Hot answers tagged software
12
It depends on the source of the music, but I can think of two ways to do this. If I remember correctly, they can both be accomplished with Finale and Sibelius.
If the source is Sheet Music:
You are going to need to scan the music and use OCR software meant for music. Sibelius has a program called Photoscore that will do this.
If the music is available ...
12
I don't know about "best," but I have found Audacity a good, free, cross-platform audio editing solution. You can cut and paste, trimming your audio down to just the section you want. Then, you can export to audio output for use however you like. If you're still using CDs, you could just create a CD with rehearsal tracks this way; else load the audio on ...
11
Well, there are a few options, but there are considerable limitations.
First, copyright. The instrumental backing tracks for popular music are usually the property of the producer or record label, so finding these on the internet for free is of questionable legality.
Some labels do provide licensed CDs for exactly the purposes you require (or karaoke, ...
11
Simply put, no.
If you limit a song to single pure tones, it's pretty easy to write software to recgonize them and transcribe it. But once you get to a real instrument things get much harder. Even single notes can be difficult to recognize due to overtones -- the dominant frequency doesn't even need to be the fundamental frequency, which makes it very ...
11
I'm pretty sure LilyPond can do what you want. It's not the easiest thing to use but since you've already used a text-based system it might not be too bad. Here are some examples and this is also relevant in this case. MuseScore is another free option, which is easier to use and might also be able to do this.
EDIT: Here's a lilypond version:
And code:
...
10
I'll answer each of your questions in order:
The notes in parentheses are ghost notes. You should play them quietly - certainly don't emphasize them. They do have rhythmic value, however (i.e. they aren't grace notes).
The 7 to 9 slide is a legato slide. Pick the 7, then slide to 9, but don't pick again for the 9.
The 5-7-5, 7-5-0 are indeed hammer-ons ...
9
My current favourite is Ableton Live. Once you learn the ins and outs of Live, it's one of the best for live performances (looping included) as the name would suggest. If you're playing using any kind of MIDI instruments, Live supports all VSTis; if you're playing a real instrument that you can pickup, amplify, mic up or otherwise record, then Live 8, which ...
8
Logic Pro has built-in controls for using different temperaments. Check out the link below:
http://documentation.apple.com/en/logicpro/usermanual/index.html#chapter=43%26section=6%26tasks=true
It allows you to either select a pre-configured tuning system, or customize your own. MAX/MSP is another solution, but if you don't have programming experience, ...
8
It's actually pretty easy to remove just vocals from a track with something as simple as audacity. Most modern songs have just the vocals panned hard center (everything else is slightly to the left or the right.
import into audacity.
to the left of the window, there's the name of the track you just imported, just above where it tells you the info for it ...
8
Check out Lilypond: http://lilypond.org/ It's free and powerful, and although it won't do audio playback, I believe it can do the rest of what you ask. It's text-based, and if you are at all familiar with TeX or LaTeX, Lilypond will feel similar. It has a somewhat steep learning curve, but there are some GUIs in active development that make things easier, ...
7
As a friend of mine once explained, "It's like paint. If you mix together several colors of paint to make a custom color of paint, you can't un-mix it and get the original separate colors of paint back."
Vocal removal software, as mentioned in other answers here, is only of limited usefulness due to laws of physics that cannot be circumvented. All such ...
6
Microtonal is tricky on MIDI because it separates the space between half-tones into 128 equal notes. I'm surprised any normal MIDI player won't integrate pitch bend as a microtonal parameter - is that how you are doing it?
I've been trying to work on a continuous pitch controller in MIDI. the issue is that depending on the MIDI player, the 0-128 can send ...
5
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_%28program%29 :
"Scala ... allows users to create ... musical scales..., play them with an on-screen keyboard or from an external MIDI keyboard ... retune MIDI streams and files using pitch bend ... supports MIDI sysex and file-based tunings ... export them to hardware and software synthesizers ... as a midi ...
5
If you still don't know about it, there is a software for guitar tablatures called Guitar Pro, you can download the trial version from their official site. About open source, can't help you , sorry.
In Guitar Pro you will have seamlessly both the tablature (playing midi in real time) and the sheet music that goes with it; the only real problem is that ...
5
The Singstar series on the Playstation 2 and 3 monitors your pitch, gives you visual feedback of that, and a score. Similar titles exist for other platforms.
At the easiest difficulty level, you don't need to be all that accurate, but at the higher difficulty levels it does demand very accurate pitching and timing.
Whether this would help you depends on ...
5
I basically asked this question on the Audio site: How can I cut out a particular instrument in the same pitch range as other instruments I don't want to cut?
As you can see there, the answer is no. There's no good way for software to tell what is voice and what is not for any arbitrary voice and song combined into a single waveform. As you note it can be ...
5
This site doesn't do shopping recommendations, but naming three products will give you a start in finding the kind of software you want.
The SoundTrek "Jammer" range
PG Music's "Band In A Box"
Hard Note's "Jump"
I have tried demo versions of two of these, from way back in the days when people bought computer magazines with cover CDs. I can't make a ...
5
MuseScore 1.3 will not create the sub beam like in the first measure. The rest should be doable. If you are not afraid of using a development version, you can try a development version of MuseScore 2.0. I did the following with the current dev version.
5
Musescore is free as opposed to many other programs such as Sibelius or Finale. However, it is still very good and can do almost everything that paid programs can do.
One of the input files accepted in Musescore is MIDI and it can output PDF among other formats. However, as guidot said, it takes a human to do it right because a MIDI file does not contain ...
5
There's an iOS (iPhone/iPad) app, Music Spectrograph, designed for just this purpose (Disclaimer. It's my app in the iTunes App Store.) The Y axis is scaled to a midi keyboard. Works both with live audio and with sound files. "Assist" is the right word, as a spectrograph can display a lot and lots of overtones, leaving a human with musical training to ...
4
If you're on a Mac or Linux system, Sooperlooper is free (I believe the cellist Zoe Keating uses it). If you're on Windows, Mobius is another free option. I don't have experience with either of these programs however.
4
Is the drum machine better or worse then a metronome in terms or every day practice?
Definitely a drums are better to this; a metronome is just really a flat click there is no style to groove with; drums can provide this. Metronomes are really all about 'drilling' timing/speed into a musician. Using drums will let you develop timing in a more naturally ...
4
Personally I'm rather satisfied with Garageband's supplied piano sounds. However, it's entirely possible that I have cloth ears, and certain that I have very basic piano skills.
Have you explored the full range or GarageBand sounds? Note that if you go into the detailed instrument settings, there are more sounds than are apparent in the first menu of ...
4
Your EDIT is the right track. What you described all falls under the category of Ear Training. Or better you would say: Brain Training. Because the whole purpose is to write down what you already have heard (or imagined) and maybe even can sing or play.
As always: You have to train and you have to practice. And start simple. Better too simple than too hard. ...
4
One thing you could do is install MuseScore. It's free. You can input a score, and change the size of the page by going to Layout > Page Settings and changing the width and height of the page to about the size of a bar. Then you can re-size your window so only one page is displayed at a time. When you push the playback button it will scroll to each next bar ...
4
If you are just need the "comping" (chords and rhythm) check out iReal b for iOS and Android devises. When I purchased it, it came with a huge library of all the standard Jazz tunes, but since then they have faced some legal challenges. Now the app does not come with any tunes, but you can download a pack of 1200 Jazz standards from their user form (the app ...
4
You need look no further than Sibelius and Finale.
They are the most expensive programs on the market, and for good reason. They can handle professional, advanced music notation and they can emulate the way it was done in classical music engraving in previous centuries. They also do it in a nice GUI that, while it certainly has a steep learning curve, ...
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