Play and explore a MIDI file

Import a piece

1. Choose File > Import MIDI… or press Cmd+I.
2. Select a .mid or .midi file and open it. Standard MIDI files in format 0 and 1 are supported.
3. If the file has more than two voices, answer the Which voice is each hand? dialog (see below).
4. Go to Visualizer to see the waterfall, or to Editor to work on the timeline.
5. Select an instrument and click Play.

If the editor's start screen appears when you open it, choose Import Current MIDI to work on the loaded piece. Choose New Empty Project only when you want to start without it.

Split the hands when importing

Medussa can draw the left hand in its own colors, on the keyboard and in the waterfall. The hand isn't a separate track: it travels with each note, and you can change it in the editor whenever you like.

What Medussa does when importing depends on how many voices (track and channel combinations that contain notes) the file has:

When the dialog appears:

1. Read the list: each voice shows its name, its channel and how many notes it has.
2. Choose the voice for the Right hand.
3. Choose the voice for the Left hand, or None if the piece doesn't need it.
4. Click Import.

Voices you don't choose are not imported. If the file has three or more parts and you want to keep them all, assign them to the two hands in batches or check the file in your DAW before bringing it in.

If you click Cancel, the whole piece is imported and everything is set to the right hand; you can mark the hands in the editor afterward.

To see the difference, keep Settings > Scene > Main > Tell the hands apart turned on and choose their colors in the Keys and Waterfall sections. When you turn that switch off, everything is drawn in the right-hand colors and the left-hand colors stay saved.

Repeat a passage with the A/B loop

A marks the start and B the end of the passage you want to repeat.

1. Find the passage in the track overview.
2. In Visualizer or Practice, turn on the loop range selection control and drag across the overview to set it.
3. In Editor, hold Cmd and drag across the ruler to set A/B.
4. Turn on the loop with Cmd+L or Options > Loop Enabled.
5. Play and check that it jumps back to A when it reaches B.
6. Adjust the ends until they cover the passage you need.

Turn on Options > Always Start Inside Loop if you want Play to jump to A when the playhead is outside the loop. If a training session is controlling the range, stop that training before changing it manually.

Listen slower or faster

1. Play the passage you want to study.
2. Adjust the transport's tempo control with its buttons or value field.
3. Listen to the result to check the new speed.
4. Set the control back to its neutral value when you want the original speed again.

This control is for exploring playback. To write tempo changes into the piece, use the tempo map. Blocks in Guided Training have their own target tempo, and while one is running this control is disabled.

Transpose playback

1. Find the transport's transpose control.
2. Raise or lower the value in semitones, or type it in directly.
3. Play to hear the change.
4. Go back to 0 to restore the original pitch.

The control's range is −48 to +48 semitones. Don't confuse this setting with changing a chart's written key: renaming its key isn't the same as shifting every MIDI note. If you need to hand transposed notes to another program, check the resulting MIDI or edit the notes in the editor.

Make the piece easier to read

In Visualization you can adjust opacity, colors, glow and how the pedal is shown. Hold Cmd and scroll over the visualizer to zoom the waterfall in or out, to see more bars at once or spread out a dense passage. In Practice, bar and beat lines are turned on to help you follow the rhythm; you can turn them off in Practice > Practice Grid.

To save your project changes, press Cmd+S. To get a MIDI file you can edit in another program, see Export.