: Too many dotted notes I don't have any formal musical training. I’m just a beginner arranging music that I like. So, I have the following sheet music and it seems kinda off. I think I need to change something with the

There are two things one needs to focus on when transcribing music: pitch (names of notes), and how long each note lasts (note values). It's best to focus first on one, ignoring the other, and then get the other aspect straightened out, separately. You can start with either one. I'll explain how to do this assuming that you will start with note values.

Sing or hum the tune while walking around. Figure out what the main beat is. Most melodies have a basic feel of being in multiples of two, three or four beats in a unit ("measure" or "bar").

The basic beats in the unit can usually be fit into a person's walking gait. For some tunes, you'd have to take pretty quick steps, for some, you'd have to use a strolling gait.

Okay, now you've matched up your tune to your walking gait. Let's say there are two basic beats in a unit, or measure. The next question is, does the tune have any little notes, in groups of two, three, or four, that fit into one basic beat? "On the bus" sometimes has two little notes within the beat. If there were three little notes inside a basic beat, then you might want to work in a framework of dotted notes. Otherwise, you will probably not need dots.

When you write down a sequence of note values, there is a convention used by musicians, called "meter" or "time signature." For "On the Bus," you would probably notate it with a time signature of "cut time" or "2/2". This means that we will use the "half note" as the basic beat, and there will be two of them in one measure. It's a slightly weird system, but it works, and musicians all around the world will understand what 2/2 means.

Note that the "nightmare in Midi" answer uses a time signature of "cut time" (it looks like a capital C with a vertical line through it), which is another way of notating a 2/2 time signature.

Once you've figured out how many beats there are in your unit, sing the tune as you're walking, and notice when you get to a note that's twice as long as the half note basic beat. That is called a "whole note", and you draw it as an empty blob, with no tail (whereas the half note is an empty blob, with a tail).

Also notice when you get to quicker notes, that fit two notes into the basic beat. These will be "quarter notes". It looks similar to a half note, but the blob is filled in.

There should always be a separating line between measures. It is a short, vertical line, called the "bar line."

In "On the Bus," the basic phrase that gets repeated many times has this sequence of note values:
half - half | whole | quarter quarter quarter quarter | whole |

An easy way to write music is with a hand-sharpened pencil. Sharpen it asymmetrically so that the pencil can draw either a thick line or a thin line, depending on the direction or orientation of the pencil as you are moving it across the page.

Now we can figure out the pitches -- how high or low each note is.

As we did with note values, we will first take a step back and figure out the big picture. As you are singing or humming the tune, notice that there is one special note that feels like home. Probably the very last note of the melody will be the "home" note, or "tonic." Now figure out whether the first note of the melody is the same, or if not, how far away it is from the tonic note. In the case of "On the Bus," the first note (after the brief intro) is the fifth note of the scale. We will call it "5".

Notice that 8 is the same pitch as 1, but one octave higher up. So, in this numbering system, we will call it "1" also.

Now we can put labels on each note of the tune as we are singing it. We discover that "On the Bus" has this sequence of pitches: 5 1 | 3 | 6 1 3 4 | 3 |

Now, decide what key you would like to play the tune in. Let's say you want to play it in the key of C. Tonic will be C, so the 5th note of the scale will be G. Thus, your melody has this sequence of pitches in the key of C:

G C | E | A C E F | E |

But what if you want to play your tune in the key of B flat? Now it will look like this:

F B? | D | G B? D E? | D |

You can now use staff paper to write down your tune in musical notation. Start with the clef (probably a G clef), the time signature (2/2), and the key signature (two flats if you are in B? major). Draw each note head in the appropriate place on the staff. Fill in the note head if the value is a quarter note. Give each note a tail (at this stage, it doesn't matter if it points up or down) unless it's a whole note, which should not have a tail.

And that is an example of how you can work out how to write down a tune that you have in your head, step by step.

Try it out with a bunch of simple tunes. It gets easier with practice. It really is best if you practice doing this by hand, before you put it into music notation software.

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A nightmare from Midi. Key signature, proper meter and sensible enharmonics are absent and the notes don't fit the meter at all. This should likely be something more like

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