Screen 1: If the imported audio has a constant tempo, try simply adjusting the tempo slider (with DP’s click enabled) to align the sequence tempo with the audio.
Need to turn your audio and MIDI recordings into usable sheet music? Digital Performer has you covered.
Transcribing is the process of creating readable music notation from a music recording or performance — or, in a DAW context, from MIDI data. Melody, harmony and rhythm are the basic musical elements that are transcribed into individual instrument parts. You can use the resulting transcription to create scores or lead sheets, but it can also be used to employ interesting production techniques, such as doubling parts. Digital Performer includes a powerful tool set for transcribing both MIDI and audio recordings.
Taking Notes
Internally, DP is always transcribing MIDI notes into notation, and has a powerful engine for doing so. The extensive QuickScribe notation editor displays the notes ‘on the page’ and provides many settings for customising staffs, ledger lines, measure spacing and much more. Tool palettes provide controls for text, chord symbols, articulations, and virtually all commonly used musical symbols. However, an essential requirement for a clean and accurate transcription is the relationship of the notes to the sequence timeline. If the audio or MIDI was recorded ‘freestyle’ and the notes don’t align with the measures and beats in the Conductor track, the transcription will look more like a train wreck than readable music notation. An accurate tempo map that aligns with the music is essential to achieve the best possible transcription results.
Transcribing Audio Recordings
Most of the time, though, when you are faced with the task of transcribing music, your source material is an existing audio recording. So, let’s examine a few techniques for creating a tempo map that aligns with previously recorded music that you import into DP.
First, try to obtain the highest quality audio available. Uncompressed formats like WAV and AIFF are preferred. After the tempo is adjusted, we’ll discuss slowing down the audio later in this article. The higher the audio resolution, the slower the audio can be made on playback (as discussed later).
Import the WAV or AIFF into DP using File / Import Audio, or by dragging the file from your file browser into the left side of the Tracks window. DP will automatically create a new track matching the channel format of the imported file. Files can also be dragged into an existing audio track or the Soundbites window (and then added to audio tracks manually).
Finding The Tempo
Once the audio is in a track, edge‑edit the left edge of the Soundbite to the initial downbeat of the music, eliminating any dead space at the beginning. If there are pick‑up notes before the first downbeat, edge‑edit to the start of the first pick‑up note. Place the soundbite at bar one of the timeline (the very beginning of the sequence). If there are pick‑up notes, place the soundbite in bar one such that the initial downbeat of the music lands on the downbeat of bar two.
Once placed, here are a few ways to align the sequence tempo with the audio tempo.
Tempo Slider: If the source music has a constant tempo, try simply adjusting the tempo slider while listening to the music with DP’s click enabled (see Screen 1). Double‑click on the metronome icon in the control panel to choose a click sound, level, accent, and output. Often it doesn’t take long to adjust DP’s tempo to be locked in with the music.
Screen 2: With these preferences enabled, DP will automatically find beats and tempo in audio files.Tap Tempo: You can also try to match the tempo of audio with a constant tempo using DP’s Tap Tempo feature. By default, this feature requires clicking on the on‑screen Tap Pad in rhythm to enter the tempo. If, instead, you wish to tap on a computer key, MIDI keyboard key or a MIDI controller pad, search for Tap to Enter Tempo in the Commands window to assign your desired key or pad to tap tempo. Tap along until DP’s click matches the audio.
Audio Beats: DP has a useful global setting for beat and tempo analysis. Under DP / Preferences / Background Processing, enable beat and tempo analysis for the current project (see Screen 2). When enabled, DP quickly calculates beats and tempo information for soundbites in the background. This is true for both imported audio files and newly recorded audio tracks.
DP bases audio file tempo on the analysed beats. In fact, the tempo can’t be calculated at all unless DP finds the beats in advance. The beats in soundbites are represented by blue lines that indicate attacks and transients in the audio (see Screen 3).
Screen 3: Detected beats are indicated by vertical blue lines.
Screen 4: You can manually edit beats in the Waveform editor to fine‑tune the beat map. Use the fader handle to indicate the strength of the beat.There are two ways to alter the detected beat sensitivity. Select the soundbite and choose Audio / Audio Beats / Find Beats. Drag the slider right or left to increase or decrease the sensitivity. DP will quickly re‑render and display the results, adding or removing blue lines according to the sensitivity setting. Hit Apply to keep the results. If Find Beats is still unable to catch all of the necessary beats, view the soundbite in the Waveform editor. One quick way to do this is to right‑click on the soundbite and choose Open in Waveform Editor. At the bottom of the window, choose Beats under the Edit Mode menu. This will display green lines indicating the found beats. Use the pencil tool to click and add additional beats as needed (see Screen 4). Selected beats can be deleted with the delete key or muted with the mute tool.
If the beats have been modified, re‑analyse the soundbite tempo: select the soundbite and choose Audio / Soundbite tempo / Analyze Soundbite Tempo. To map the soundbite’s new tempo map to DP’s Conductor track, make sure DP is set to Conductor track tempo mode, and then select the soundbite and choose Audio / Soundbite tempo / Adjust Sequence to Soundbite tempo. DP will create a new tempo map that matches the soundbite tempo. If the audio beats and tempo were accurately calculated, the music should now be locked to DP’s click (and timeline).
Record Beats: Record Beats is similar to Tap Tempo: you tap along with audio playback using a key on your MIDI controller to record your taps as tempo events in the Conductor track. The resulting tempo map should then align with the audio. Record Beats can also be used for a MIDI performance that was not recorded to a click. The DP User Guide PDF is a good resource for learning more about these features. MOTU’s YouTube channel, MOTU TV, has a specific how‑to video about Tap Tempo.
Screen 5: Use Adjust Beats to drag beats and bar lines in the time ruler to align them with beats and bar lines in the audio.Adjust Beats: DP’s Adjust Beats feature is another way to manually make local tempo adjustments around MIDI notes, markers and audio beats. Put tempo control into Conductor track mode and view the soundbite in the Sequence Editor. Open Adjust Beats from Project / Conductor Track / Adjust Beats (see Screen 5).
This feature facilitates anchoring notes, audio beats or markers to timeline measures, beats, or fixed durations. It can preserve the performance and simply change the tempo to align the timeline to the audio or MIDI material. It provides options for moving single beats, moving all following beats by the same amount, and applying the adjusted tempo until the end of the sequence. With the Adjust Beats window open, click on the audio waveform in line with the time grid for the chosen beat value. A shadow will appear and the pointer arrow will change to a different shape. Drag left or right until a red line appears (Screen 6).
Screen 6: In this example, the Adjust Beats cursor is being used to grab the downbeat of measure 4 (A), which is then dragged to the beat transient to the left (B). The result is that beat 4 now aligns with the beat (C). The audio didn’t change. Instead, the timeline did.
Based on the Snapping settings in the Adjust Beats window, drag and snap the red line to the note or audio beats desired. When you let go, DP updates the Conductor track to align the note or audio beat to the grid. It’s best to work left to right while realigning beats. Again, the DP manual and MOTU YouTube channel are good resources for more information on using Adjust Beats.
Ready For Transcription
Now that the audio is aligned with DP’s timeline, you are ready to use whichever of the transcription methods described below that best suits the material.
One of the easiest and most direct ways to transcribe audio is to slow down the track and play along with the audio material, recording your MIDI performance. Fortunately, MOTU’s implementation of time‑stretching doesn’t change the audio pitch when slowing down monophonic or even polyphonic soundbites. Depending on the complexity of the music, it can be incredibly helpful to slow down the tempo to listen more critically, pick out specific musical parts, and better discern notes and phrasing. Because the music has been aligned with DP’s timeline, your newly recorded MIDI material will transcribe properly, even at considerably slower tempos, to mirror melodies, harmonies and rhythms from the audio guide.
First, turn on the Stretch setting for the track from its Track Settings menu in the Sequence Editor. The audio track will now follow both tempo slider changes and Conductor track tempo changes immediately, on the fly, without any rendering.
Next, to ensure the best possible audio quality, go to DP Settings / Pitch and Stretch, and set ZTX quality in the current project to Standard Best from the Pitch and Stretch Playback menu.
You are now ready to slow down the tempo. If the conductor mode is set to Tempo Slider, simply type in a slower tempo for playback. If the mode is set to Conductor track, select the tempo data in the Conductor track and use Region / Scale Tempos to slow down the tempos by subtracting or scaling values. Feel free to experiment with fairly extreme values. Remember, the audio quality doesn’t need to be perfect, just good enough for you to be able to play along.
Once the MIDI has been recorded or pencilled in, the tempo can be brought back to the original speed.
Alternately, you can apply offline processing, which offers even greater resolution but requires the use of the Scale Time window from the Region menu. This reprocesses the audio and can take time to process based on the chosen quality settings and the duration of the soundbite.
DP v11.2 (and above) provides state‑of‑the‑art audio‑to‑MIDI conversion...
Audio To MIDI
Screen 7: Use Audio to MIDI to quickly convert audio tracks to MIDI data.Digital Performer v11.2 (and above) provides state‑of‑the‑art audio‑to‑MIDI conversion in three forms: single melodic lines, rhythms, and polyphonic note detection. These are not only extremely helpful when transcribing parts in QuickScribe, they are also useful for extracting parts for producing new tracks or parts inside DP. In the Sequence editor, it’s best to make a time‑range selection of the soundbite for the audio‑to‑MIDI conversion. Control‑drag to select, or use the I‑Beam tool to do so. After the soundbite is selected, go to the Edit menu and choose Copy Audio to MIDI. The Audio To MIDI window provides three conversions in the form of Melodyne, PureDSP, and beats (see Screen 7).
Melodyne uses the Melodyne engine from Celemony. PureDSP uses MOTU’s own pitch algorithm and is designed for monophonic, single‑note tracks only. Beats uses DP’s internal beat analysis and puts the transcribed MIDI notes on one pitch. When Melodyne is selected as the conversion algorithm, the Algorithm menu provides seven options:
- Automatic: Performs a pre‑pass to figure out the best algorithm to use based on the material.
- Universal: Best for time‑stretching and transposing where individual notes are not needed.
- Percussive: Best for conventional drum and percussion sounds or loops.
- Percussive Pitched: Best for 808 kicks and toms, tabla, and similar percussive sounds with a pitched component.
- Melodic: Best for single lines like solo voice, saxophone, flute, and monophonic bass.
- Polyphonic Sustain: Best for longer polyphonic sustain notes (such as legato strings).
- Polyphonic Decay: Best for shorter notes like pizzicato strings and plucked instruments.
When the conversion finishes, the Target window provides four options for how to use the results. The Clipboard option copies the data to the DP clipboard so it’s ready to paste into a MIDI or VI track. Alternatively, you can place the material into an existing Clipping window. Or, you can create either a new unassigned MIDI track or instrument track, populated with the converted MIDI data. The Package As Clips tick box provides the option to create the MIDI data in the form of a Clip.
Quantising The Results
Screen 8: For best results, quantise MIDI data that has been converted from audio.After converting audio to MIDI, it might be useful to quantise the notes to achieve the best transcription results (see Screen 8).
Depending on the accuracy of the conversion, try quantising the Note On and Note Off messages to fix the timing and eliminate errant note lengths. The Smart Quantize window (Region menu) is designed to simply tighten attacks and durations for a more accurate note display in DP’s QuickScribe window.
And don't forget — it’s always a good idea to do a Save As or duplicate track takes when performing destructive processes like Quantize and Transpose.