need help turning midi into sheet music

[tomthetank]

Hello, new to this i made a mp3 into a midi file then imported the file and nothing like its so posed to sound like looked at tutorials but am lost any help would be great trying to get the monkees tune you told me intro on guitar to sheet music thanks in advance, Tom

[dj]

Hi, Tom:

Transcribing from an audio file to a midi file is a project with many problems. It will likely take some work to get the piece into actual useable notation.

Can you post the midi file in question and I'll have a look at it to see where the problems may lie?

Always fun.

David

[Sherry C]

Hi guys,

Of all the requests that we get, "how can I get sheet music from my audio/mp3/ogg/wav files?" is probably the most recurring.

I just answered such a query yesterday at the helpdesk, so I'll post my response here for information's sake:

The short answer: there is not yet any software product (despite any claims) that can take an audio file and faithfully translate it to a MIDI file from which anyone can get good sheet music. It's a "holy grail" of sorts that isn't yet achievable - and trust me, we've tested for just that!

Taking any audio file and trying to separate out the instruments or voices (different instruments/voices playing the same note pitch or chordal notes), the notes themselves (determining what is a root note versus the harmonics), the root pitch (versus vibrato or reverb), 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 (www.celemony.com), 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's getting better, and it can definitely 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. If the pieces you want to do are fairly "clean", then the Melodyne Editor might be good for you for getting a MIDI file which you could then use along with our Notation Composer. Composer has the exclusive "Rebar" feature which allows you to adjust barlines to accommodate rubato playing. No other notation software allows you to do that, and it makes a tremendous difference in keeping the performance while being able to get readable sheet music.

I don't know what the trial version of Melodyne allows these days -it used to be only about a 10 second file save. You may want to check that out. Our Notation Composer is available as a free 30 day trial, which you can get at www.notation.com/DownloadComposerTrial.php

Sorry to be a bit of a downer for the present, but the good news is that there's still progress being made toward the goal!

You can also see our Resource page on "Audio to sheet music" for some tips on doing your own transcriptions.

ttfn,
Sherry

[tomthetank]

Thanks for the help Sherry and Dj .Dj, how would i send attachment the mid file isnt valid thanks, Tom

[Sherry C]

Hi Tom,

Sorry for the lateness of this response - this one slipped under my radar.

Thanks for attaching the file - it confirmed the fact that the translation of the audio to MIDI is really a mishmash, which is unfortunately pretty typical of such software. If you haven't seen it yet, please see my previous post in this same thread for further info.

ttfn,
Sherry

[dj]

Hi, Tom:

That is one messed up piece of notation!

The problem with transcribing from audio to midi is dealing with overtones and "beat" frequencies, where strong harmonics from a note and clashes between two or more notes result in new frequencies being generated.

There are supposed to pieces of software out there that can deal with those, but I've not run into any.

As a result, you've got all kinds of spurious notes that clutter up the midi file and are not part of the original. Add to that the fact that the midi transcription doesn't reference bar lines and it's pretty close to indecipherable.

Additionally, you may have a percussion line in there that adds "non-notes" transcribed as real notes.

You'd probably be further ahead trying to transcribe this by hand. Patience and your ears!

Sorry.

David