[Harp-L] Transposing music - or TransLATING music

["Tom Halchak" <thalchak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Crazy Bob wrote, in response to my question about "Transposing Music".

 

Perhaps I have misunderstood Tom's request, but...It appears he is asking
for music software to TRANSLATE from a recording(perhaps MP3?) directly to
harmonica tabs or sheet music. He is NOT asking for software (like Finale or
Sibelius) which TRANSPOSE sheet music from one key to another. As useful as
that is (if you already have the sheet music in a format that can be loaded
into one of those products), that is not the same thing. Having said that, I
don't know of any software product that can faithfully analyze a recording
and accurately produce sheet music directly from it. If there is such a
beast, I would also like to know more about it. It is not a simple process
under the best of circumstances, which would be a simple recording of a
single monophonic instrument. A polyphonic instrument becomes much harder,
and an entire band (never mind something like an orchestra

) becomes (almost?) impossible. The designer of Harping MIDI is to be
congratulated for his skill with Java.  My Christmas wish list has had a
software package on it that will play the sheet music AND concurrently in
REAL TIME analyze the input from an instrument (harp),displaying the "wrong"
notes. I'm still waiting... If I had the time, I might waste it trying to
build such a thing. I lost my enthusiasm for building impossible dreams when
I retired as a software engineer - and find myself still working for health
insurance. Regards, Crazy Bob

 

Bob, you are quite correct.  I was not asking about software that would
transpose sheet music from one key to another, which apparently, is what
Finale or Sibelius are designed for.  Perhaps my question was misleading
because of my use of the word TRANSPOSE.  Perhaps TRANSLATE might have been
a better choice of words, but even that might not be the best word for it.  

 

Here is my logic.  We all know that there is some pretty amazing software
out there.  I have the Windows Vista Ultimate operating system and it
includes a voice recognition program built right into it.  You can buy
add-on voice recognition software from a number of vendors for less than
$100.  We all have seen programs that serve as frequency analyzers and show
the little bars that go up and down as the volume of the music changes.
There is a separate bar for each range of frequencies so what you see is a
bunch of bars that go up and down as the music plays.  We also know that
there are keyboards that are purely electronic synthesizers.  

 

So, if software can recognize speech and translate it into text, which would
seem to be more difficult that recognizing a musical note, AND if it can
recognize a range of sound frequencies, AND if a synthesizer can
artificially create music, why can't there be a software program that would
recognize music that is played (sound) and translate that into sheet music.
It would seem, at the very least, that you could use a synthesizer keyboard
to play a song, and have that translated into sheet music.  That wouldn't
even have to be sound recognition, because you could just program each key
on the keyboard to correspond to a note just the same as the keys on the
computer I am using to write this message are programmed to translate a
keystroke into a symbol.  As Bob puts it, a monophonic instrument, such as a
harmonica solo would seem doable.  On a larger scale, if each instrument
being played in a band (jam session perhaps) could be individually miked to
its own track, then it should be possible to translate multiple instruments
simultaneously.

 

Am I whacked?  Is this not making sense to anyone but me?  Wouldn't it be
nice to be able to run a harp solo through a software program and have it
spit out tabs for you?   Think about it.

 

 

Tom Halchak

Clearwater, FL 

 





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