Transcribing solo paino recordings

[Sherry C]

Hi,

The short answer is "you don't"

The longer answer, and hopefully the one that helps folks understand the complexity of such an operation is:

Taking any audio file and trying to separate out the instruments or voices (different instruments/voices playing the same note pitch or even chordal notes from the same instrument such as a guitar), the notes themselves (determining what is a root note versus the harmonics), the root pitch (versus vibrato or reverb artifacts), the duration (whether the note is still playing or if that’s some ringing echo in the recording) and a host of other nuances is a very difficult technological task. Our ears and brains work in an incredibly complex way to discern all these aspects of music.



Getting a program to do the same thing, and then produce a MIDI file (the “directions” for playing the piece) so that we can get sheet music is still a goal yet to be fully realized. There are a number of programs that claim to do this, but in all the testing we’ve done, none of them do a good enough job to produce a MIDI that doesn’t still need a lot of work to give decent sheet music. Even the Melodyne Editor, which does an absolutely amazing job of separating audio tones, still doesn’t give a very good MIDI file for getting sheet music (though it can be used in sequencers to give a performance). It's not that smart folks aren't trying their best, it's just a very difficult task to do well.


You can bet that when we find a good one, we’ll let folks know!

ttfn,
Sherry