Software to convert audio to MIDI

Question

Does any one know if there is good software to perform conversion from (wave or mp3 or other known format) to MIDI? I understand that conversion from audio file to MIDI is a very complex process. I'm currently developing a course project for my bachelor degree that requires manipulating MIDI files.

If you know any good software, I'm opened to suggestions. I prefer software that can also be executed from a shell by passing a file to be converted.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Edit: With advances in software and hardware, this answer is now out-of-date (note the year it was posted).

This is going to be a terrible process at best and utterly impossible most of the time. The problem is that such software has to identify individual musical notes from the audio stream to convert them into MIDI information. This is complicated by the fact that it also has to identify the the different types of sounds to assign them to different tracks. It is even more complicated by the possibilities of sounds that are not "on-note", leaving it several ways of conveying that in the MIDI stream. And then you have the problem of non-musical audio, such as singing, which is conventionally not even put into MIDI.

You're best bet is to spend time either making your own MIDI tracks, or finding or buying some off the 'net. FWIW, before the popularity of MP3 ringtones, a lot of "polyphonic" ringtones for mobile phones were actually MIDI files.

Answer 2

WaoN does conversion of WAV to MIDI: http://waon.sourceforge.net/

At least it is quite fun :-)

Answer 3

You can convert WAV to MIDI using WaoN. You can download the WaoN Windows binaries here.

Answer 4

There's a new tool coming up (currently beta) that looks really promising. It is called Imitone: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evanbalster/imitone-mind-to-melody

Answer 5

I've heard about Waon. However, it gave me a bunch of compiling issues, so I was not able to install it.

I did find sonic annotator, developed by Queen Mary, it uses Vamp plugins to extract features (in this case transcribe) and write it to a midi file.

These plugins could work, however, they will work better if you add a config file (see individual plugin's doc):

./sonic-annotator file.wav -d vamp:qm-vamp-plugins:qm-transcription:transcription -w midi

./sonic-annotator file.wav -d vamp:silvet:silvet:notes -w midi

./sonic-annotator file.wav -d vamp:ua-vamp-plugins:mf0ua:mf0ua -w midi

Answer 6

Such conversion can be achieved with genetic algorithms. It is not going to be perfect, but it can be close as possible. In a similar manner Mona Lisa was reconstructed with triangles in Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa project.

Answer 7

A little research (half of that research was a comment on this page) led me to two superb solutions.

One is Sonic Visualiser (https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/download.html), which is a deep (complex) program that, when the Vamp plugin package is installed, includes a few "transformations" (analytical operations) which include export to midi. The two I found most effective were "pYin: Notes" and "Polyphonic Transcription [University of Alicante]". The method is this: You open a wav file, select the transformation (play it if you want) - this creates a new "layer" (each layer is shown as a tab). With this layer active, export using "Export Annotation Layer". Midi is one of the options.

The other, more simple option is called "Tony" (get it? tone-y?) available from https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/tony/

Method: open wav file, it auto-analyses by default or select "Analyse Now", then "Export Note Data" allows midi export.

There are probably other solutions. I'm looking for a command-line solution, too, but these work really well.

Answer 8

Most Midi files you may have heard were not converted, instead they were remade. By carefully studying the notes in the song the Artist/User converting the audio file, reproduces the song to as close as possible to a midi sequence.

FL Studio (formerly Fruity Loops) has the ability to create midi files etc from scratch, but this takes a lot of time, effort and basic skills of using such a program.

It is not possible to convert an Audio file to Midi though.

Answer 9

Use SoX - the Swiss Army knife of sound processing. Very easy to use.

SoX is a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, etc.) command line utility that can convert various formats of computer audio files in to other formats. It can also apply various effects to these sound files, and, as an added bonus, SoX can play and record audio files on most platforms.

Example:

sox /mypath/my_audio.mp3 /mypath/my_audio.MIDI

SoX is very mature project! Here is the link: http://sox.sourceforge.net/

Here are some examples I googled for you: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/05/sound-exchange-sox-15-examples-to-manipulate-audio-files/