däng sähn
What is the best audio to midi file converter?
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- KVRist
- 438 posts since 8 Mar, 2008 from Berlin
Cubase pro has audio to midi too: variaudio.
my music:
soundcloud.com/septimon-band
blend.io/septimon
soundcloud.com/septimon-band
blend.io/septimon
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- KVRist
- 202 posts since 10 Nov, 2012
Individual track audio to midi in Melodyne works well. I think the OP is better served, as they also ask about, by an archive of midi files. There are loads of these. Googling will find them.
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- KVRist
- 126 posts since 27 Nov, 2018
I have had experimented with using a tool like RX7 rebalance to try and separate the parts (somewhat) and then using melodyne. Results are mixed at best. Seems much more reliable approach is to do the transcription by hand. If you can find a score / sheet music or a midi file of the song (where someone has already performed the transcription) you will be much further along.
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- KVRer
- 1 posts since 3 May, 2013
Some success with the following workflow...
Ableton audio-to-midi conversion is pretty horrible, but just good enough that it's easier than transcribing from scratch.
1. import audio track into Ableton live. I have some reason to think that FLAC files produce considerably better results than MP3 files. My impression is that MP3 compression artifacts may obscure inner voices.
2. Line up all the bars and beats first. Enable warping. Set the audio track to warp MASTER mode (tempo for all other tracks comes from the original audio track). And then line up bars and beats using manually added warp markers. Warp the entire track manually so that tempo is correct (a very painful process -- Ableton's tempo detection isn't good unless the track was recorded with a click track. The better your manual warp marks are, the easier it is to lay additional tracks (like a drum track) over the automatically converted tracks. If you zoom into the audio track sufficiently, you can see markers for transients that Ableton has added. For some tracks (e.g. with a very clicky ride cymbal) the transient markers can make it very easy to line up warp markers. You may find it easier to put warp markers on 2 and/or 4 instead of on the downbeat, since drummers sometimes float the 1 and 3 beats a bit to give time feel.
3. Drag the audio track onto an (existing) midi track. Ableton will then prompt to convert audio to midi.
3. Edit the results into individual tracks. The conversion results are pretty horrible; but the mostly-garbage conversion does provide important clues about tempo, voicings, and preserves some usable velocity info. This is a process that takes days, not hours. Ableton makes no attempt to separate instruments. You will have to do that yourself.
There are usually about two octaves of almost random notes picked up from overtones. So delete all of those. If you're lucky, the bass notes will not overlap notes from other instruments; the bass track is usually pretty easy to split out. Piano tracks are considerably more challenging. And the presence of other instruments can utterly obscure bass or piano parts, in which case you'll have to fall back on transcription.
Other things to watch out for: compressors may screw up note velocities of instruments that are pumping underneath vocals. Watch for that.
4. Instrumentation: My piano plugin supports velocity curves; so I match the velocity of notes transcribed by using velocity curve maps. I can get fairly good tone matches by tweaking reverb to match the original, and mapping velocity curves. Good enough that I can sometimes splice in bits of original audio in patches where I can't get the midi transcription to work well. Bass: almost always have to take down the velocity of bass parts. Horns: I haven't found plugins good enough to do either solo or section horns. I have a workable B3 plugin. Sometimes I can replace horn sections with organ.
5. Drum tracks: Ableton does no usable extraction of drum tracks. You'll have to sequence drum tracks by hand. This process can be made considerably easier if your warping was accurate in step 2. If you know anything about drum ride patterns, it's fairly easy to lay down a drum track that 80% matches the original. Or write the drum track from scratch. A few days of studying drum lessons gave me enough clues to sequence drum parts quite well. Some drummers are very tight, and easy to sequence from the original; other drummers are loose as heck, and they (sometimes) get completely retracked with manual rewrites.
6. Using Spleeter. Spleeter (search for Spleeter by Deezer on Github) is an open-source AI program for separating audio tracks into separate instruments. The results are, frankly, not actually quite good enough for karaoke. There are quite dramatic audio artifacts in the results. However, it is a useful tool for stripping vocals from a track before you feed it to Ableton's audio-to-midi converter. It may also be useful to isolate piano tracks when there are horns in the original (audio results in this case are horrible; but it does significantly improve the isolation of piano in an audio file.
If using Spleeter tracks, import the original track in step 2, and add warp markers to get tempo, beats and bars correct, and the mute the master track. Spleeter tracks get added as non-warped audio tracks (since you want only one source of tempo information).
There are also various for-pay websites that offer to split audio tracks using AI, all of which seem to be just recycling and charging for access to the otherwise-free Spleeter, and adding a web interface. I've tried half a dozen of these. And all of them seem to produce the same unmistakable artifacts that Spleeter generates. Spleeter isn't exactly easy to use. But this still strikes me as a blatant rip-off! Avoid.
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Results vary. Most of my work is on original jazz recordings. So time feel really matters. Sometimes the results are really excellent; sometimes, no matter how much time I spend, I can't get good results. About half my attempts produce good results; half don't. Strangely, straight-eights tracks seem to be particularly challenging. Over-quantizing of straight-eights tracks seems to be very unforgiving. To be clear, my standards are pretty high. Most of my failures are probably perfectly mediocre midi files. But I don't count a track as a success if it doesn't accurately preserve the groove and feel of the original, or if the resulting rhythm section doesn't lock.
It's still an awful lot of very difficult manual work with a lot of time spent with small loops transcribing the bits that Ableton totally messed up. But better than starting from scratch. It's still a process that takes days per track, not hours. But it does work. Sometimes.
Ableton audio-to-midi conversion is pretty horrible, but just good enough that it's easier than transcribing from scratch.
1. import audio track into Ableton live. I have some reason to think that FLAC files produce considerably better results than MP3 files. My impression is that MP3 compression artifacts may obscure inner voices.
2. Line up all the bars and beats first. Enable warping. Set the audio track to warp MASTER mode (tempo for all other tracks comes from the original audio track). And then line up bars and beats using manually added warp markers. Warp the entire track manually so that tempo is correct (a very painful process -- Ableton's tempo detection isn't good unless the track was recorded with a click track. The better your manual warp marks are, the easier it is to lay additional tracks (like a drum track) over the automatically converted tracks. If you zoom into the audio track sufficiently, you can see markers for transients that Ableton has added. For some tracks (e.g. with a very clicky ride cymbal) the transient markers can make it very easy to line up warp markers. You may find it easier to put warp markers on 2 and/or 4 instead of on the downbeat, since drummers sometimes float the 1 and 3 beats a bit to give time feel.
3. Drag the audio track onto an (existing) midi track. Ableton will then prompt to convert audio to midi.
3. Edit the results into individual tracks. The conversion results are pretty horrible; but the mostly-garbage conversion does provide important clues about tempo, voicings, and preserves some usable velocity info. This is a process that takes days, not hours. Ableton makes no attempt to separate instruments. You will have to do that yourself.
There are usually about two octaves of almost random notes picked up from overtones. So delete all of those. If you're lucky, the bass notes will not overlap notes from other instruments; the bass track is usually pretty easy to split out. Piano tracks are considerably more challenging. And the presence of other instruments can utterly obscure bass or piano parts, in which case you'll have to fall back on transcription.
Other things to watch out for: compressors may screw up note velocities of instruments that are pumping underneath vocals. Watch for that.
4. Instrumentation: My piano plugin supports velocity curves; so I match the velocity of notes transcribed by using velocity curve maps. I can get fairly good tone matches by tweaking reverb to match the original, and mapping velocity curves. Good enough that I can sometimes splice in bits of original audio in patches where I can't get the midi transcription to work well. Bass: almost always have to take down the velocity of bass parts. Horns: I haven't found plugins good enough to do either solo or section horns. I have a workable B3 plugin. Sometimes I can replace horn sections with organ.
5. Drum tracks: Ableton does no usable extraction of drum tracks. You'll have to sequence drum tracks by hand. This process can be made considerably easier if your warping was accurate in step 2. If you know anything about drum ride patterns, it's fairly easy to lay down a drum track that 80% matches the original. Or write the drum track from scratch. A few days of studying drum lessons gave me enough clues to sequence drum parts quite well. Some drummers are very tight, and easy to sequence from the original; other drummers are loose as heck, and they (sometimes) get completely retracked with manual rewrites.
6. Using Spleeter. Spleeter (search for Spleeter by Deezer on Github) is an open-source AI program for separating audio tracks into separate instruments. The results are, frankly, not actually quite good enough for karaoke. There are quite dramatic audio artifacts in the results. However, it is a useful tool for stripping vocals from a track before you feed it to Ableton's audio-to-midi converter. It may also be useful to isolate piano tracks when there are horns in the original (audio results in this case are horrible; but it does significantly improve the isolation of piano in an audio file.
If using Spleeter tracks, import the original track in step 2, and add warp markers to get tempo, beats and bars correct, and the mute the master track. Spleeter tracks get added as non-warped audio tracks (since you want only one source of tempo information).
There are also various for-pay websites that offer to split audio tracks using AI, all of which seem to be just recycling and charging for access to the otherwise-free Spleeter, and adding a web interface. I've tried half a dozen of these. And all of them seem to produce the same unmistakable artifacts that Spleeter generates. Spleeter isn't exactly easy to use. But this still strikes me as a blatant rip-off! Avoid.
----------
Results vary. Most of my work is on original jazz recordings. So time feel really matters. Sometimes the results are really excellent; sometimes, no matter how much time I spend, I can't get good results. About half my attempts produce good results; half don't. Strangely, straight-eights tracks seem to be particularly challenging. Over-quantizing of straight-eights tracks seems to be very unforgiving. To be clear, my standards are pretty high. Most of my failures are probably perfectly mediocre midi files. But I don't count a track as a success if it doesn't accurately preserve the groove and feel of the original, or if the resulting rhythm section doesn't lock.
It's still an awful lot of very difficult manual work with a lot of time spent with small loops transcribing the bits that Ableton totally messed up. But better than starting from scratch. It's still a process that takes days per track, not hours. But it does work. Sometimes.
Last edited by rerdavies on Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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- KVRAF
- 5391 posts since 25 Jan, 2014 from The End of The World as We Knowit
There are a few recent apps for helping with transcription:
Sonic Visualizer (free), deCoda (by zplane), and Capo
https://sonicvisualiser.org/
https://decoda.app/
http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/capo/
Sonic Visualizer (free), deCoda (by zplane), and Capo
https://sonicvisualiser.org/
https://decoda.app/
http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/capo/
F E E D
Y O U R
F L O W
Y O U R
F L O W
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- KVRAF
- 8042 posts since 28 Dec, 2015 from Atlantis Island
Have you tried Melodyne?
https://sonograyn.bandcamp.com/music Experimental Ambient
https://martinjuenke.bandcamp.com/music Alternative Instrumental
https://martinjuenke.bandcamp.com/music Alternative Instrumental
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- KVRian
- 874 posts since 28 Nov, 2016
the best audio-to-midi converter is the one which was used to make this
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- KVRian
- 727 posts since 29 Jun, 2020
Good post, man! I always wondered what others thought of Ableton's audio to midi conversion. I find it really useful but as you said, only really good for simpler phrases. It's doing a very complex conversion, I guess
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- KVRist
- 43 posts since 2 Aug, 2012
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- KVRer
- 6 posts since 30 Dec, 2021 from United Kingdom
Not get such type of any tool, i searched many day ago I'm not able to find it.
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- KVRAF
- 2752 posts since 15 Apr, 2004 from Capital City, UK
Niiiiiice! If you blur your ears you can almost hear the wordssleepcircle wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:53 pm the best audio-to-midi converter is the one which was used to make this
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- KVRAF
- 8042 posts since 28 Dec, 2015 from Atlantis Island
Have you tried Melodyne?
https://sonograyn.bandcamp.com/music Experimental Ambient
https://martinjuenke.bandcamp.com/music Alternative Instrumental
https://martinjuenke.bandcamp.com/music Alternative Instrumental