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Using Notation Software products with other (third party) products Find out from others, or share your experience, about integrating Notation Software products with sound libraries, audio processing software, and other hardware and software products.

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  #1  
Old 04-26-2016, 03:46 AM
brookbend brookbend is offline
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Default Transcribing solo paino recordings

How do I download a solo guitar recording found on Youtube, send to software, make a new file, then print out the notation ?
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  #2  
Old 04-26-2016, 04:06 AM
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Sherry C Sherry C is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

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
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  #3  
Old 04-26-2016, 04:27 AM
brookbend brookbend is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

Too bad. So a trans can only be sold once? Legal issue. But i see ppl bartering them. Anyway it's remarkable how someone can trans a complex jazz solo, chord lines included in so little time. Special gift.
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Old 04-26-2016, 04:33 AM
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Sherry C Sherry C is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

Hi,

Actually any transcriptions that are sold are supposed to also send royalties for the sale to the copyright holder of the song in question, which often explains the price of such.

And yes, there are some folks who are quite gifted at listening and transcribing recordings. We have some of those here in the forum as a matter of fact However, they use their ears to hear the instruments/notes and then Notation Composer to put the notes in. One very fine example of this procedure is in this thread here.

One can definitely get better with practice, but like all good things, there is a learning curve involved and just plain old putting time into it to get good.

ttfn,
Sherry
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Old 04-26-2016, 04:47 AM
brookbend brookbend is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

Nah sherry. Playing is tough enough. Leave notation and transcribing to everyone else. Bye and thanx for answering.
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  #6  
Old 04-26-2016, 02:23 PM
brookbend brookbend is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

Speech recognition is more complicated than a few notes.
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Old 04-26-2016, 04:43 PM
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Sherry C Sherry C is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo piano recordings

Hi,

Speech recognition is tougher than a few notes, but that's not what we're talking about here

I used to work in hearing research (Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, USA), and research on speech recognition has been going on for decades, with a lot of funding from the government Given what I know of it as well as music, I would have to disagree as to a difference in complexity. Both are quite complex analyses - pretty much 4D. With both you have pitch (essential in some languages and definitely essential to music), duration, loudness, and timbre (formants in speech; timbre is essential to distinguishing between instruments and even different pitches from the same instrument).

Speech recognition is a much more universal application, and also more lucrative in terms of financial reward. Ergo a lot more time and effort have been spent there. Not so much (unfortunately) with musical analysis and transcription. You'll also notice that speech recognition technology typically requires some 'training' period for the software, as well as clearly spoken words by a single person. This is analogous to a single-note melody line for a clearly-played (eg. no vibrato, no reverb, etc.) instrument. Try singing to a speech recognition program some time and add vibrato and fermatas and other musical embellishments - the results will not be the same as with regular speech

As I mentioned previously, the Melodyne Editor actually does a phenomenal job of separating audio signals, but still does not put out a satisfactory (yet) MIDI for notation purposes unless it is a fairly uncomplicated piece (ie. a single-instrument with a "clean" recording.) It doesn't separate out the audio analysis on a per-instrument basis for multi-instrument pieces - that's a job that still requires a human to discern However, it is heartening that folks are still working on the problem.

I hope this helps explain part of the complexity and comparison of the technologies. Maybe it was more than you wanted to know (my kids tell me I do that often ).

ttfn,
Sherry
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Last edited by Sherry C; 04-26-2016 at 04:57 PM. Reason: spelling error
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Old 04-26-2016, 04:22 AM
brookbend brookbend is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

So if I buy a trans from a guy he can only sell one, and that's to me? Must be legal. Too bad cause it could sell well so the price would be lower.
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  #9  
Old 06-21-2018, 09:01 PM
vmuller vmuller is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

Did you hear about AnthemScore?
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  #10  
Old 06-25-2018, 03:40 PM
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Sherry C Sherry C is offline
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Default Re: Transcribing solo paino recordings

Hi,



Quote:
Originally Posted by vmuller View Post
Did you hear about AnthemScore?

Yes, but it seems (from posts to other forums that I've read) to have the same shortcomings as most "audio to sheet music" software - the task is just too complex for anything more than a fairly simple single-instrument recording.

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. He does a good job of explaining this on the "how it works" page of his site, but even getting a "clean" two-dimensional picture of the audio doesn't give you the dimension of "timbre to differentiate one instrument from another." Our brains are absolutely amazing when it comes to this task.

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.

That said, I have not directly tested AnthemScore myself as I have run into a problem that also seems to be fairly prevalent from comments I've read about it - the software won't install properly on my machine, and I've been unable to get any kind of support or find a solution. Any suggestions?


ttfn,
Sherry
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