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Music to Sheet Music Converter

I play the violin and some of the music that I want to play is not available in sheet music. Has anyone ever come across a computer program that converts regular music into readable sheet music?

10 comments
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May 21, 2008. 5:39 PMNachoMahma says:
. A violin tablature editor or guitar tablature editor may be helpful. I don't remember any that accept WAV input, but several will take MIDI.
May 20, 2008. 11:08 PMRishnai says:
I would say it would be a heck of a lot quicker to try and do it by ear. If you're like me and have a horrible ear, though, it would probably save a lot of time (since the track you want is just one note at a time on one instrument) to use a chromatic digital tuner--the kind that tells you what note it hears. These get really confused if you try and use them for the notes in, say, a guitar solo, because of all the other instruments, but do great for single-instrument recordings.
Jan 9, 2008. 4:14 PMPoisonedV says:
twelvekeyse music transcriber
Jan 6, 2008. 6:11 PMgmoon says:
How do you define "regular music?"

There are certainly programs that convert MIDI files to sheet music ( Lilypond. )

If you mean audio -> sheet music, that's much more complicated...There are some wav-to-MIDI converters. Most will do at best a fair job if it's a single-noted instrument, and a poor one if it's chorded or multiple instruments on the track...
Jan 7, 2008. 7:47 AMgmoon says:
There are some commercial products, for sure--I know Cakewalk's Sonar has a module for it.

From a freeware POV, on the 'MIDI sofware' page of the Linux Sound pages, there are a few: FANR, wave2mid and WAON (which looks like the only one currently in development.)

I believe I've tried them all at one time or another (although at least one wouldn't compile for me; I forget which one.) They work in an imperfect fashion at best... All output needed editing in a MIDI sequencer.

Here's one for Windows I've never tried: AmazingMidi. You'll find others if you search for 'wav to midi'.
Jan 6, 2008. 6:14 PMjtobako says:
I've seen some that converts midi files into sheet music, but nothing that converts sound.
Jan 7, 2008. 6:32 AMGoodhart says:
Well, that would make a few extra steps in the process but brings into reach, since there are ways to convert analog to digital and then to Midi or whatever.
Jan 6, 2008. 6:14 PMPoisonedV says:
Ear transcription. It's nearly impossible to convert real music to sheet music. The tones can vary widely, by being slightly out of tune, ambient scratching, etc.

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