Question:
Program to transpose music notation?
UltraStoat
2011-08-14 16:50:27 UTC
I am a musician in the sense that I play guitar, sing, and can sort of sample my way around making electronic stuff if I want to.
I'm experimenting with Garritan's Orchestra, and wondering if there's a program out there that can "listen" to music and approximate it's notation?
I don't know the complete ins and outs of music notation. I only know how to identify sharps, minors, and notes on each line. I can sight read for piano and read tab for guitar, but I'm absolutely terrible at writing it.
So, I find myself in the situation where I'm trying to create an orchestral rendition of a song from a TV show, and I do NOT know how to write music. I could basically sing each part into my microphone with AudioScore in Sibelius, but I'd rather not.
Any advice / programs?
Four answers:
Robert
2011-08-14 22:44:40 UTC
Since you dabble in sampling/electronic and do some recording perhaps (well you mentioned playing guitar) AND you don't read/write music proficiently, you probably would want to go the route of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) instead of a notation editor. Which means you probably will be working with piano roll/midi format which many find less tedious (and it also depends on how user-friendly your sequencer is) and more customizable (notation can leave too much room for interpretation, which is great if you're having the piece performed, but not so great if you just want to create the piece alone and render the final .mp3 or whatever as is). FL Studio is a DAW that has a very efficient and simple sequencer. And you can use Garritan with it too.



You mention your desire to have a program record and transcribe the data. And I don't know what you were expecting when you say you would rather not have to sing and transcribe every part via AudioScore; because you're going to have manually write them or record them either way. Another option is recording midi data through a keyboard (or even guitar, although pickups with MIDI capability are harder and somewhat expensive to obtain).



EDIT: Also I strongly recommend you learn to read music either way. And to the person above, you don't need to be able to write music to make a musical rendition of something. Aural and notation skills are two entirely different fields. It's like saying you need to know Japanese to do algebraic equations.
Mamianka
2011-08-14 19:34:49 UTC
Agreeing with I. Jones - again. There are NO reliable programs that will listen to recorded or live music, and notate it, except in the most rudimentary way - you play one lonely, unaccompanied note at a time,with discrete space between each one, and it is saved as MIDI -which then can be opened in a program like Sibelius or Finale. This is crude, and pathetically slow. There are no programs that will listen to a CD, for example, and break out all the part for each voice and instrument; if there were, I would be professionally prepared to pay a huge whopping pile for this, since it would save me hours in my work. M son has a Mm in Digital Music, and HE would also give a body part for this - bit it does not exist. There are charlatans who SAY they save reliable - if not FLAWLESS - polyphonic pitch to MIDI or WAV to MIDI conversion - but the outcome is a hot mess. These same folks tell you that they can remove certain tracks form already-mixed, for-sale-to-the-public CDs - they lie about that, too - the outcome is terrible, and unusable. And AudioScore to Sibelius will take you until your grave to get an entire CD done . . . .such overdubbing and track-combining got old in the Fifties.



Learn to read music. I taught mentally challenged people for years - THEY learned. The loner you whine about not reading music, the more time you waste. Put on the Big Kid pants, and do this, already.



Added - You are writing an arrangement from a TV show? Got permission? You CAN'T be doing this for money, since you have almost no skills to pull it off - must be for your own didactic use? Why are you starting THERE - when you cannot read music????? Its like trying out for the Olympics, when you never played Tetherball.



Added - @ Robert - of course, *historically* there have been many pieces composed by musicians who were not able to read music. These works were all rather simple - rock, folk, etc. - even though by the standards of *those* genres, they were considered more complex. There has been NO extended, serious art music written by anyone who cannot read music. None. There have been composers who have re-devised their own notation, but their point of departure was conventional notation. Somewhere, there might be an illiterate playwright, who has dictated everything into a recording device. Possible - but not likely. This is the 21st century. Successful contemporary musicians often have degrees from good music schools. To tell someone in essence - "That's Ok - you are so creative, that you can afford to stay functionally illiterate, too." is just plain patronizing. NOBODY can afford to show up to the part without all the skills that their competition has. Nobody. We're not talking about brain surgery here - we're talking about music reading - a simple and fundamental skill that can be learned in a few hours, tops. I taught this to thousands over a long full-time music education career - and that was BEFORE there was access to the Net - just plain old paper and pencil. Time for this guy to suck it up and learn.
?
2011-08-14 18:09:37 UTC
Transcription is not the same as transposition. From your question, it seems that you want to find a software solution to render sheet music from an audio source. As you may know, AudioScore isn't the greatest even when working with a single line of music. Finding something that can take apart full orchestral audio files and rendering that as an audio score is not a viable option yet.



... As for transposition, yeah, any reasonable music engraving program can do that.
anonymous
2016-02-27 04:20:22 UTC
C on the Alto Sax = Eb on the Piano. So your music (Alto Sax)would need to be in the key of Eb or 3 flats (Bb,Eb,Ab) So, if you want to play in the key of C (with your accompaniment on the piano) you'll need to play in Eb... (3 flats) and your start note will be G. --------------------------------------... Disregard the above! The NEXT answerer is absolutely correct..... I had added a minor third instead of stepping down one! Sorry about that... Must have been thinking about my Tenor which you do have to ADD a whole tone to play along with the piano..... Sorry about that!


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