Converting audio to MIDI might be something you'll want to do if you play an instrument
and have a hard time translating what you play into notes that you can use in your DAW.
And let's face it, not everyone knows music theory and it can be hard to tell what notes are being played,
especially when it's based off of a recording made by you or even someone else.
Stick around, I'll be teaching you how to do this for free in the demo versions of Melodyne
and FL Studio.
The download links to both are in the description below.
[How to convert audio to MIDI and MIDI to audio]
Hey everyone, Jake from Transverse Audio here.
Before I get into it, I want to warn you that this may not be as accurate as you expected.
There is a lot that these can both get wrong and with my experience,
I haven't been able to get every single note dead-on.
For the most part, they do get the correct pitch of the notes that are detected
but they don't detect all of the notes being played if it's even slightly complex.
With that aside, you may find these useful in some cases and that's why I'm making the video
To save you a lot of time, I'm going to show you the results right now and you can decide
for yourself if you want to watch the rest.
[Example of Melodynes audio to MIDI conversion]
First, I'm going to start off with Melodyne since it's the best option for this
as it can handle chords or just multiple notes being played at the same time.
The only drawback is that it's a 30-day trial if you haven't already purchased it.
Since it might be a little bit confusing, I'll go over how to install it really quickly on Windows.
Once you followed the link in the description, download it for the operating system you use.
After that just run the installer, which is the file called "setup.exe".
After the installer, go to your C drive and to program files (x86).
Melodyne will be in the Celemony folder.
Run Melodyne and activate the program.
You'll just need to enter in your info and then you'll land on this page
letting you know the trial is activated.
Now, we just have to go back to Melodyne.
The first thing you'll need to do is import your audio by dragging it into the top
section of the software.
Once it's loaded you'll be able to see the note structure of the audio
(which you can edit by the way) by double-clicking on the waveform.
For it to detect multiple notes played at the same time, you'll need to go to "Algorithm"
and select one of the polyphonic options then redetect.
Now, with the tracks you want to convert in Melodyne, go to File, Export,
and select MIDI with Individual range for each track.
Press export and choose where it will be saved to.
That's it, you can import this MIDI into any DAW and add your own instruments,
which I'll be doing after the next method.
Now, let's let's go over this in FL Studio
and don't worry, this will work in the demo version as well.
The major drawback to this method is that it will only convert single notes.
By that I mean it doesn't work with chords or multiple notes being played at once
and it will only convert one of them at any given time.
With that aside, let's get into it.
First, open up the plugin called Edison in the effect rack of any mixer track.
Just like the previous option, you'll need to import your audio file.
To do this, all you need to do is drag and drop the file into the waveform view of the plugin.
Or, you can just click on the waveform section and navigate to the file that way.
Once your file is in the plugin, you can either go down to the bottom left corner and press the little arrow,
then to the tools menu
or you can access the tools by clicking the wrench icon on the menu up here
(which is probably easier).
Whatever way you choose, once in the tools menu go down to analysis and use the option
"convert to score and dump to piano roll".
And there you go, that's all there is to it.
Oh, and another quick tip on how to make it more accurate is to convert it twice.
Once with the regular sample and again with a dramatic EQ to isolate certain harmonics.
[Dramatic EQ example]
Send these to separate patterns by changing the pattern before you dump to piano roll.
Then you can compare the two and get a better idea of where things should go.
If you really want to convert to MIDI this way,
I would suggest recording it once at normal speed to know your timings
and then a second time much slower to let Edison pick up on the notes.
I think you might be able to use it this way to get an idea of where the notes are
and go through and salvage any notes that line up to what you recorded.
Like I said though, Melodyne is going to work a lot better but it is REALLY expensive
so you might be better off just learning how to do it on your own by familiarizing yourself
with the pitch of each note.
But, I'll show you another trick to use in FL Studio to convert MIDI to an audio file,
without rendering the entire project.
For this, you'll need to have an instrument assigned to the channel with MIDI.
You can add an instrument by right clicking on the channel, hover over "Replace"
and select the plugin you want to use.
[Example of using a plugin on the converted MIDI]
In the playlist, right click on the track that has the MIDI you want to render
(or bounce as audio) and go down to "Consolidate this track".
I recommend using "from track start"
because if you have your pattern over here and choose "from song start",
you'll have a bunch of silence before the audio
since it's starting from the very beginning.
As for the settings, I would just go with what I have on mine and make sure you have
"leave remainder" selected so it doesn't abruptly end.
Go ahead and start the rendering using one of the options on the bottom right.
Once it's done you can find it in the "Rendered" folder in the file browser in your DAW
which you can right click and open to access the folder outside of FL Studio.
And the name does depend on the track name so you could always rename it there
to make it easier to find and organize.
There you go,
now you can turn your recordings into MIDI and then apply your own synths or plugins onto it
and render it to an audio file again.
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and let me know in the comments what way you think is best.
As always, thanks for watching. [Share this with someone!]