Ableton Live 9 has introduced a really handy feature where you now have the ability to convert audio to MIDI. In this video and article, I’ll show you how to easily convert the Harmony and Melody of an audio sample to MIDI format.
[Video Transcript]
Today I want to focus on converting harmony and converting melody. And I am going to be using these three tracks as an example. These are actually excerpts from a previous beat that I created and uploaded on my site a couple of months ago entitled “A New Day”. Keep in mind that the convert audio to MIDI function is not going to be perfect, even if it’s just for a simple isolated melody or instrument.
Converting the Rhodes Piano (to Harmony)
Before we get into the conversion, I first want to play this rhodes piano loop just to give you a sense on what we are working with, and we’ll do the conversion and compare the two. (Music playing)[1:23-49]
You can hear that there is a little bit of processing done – automated panning, etc. Now what we are going to do is, right click on the audio and convert the harmony to new MIDI track. We are going for harmony because these are actually chords that are being played. If it were a single melody being played, we may want to convert the melody.
That conversion may take some time depending on how long your loop is and how fast your processor is. You’ll see all of the extra MIDI information that was included. Ableton also loaded up a grand piano instrument for me automatically. I am going to play this MIDI track through, and you’ll notice it’s not perfect. There are some accidental notes that are thrown in, but I just want to play this so you can get a comparison of what you just heard versus what it converted that audio to. (Music playing) [2:42-3:08]
It is very close with a lot of the same harmonies and the same notes from the audio, however there are numerous accidental notes that appear. You may notice that it did not convert some of the connector notes either.
Why does this happen?
Well it basically comes down to the Ableton algorithm, how it’s programmed – what information it’s taking in to do this conversion and calculation. For whatever reason it is possibly detecting some harmonics or some extra notes that appear in the higher register. Another thing that this algorithm will take into account, as far as detecting a change in the audio are the transients.
You are probably already familiar with the white markers added to your audio called the transients, where Ableton detects a change or different inflection in the audio. It will most likely use this information to tell where new note is coming down or where something is changing.
Keep in mind, this is only a single Rhodes piano instrument being converted into MIDI.
Think about what could potentially happen when you start introducing more instrumentation for this conversion. If you were to introduce a sample, that has a string section, and horns, and a vocal, etc – you just have to be more careful about what to expect from this function.
Converting the Bass Line (to Melody)
Now with the bass line I’m actually do a conversion to melody. This is going to tell Ableton that I do not need multiple notes at a given time, rather it will find the best note to be played at that particular transient or that particular timing and will give me that note instead of a chord. First I just want to play this back in audio format and then we will do the MIDI conversion. (Music playing) [4:57-5:23]
To convert, we are just going to right click, then Convert melody to new MIDI track and see what we got. (Music playing) [6:15-40]
As you can tell, it did a pretty damn good job. There were a couple places where it did not register particular notes.
Converting Multiple Instruments (to Harmony)
Next I’ve got a single audio track with a lot of the main instrumentation from my beat- additional synths and may other layers were added. We’ll play back this last audio track and then convert that to harmony.(Music playing)[7:04-29]
After the conversion, Ableton went ahead and gave us a grand piano as a a default instrument like before. There is a lot of information in here that we do not want or need, but now I am going to play this back and you will hear what it sounds like in MIDI. (Music paying) [7:50-8:15]
You should be able to tell right away that there is a lot of extra, unwanted notes in here. The main thing I want to point out is that the convert audio to MIDI process in Ableton Live 9 is not perfect. You have to be more considerate and more careful, especially when you start introducing more instrumentation. Nonetheless, this tool definitely can be useful at times. It’s inherently going to be more effective if you can convert an isolated instrument or melody line.
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About the Author
Travis Cole has been operating TCustomz Productionz, LLC full-time since 2011 and hopes for it to serve as a source to help many music artists, producers and entrepreneurs worldwide achieve their dreams of success.
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