New Software Processor Can Transcribe Music From Any Performance

As a violinist, I understand that this must have been extremely difficult to achieve. Nice job!

I don't think being a musician gives one an accurate idea of this audio engineering solution. Also, I thought I've seen software in Guitar Center that does a very similar task called Celemony Melodyne, I don't think it works with just any recording, but it's able to recognize things like chords, and discern individual notes, and breaks down full recordings into separate tracks.

This could be very useful to do true transcriptions of great performances. You can buy a book of classical piano, but what if I want to learn to play a classical song exactly the way a certain performer played it? Many similar such applications could change the way we view musical compositions.

Could anyone explain why non-musicians have much more 'accurate' ideas about music than musicians do? Must be that we go about doing things the wrong way. We study and practice instead of passively absorbing all of that knowledge via popular media.

Well, there have been midi implementations of this for decades. Extracting note data from a wav file is different, though not impossible. In fact, I'm surprised that this is "news."

The problem with this sort of computer transcription is that the computer has trouble quantizing the rhythms and beat durations, so what you end up with is pretty much unreadable, unless you adjust quantization settings. But even then, something like a triplet can screw up the transcription. And also, the computer would most likely transcribe everything enharmonically, unless the user specified what key signature the song (or portion of the song was in).

Conductors make the best S/W Engineering Leaders! Unlike sports where the goal is competitive, music creates and focuses on the synergies and qualities of the end product, not the glory of individuals or even the group. A conductor deals with people, their differences, their strengths, their needs, their different sensitivities and communication styles, (their parents, too!). The conductor must get to the essence with few words and gestures, always keeping everyone on the same beat (not just the same page).

A few weeks ago I critically examined the work cited in this popular science piece on my research blog at Aalborg University Copenhagen, Medialogy. (I cannot cite my discussion here because it is flogged as spam.)

There is not much novel in their work, and they even show that their approach is not as accurate as others. So does that mean the others can transcribe any performance never recorded?

That's crazy that it can transcribe free music from performances. Technology is getting so good these days.

http://www.ez-tracks.com

ya it's an important milestone in music field's devolopment......