Voice-to-Midi for ableton

January 31, 2008 11:03 AM

I record voice tracks with Ableton Live. No problem. But now, I want my singing to create MIDI tracks of the notes, on-the-fly (more of less). Is this currently being done? What must I do? RPM 2008 awaits.
posted by Moistener to media & arts (11 comments total)

Sorry if I can't directly address your question, but it reminded me of a piece of software (currently in development) that is specifically for this purpose. The app is called Whistler, for Mac OS X.
posted by ISeemToBeAVerb at 11:08 AM on January 31, 2008

Also, if this functionality is available, but not for Ableton, I'm interested in that too.
posted by Moistener at 11:09 AM on January 31, 2008

Is Whistler really being developed? I can't tell from the website. I remember it was part of the My Dream App contest thing, but I know it didn't win, and that really pissed me off because I'd absolutely kill for something like this.
posted by Plug Dub In at 11:12 AM on January 31, 2008

I looked a little harder, and I don't think it's being developed. here's still a "vote" link, and the contest ended last year.

But now I remember why I was so pissed. A recipe organizer won. A frickin' recipe organizer. The first chapter of every database design 101 book. Ugh.
posted by Plug Dub In at 11:16 AM on January 31, 2008

It's not Ableton, and it's not realtime, but Logic 8 has Audio to Score, although I'm not entirely sure how well it works (people use it sometimes for drum replacement, which is obviously not pitch-conscious). From the manual:

This function transforms a monophonic audio recording into musical notation, by creating a MIDI region that corresponds to the recorded melody. This allows you to play a MIDI sound module in unison with an audio recording or--transposed--as a second voice.

Note: This function is best-suited to producing melody notes from a clearly sung non-legato vocal line. It works best on unprocessed (no effects) audio.

posted by uncleozzy at 11:43 AM on January 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

The WIDI audio-to-midi plugin looks like a likely candidate, though I haven't tried it myself. It's a VST plugin so you can drop it into Live and record its output onto a MIDI track. "pitch to midi" or "audio to midi" are good search terms to find more stuff like this.
posted by moonmilk at 12:03 PM on January 31, 2008

Melodyne is both a standalone and a plug-in that abstracts pitch from timbre. The most common use is pitch correction and creating harmonies.

It also includes Audio-to-Midi. Although it isn't real-time, it is one of the best pitch analyzers on the market, and has many famous endorsers.
posted by ScarletPumpernickel at 12:09 PM on January 31, 2008

Scrambled Hackz is similar in concept but still awaiting public release.
posted by sixacross at 12:53 PM on January 31, 2008

melodyne also runs as a plugin within a host, so you can run it inside live and your problem is solved.
posted by Señor Pantalones at 2:10 PM on January 31, 2008

Max/MSP has had a pitch to midi object for like, forever -- if you can find a way to save to a VST (not sure if the trial version will let you do this -- many years ago you needed pluggo to do this), you should be able to use it with Ableton. Real-time, as far as I recall. Sorry for the sketchy details -- it's been 8 years.
posted by fishfucker at 10:25 PM on January 31, 2008

Uncle Ozzy just became my new hero.

Thank you, sir.
posted by phoebus at 3:23 PM on February 7, 2008