midi to chords notation?

• Nov 4, 2017 - 21:52

I converted a complex midi clip to music notation.
Great!
But is there a plug-in or feature that allows you to extract chords from the music notation? or just directly convert midi clips to chord notation?

Thanks,
Craig

Comments

• Nov 4, 2017 - 22:07

You mean you want some sort of "artificial intelligence" that can look over the music and try to guess what chord symbols make the most sense? I have seen some research projects to attempt this sort of thing, but if you're expecting something that just kind of runs automatically and produces usable results, I'm afraid that technology is still a ways off. Meanwhile you can try https://musescore.org/en/project/chord-identifier-musescore-20 which I guess makes some attempt at this within MuseScore.

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• Nov 4, 2017 - 22:52

Thanks for the response Marc!
Yes it is a very hard problem and may not even have a feasible solution, especially if the input is messy/complex.
BUt after seeing what MuseScore could do with a REALLY complex midi clip of mine - converting to notes, I wondered if someone had tried to extract subsets of notes from timed vertical sections, and match them with a predefined dictionary of chords. Even if this is possible, it wouldn't produce a unique or complete solution, but maybe it could extract something useful as a start point. But YES you're right,

Thanks for the ref. I'll definitely check it out!

What motivated me, is that I used Ableton Live to translate audio of a Weather Report song "Herandu". And it produced huge vertical note patterns (stacked ~20 notes high). I don't read music very well, but chord charts (even with Jazz chords) are easier for me.
I can't find the actual sheet music to Herandu anywhere.
Thanks again.

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• Nov 5, 2017 - 16:22

Realistically, the automatic schemes I have seen only handle triads and very simple use of non-harmonic tones. Anything else generates complete gibberish. I don't know Herandu in particular, but I've pretty much never heard anything by Shorter, Zawinul or anyone else associated with Weather Report that would give me any hope that you'd get anything even close to usable from any sort of automatic analysis.

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• Nov 5, 2017 - 17:24

Yes I'm pretty sure you're right. I used to write algorithms ( for non music applications) and when I think of potential strategies for doing complex chord extraction - given all of the potential voicing's etc. - it's hard not to imagine gibberish as output. It probably can't be done. But it would be amazing if someone could prove me wrong.

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