Music Notation Parsing
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Adding harmonics isnt the same as decoding music and working out the key it is in.
The device needs to know the key you're playing in, in order to generate harmonies. /ravi
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The device needs to know the key you're playing in, in order to generate harmonies. /ravi
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No it doesnt. It takes the input sine wave and adds thirds and fifths commonly.
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No it doesnt. It takes the input sine wave and adds thirds and fifths commonly.
Munchies_Matt wrote:
It takes the input sine wave
The control input to these devices is a chord played on a guitar, which (as I'm sure you know) is not a pure sine wave. The hardware (actually the software running on the hardware) determines the root note from the complex input waveform, and uses that to generate the selected harmonics. /ravi
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Pulling instruments out is impossible IMO, but the issue of key is crucial. Regardless of the same notation being used for various keys, if you cant tell the key, you cant score it in a standard way.
Working out the key is a trivially simple task that the human can do, either as an input to the program or later when editing its output. In fact, since the computer already knows the *pitches* of every note, a good heuristic would be to go through all keys and see which produces the least amount of accidentals in the resulting score. The really hard bit, as you pointed out first, is isolating the sounds of different instruments.
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As hinted at above -- it's not even as simple as identifying the pitch (frequency) of the note of a particular instrument. For example, a particular pitch could be considered a D# or an Eb, depending on the context. As for the rhythm, one example is that swing 8ths are notated on the page exactly the same way as Bach or Mozart's straight 8ths (let's see... those are quavers on the other side of the pond, I think.... two quavers per crotchet, isn't it?). And is it in 3/4 time or 6/8? That depends on where you the emphasis on those crotchets and quavers.
kholsinger wrote:
As hinted at above -- it's not even as simple as identifying the pitch (frequency) of the note of a particular instrument. For example, a particular pitch could be considered a D# or an Eb, depending on the context.
If the machine could just identify the pitches of each note, that would be a massive leap forward and would simplify transcription greatly. Fixing up enharmonic equivalents later wouldn't present any kind of meaningful problem to the user and is a piece of cake compared to trying to transcribe a whole song by ear. That said, all automated transcription software I've tried to date has indeed done a really bad job at rhythmic dictation and tends to be produce a mess of rapid notes. This is more time-consuming to fix and badly obscures understanding of the music.
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I may be totally wrong, but it seems that there should be a fairly good piece of software that can "listen" to a WAV or MP3 of a song, and transcribe (polyphonically) the various parts into staves of notes for that instrument. Anyone know of such an application? Anyone aware of one being developed using machine learning? Thanks in advance.
There have been many attempts to create software that can accurately transcribe polyphonic music, going back at least to 1998 (WidiSoft). All of the ones I have tried have produced quite bad results, with a mess of very short notes and lots of "noise" notes that it's falsely detected from overtones or whatnot. There's a pretty comprehensive list of existing software here. As it's still a research problem without a general satisfactory solution, you can also find lots of papers on Google Scholar[^]. I tried a couple of programs released with research papers with mixed results (mostly on piano music, but some chip music too). Let me know if you find something that works well!
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
I thought they had a free version that would let you notate by singing?
My intended use is to transcribe (within a reasonable percentage) a polyphonic musical WAV or MP3 file. Monophonic would not let me know how well the software works for what I want. Thanks
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Working out the key is a trivially simple task that the human can do, either as an input to the program or later when editing its output. In fact, since the computer already knows the *pitches* of every note, a good heuristic would be to go through all keys and see which produces the least amount of accidentals in the resulting score. The really hard bit, as you pointed out first, is isolating the sounds of different instruments.
destynova wrote:
the least amount of accidentals
Or intentional notes outside the key. Dont forget, the OP asked for SW the could write the music onto staves, so the key is crucial. If it were to some kind of linear tabulature it would be easier. As you say humans can detect the key, if they are musicians, because of the mood, or feel of a song. How do you teach a computer to understand mood? :)
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destynova wrote:
the least amount of accidentals
Or intentional notes outside the key. Dont forget, the OP asked for SW the could write the music onto staves, so the key is crucial. If it were to some kind of linear tabulature it would be easier. As you say humans can detect the key, if they are musicians, because of the mood, or feel of a song. How do you teach a computer to understand mood? :)
Munchies_Matt wrote:
As you say humans can detect the key, if they are musicians, because of the mood, or feel of a song. How do you teach a computer to understand mood? :)
Indeed, this is difficult for computers, but it's easy for us and therefore not the problem we need them to solve -- accurate transcription (of heavily polyphonic music) is very hard for us and that's where we need help from the machine.
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As hinted at above -- it's not even as simple as identifying the pitch (frequency) of the note of a particular instrument. For example, a particular pitch could be considered a D# or an Eb, depending on the context. As for the rhythm, one example is that swing 8ths are notated on the page exactly the same way as Bach or Mozart's straight 8ths (let's see... those are quavers on the other side of the pond, I think.... two quavers per crotchet, isn't it?). And is it in 3/4 time or 6/8? That depends on where you the emphasis on those crotchets and quavers.
kholsinger wrote:
For example, a particular pitch could be considered a D# or an Eb, depending on the context.
True enough, most of my music friends are amateur musicians (but some of them at a quite high level). Very few of them distinguish beetween D# or Eb. Music editors are usually quite bad at it, too, even though they know the key of the piece. Expecting a program that only has the sound waves to do something similar is naively optimistic.