From sheet music to a motor melody — a full walkthrough

Most of the time you'll start with a MIDI file someone else made. But every now and then you want a song that nobody's sequenced — an obscure game track, a friend's band, a melody stuck in your head. When there's no MIDI, you have to make one. It's less work than it sounds.

Here's the complete path from "I have sheet music" to "my quad plays it".

Step 1: get the notes into a sequencer

You have a few options depending on what you're starting from.

If you have sheet music or a lead sheet: enter it into free notation software. MuseScore is the standard — it's free, runs everywhere, and exports MIDI directly. Place the notes on the staff, and that's your melody track done.

If you have a guitar tab: tabs are just notes in disguise. Either read them into MuseScore manually, or use a tab editor that exports MIDI. Tedious but reliable.

If you can only hum it: play it into MuseScore note by note, or use a MIDI keyboard if you have one. Even a cheap 25-key USB controller makes this ten times faster.

You don't need to be a notation expert. You need the right pitches in roughly the right rhythm. The converter forgives a lot.

Step 2: keep it simple

Resist the urge to arrange a full orchestration. For motor music you want, at most:

• A melody line (the tune you'd hum).
• A bass line (the lowest notes — gives it weight).
• Maybe a simple harmony.

Three voices is plenty for a four-motor quad. If you're entering by hand, start with just the melody — a single-line tune already sounds great on a quad, and you can add a bass later if you want.

Put each voice on its own track/staff in MuseScore. This matters: separate tracks let the converter assign each voice to its own motor cleanly. One stacked chord track gets jumbled.

Step 3: export MIDI

In MuseScore: File → Export → MIDI. You now have a .mid file. That's the same format you'd download from any MIDI archive, so from here the workflow is identical to using someone else's file.

Step 4: convert

Open the converter, drop in your MIDI. You'll see your tracks listed. Check the ones you want (melody, bass), uncheck anything else. Set the number of motors (4 for a normal quad).

The converter immediately shows you the per-motor RTTTL output and a piano-roll editor. Listen to the preview. If it sounds right, you're basically done.

Step 5: fix the inevitable octave problem

Hand-entered melodies almost always come out in the wrong octave for motors. If parts sound too low to hear or get clamped at the top, use the Octave shift control to slide everything into the sweet spot (octaves 5–6). Listen again.

This is the single most common fix when working from your own notation. Don't skip it.

Step 6: trim to the budget

If your song is longer than ~62 notes per motor, the converter tells you what got dropped (faded notes in the editor). Either crop the time window to just the hook, or accept the trim. A 15-second hook beats a cut-off full song every time — see our short-songs post on why.

Step 7: flash it

Copy each motor's RTTTL string (or download them all), open esc-configurator.com, and paste into the melody editor. If you've never flashed before, our flashing guide walks through it. Write the melodies, reboot, listen.

A realistic example

A friend wanted his old ska band's horn riff on his quad. No MIDI existed. We:

1. Had him hum the riff while I tapped it into MuseScore (about 20 minutes, lots of "no, the third note is higher").
2. Split it into the horn melody (one track) and a simple bass line (another).
3. Exported MIDI, dropped it in the converter.
4. Shifted up one octave so the horns sat in octave 6.
5. Cropped to the eight-bar riff — about 40 notes per motor.
6. Flashed it.

Total time, including the humming-and-arguing phase: about 45 minutes. He's flown it at every meet since.

The point

You're never limited to songs other people have sequenced. Anything you can notate — or even just hum accurately — can become a motor melody. MuseScore is free, the converter does the hard part, and the only real skill is patience while you get the notes right.