Help

FAQ

Where can I talk a bit about the piece, describe the background when I wrote it, etc?

If the piece needs a background story to be properly understood, then the story is part of the piece. Therefore, include the story as part of the score, by using the # pound/hash key at the start of each descriptive line. Any line that starts with # is considered to be a comment, and will be disregarded by the mascii interpreter. See the examples for, well, some examples!

Can I create mascii music offline?

Absolutely! Type your piece into any old text editor on your computer, your iPhone, your blackberry, anywhere. (On Windows, TotalEdit is a nice free text editor, for example.) You could even type it as an email. Then at any time you can copy/paste your music into this website to hear what it sounds like.

Can I get a printout of my score using standard sheet music notation?

Currently the way to do this is to click the download link and save the generated midi file, then use your own software to open the midi file and print the score. Finale offers a free read-only version called Finale Reader, which may work for this purpose. Support for directly generating standard sheet music on this website may be added in the future.

Troubleshooting

My music is all playing at once! I only wrote a tune but several notes are playing at the same time (and they sound terrible)!

Remember to double-space your lines unless you want them played simultaneously. Parts are grouped together based on line spacing, so when you write two lines directly on top of each other, Mascii reads this as two parts being played together.

I'm not able to play the example files. It says there are no updates from Real to support it.

Real Player has a habit of taking over your system and then doing a very poor job with it. Most machines DO know how to play these files, but Real Player sometimes prevents it from working.

If you are on a Windows machine, then Windows Media Player normally will support this file format. On the Mac, Quicktime works too. To restore the natural setting on Windows, right-click the saved file and choose "Open With", then go to "Choose Default Program..." and choose Windows Media Player, or Quicktime if you prefer, and be sure the "Always use..." box is checked so you don't have to do this again.

As an aside to anyone who is interested, there is a free alternative to Real Player that allows you to still play Real-formatted files without using Real Player at http://www.free-codecs.com/download/real_Alternative.htm

What is that glitch sound at the start of my piece?

That's a common problem with your browser's playback software. An easy fix is to add a rest measure at the start of your piece. This is done automatically for you when you listen to your piece (but not when you download it), so this solves the "glitch" problem in most cases automatically. Some playback devices also truncate the last note, so you can add a rest measure at the end of your piece to fix that.