehearse at home.  

 

Paula Roberts

 

Hello Roger:

Not sure if you are still reviewing this, but this may help for the future or for others who have the same problem.......I agree with Paula Roberts that there are alternate ways -- one is www.noteflight.com, a free online music notation program that is of immense help for choristers who can't sight-read music or play the piano, but are willing to put in the effort to learn to sing their part in a chorus. Individuals in our group use it for practicing their parts for choral singing.

You need to be able to identify your part though, so you can put those notes into the program (insert rests for the sections you are not singing). They have a good "Help" section. You can even check out some of the shared music on that site to get a feel for it.

Hope this helps..

Mrs.George

I am willing to pay for the capability to convert chorale music sheet to MIDI type file, so that our choir members could

practice choir scores.  Any information or experienced suggestion for the reasonably priced software and or hardware would be greatly appreciated. 

Ilmun: You don't seem to have read the other posts on this thread. Both Finale and Sibelius have music scanning programs included, but I believe they are "lite" versions. (The one for Sibelius is called "PhotoScore," I believe, but the reports are so negative that I've never bothered to try it.) Both come in full versions at additional cost that are reputed to work much better.

 

But music scanning is still in its infancy, and even the best programs (which are not free or even cheap!!) can read some pages with fair accuracy and fail completely to read others, depending on the quality of the original. That is the concensus on both the Sibelius and the Finale mailing lists. And then of course you still need a version of the notation program in order to process the information that you've scanned.

 

The only sure way to accomplish your goal is to enter the full score--or at least the choral parts--into a notation program and then save the parts separately as MIDI, .aiff, or MP3. Once you have the music in digital form you can process it, just as with a word processor. But scanning is not yet a reliable way to digitize music that exists only on paper, and if there is a freeware and effective program out there no one is talking about it!

 

All the best,

John

This is a bit of an old thread, but I have something new to add to it, and the problem certainly hasn't gone away for any of us.

 

The way I look at this, you have a score and you want a way to hear your part played on a device of some sort that you can plug yourself into.   This is a ubiqutous problem that every choir member has, all the time.   As a choir director and member I have experimented with many ways to skin this particular cat.   My current approach is this...

 

1. Try to find a MIDI file of the piece on CPDL or anywhere else on the internet. 

This is very often fruitful.  If it is successful, skip to step 3.   Otherwise...

2. Create a MIDI file of the piece.   Do this either playing or 'typing' it into Sibelius (or Finale, or MuseScore) and then export as a MIDI file.   Note: I would not recommend scanning in using something like Photoscore.   I have tried it, I found it got close but required much editing that took longer than just starting from scratch.   Obviously if you lack the knowledge to type it into Sibelius, you also lack the knowledge to do the editing - it's the same knowledge.  Photoscore doesn't really in practice give you a way to not need that knoweldge for anything other than something really simple like a hymn from a hymn book.   Your mileage may vary of course, but I don't think scanning sheet music is a good way to go.  I agree with the other posters on this point.

3. Get selected parts extracted some how from the MIDI file so that I can play just the parts I want on some device.   

 

For step 3, you can do this using Export To MP3 function in Sibelius (or equivalent in other software), using the mixer to select which parts you want to hear how loud in each MP3 that you export (you might want to do a few variations - like just your part or your part loud with the other soft, or possibly everything slowed down etc...).

 

Alternatively if you have an iPhone you could try this iPhone app which will let you easily play back a standard MIDI file with certain parts isolated/highlighted - it gives you a mixer basically for each of the parts.  It also lets you change the speed of playback and loop the file between points if you want to play a few bars over and over again for learning purposes.

 

 

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/learn-my-part/id517515605?ls=1&mt=8

 

So with that, if you can find a MIDI file with all the parts in it on the web, you would bypass the need entirely to try to create your own MIDI or MP3 files for part learning purposes.   And even if you can't you'd only need to do step 2.   Either way you bypass step 3.