a stupid question perhaps

[jayjay]

is there any software that can convert a wav file into a midi file by determining what tracks r being played???

if there isnt... there should b.

[polarbear]

right.

studio vision and logic both do solo instrument style audio to midi - a pitch detection process. as does celemony melodyne.

but what you want to do is 'rip' the rhythm and melody from a piece of mixed audio.

FFT theory suggest that if you have samples of the solo instruments that make up the mixed file, you could reduce the file to a group of basis waveforms that are these files.

reality check: it's not going to be for a around for a while, though.

purely rhythmically, using filters gates and triggers you can rip rhythms apart. most people settle for being able to break it up into timed segments using Recycle though.

otherwise, learn to play and transcribe! it's more fun and you learn more in the process.

[jayjay]

thanks polarbear. so basically there isnt anything around at the moment but u can isolate the rythm etc by using filters??? that sounds fairly involved... is there like a tutorial that u know of that gives a pretty good run down on how to do all of this tech stuff???

btw... polarbears actually live in the north pole ;)

[driload]

haha jayjay got you there ben


hey ive used a bunch of programs mainly from hitmachine that claimed to be accurate audio to midi algorithms but they were useless... nothing that even a basic knowledge of melody and harmony fundamentals couldnt have laid out anyway

thats rich coming from a melodic lamer like me

they WERE a neat little experiment and got some unexpected side effects (amongst the wierd and useless artifacts)


whats FFT ben?

jayjay instead of boring tutorials why not cut an 8 bar loop out of some song you know well, load it into some program with filters and parametric eq

its a good exercise to load something up like this, set up a full cut of eq and sweep around the bands, with a fairly wide bandwidth/Q

narrow the Q when you get a feel for the music and what frequencies tend to be where, until you can notice more and more seperation between elements of the music when you cut certain frequencies

i remember a guy called Sunshine from dubtribe sound system was nice enough to give me the 101 on eq and stuff. thats basically a short version of what he showed me.

if you want i can scan or type out a frequency chart of common instruments and their 'position' in relation to frequency

for example, vocal presence is greatest at 2 - 6k region which is why mics like the sm58 have a boost there


pointless info like this will become your best friend.

[polarbear]

> whats FFT ben?

FFT = FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM, which is a type of discrete fourier transform

the act of decomposing a complex waveform into basis waveforms - you might break any sound into sin waves of various frequencies and phases.

you can decompose anything into anything really, but if you do it with sin waves, you're effectively breaking something down from the time domain to the frequency domain.


> narrow the Q when you get a feel for the music and what frequencies tend > to be where, until you can notice more and more seperation between
> elements of the music when you cut certain frequencies

then chuck it into a sidechain of a gate so that the eq triggers the gate.