I tried it with Cubase, but am not happy with
the result: only found about 80% of the chords.

Can someone do it for me:
in FL-Studio, Logic Pro, or other ?


Thanks in advance.

Theo...

Btw. Please no AI Stuff

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 28, 2025 at 10:00 PM

unfortunately, the way i do audio to midi is with Ai

 

Melodyne if you want all of the individual notes, deCoda if you want the song structure and chords.

deCoda does show individual notes, but it doesn't create them for you, as it's a tool for transcribing/learning tunes instead of wholesale MIDI conversion.

I attached the basic chords that deCoda spat out, but again, it's more concerned with the structure of the tune, so it's probably not something you want.

 

And why no AI? Because of ideology? Either you want a result or you want ideology supported. Latter is stupidity in my book.

BTW: Melodyne. But you have to have some knowledge in music theory to cope with the results, because of the passing tones and passing chords and slash chords and reversal of chords and such. And the interpretation of this, because this all is by far not unambigously. No halfway intelligent and/or decent piece of music is made of one measure = one chord. So: complex music equals complex results. And in all this regards AI is way more capable than Melodyne.

 

I agree. Its funny how everyone gets upset at the buzzword "AI" and op doesnt even realize that its all machine learning at the end of the day. Those algos they are using to figure out chords from audio require a form of machine learning.

They are pretty much asking to find chords with an algorithm that doesn't have the social stigma that has persuaded their ideology when under the hood there are so much nuance to all of this.

 

Here is the midi for you using AI. If you feel that its not the best way to rip Propaganda - Dr.Mabuse (The Last Word) strings then i understand try another algo:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/m7AXHmpV

 

And which AI do you prefer for this task?

 

I cant say what I used for that one. (yet)

But Samplab is good, EZkeys, EZbass, Scaler, and others listed above are good.

 

Yes but usually it misses fast passages and doesn't recognize complex chords (7th, dim, aug).
While I still prefer decoda it seems to me that Song master is a bit more precise.
I'll add some example when I can.

In anyway learning basics of harmony is mandatory if you want to transcribe songs, softwares like the above are just guidelines.

I guess because it's not offline (in most cases).

 

https://www.hornetplugins.com/plugins/hornet-songkey-mk4/

HoRNet Songkey does that. Whether it works for your specific application requires you to try it, but it's quite affordable.

Also, what the other people said is true, A.I. is pretty much irrelevant in this case, A.I. is just algorithms that have automated feedback features, so it's easier to update and fine tune them. When you say algorithm, you're saying A.I. and when you're saying A.I. your saying algorithm. Literally anything that does what you're asking is basically going to use A.I., because it's going to use an algorithm . . .

Melda MTuner is free and can do audio to midi, but I think it only does single notes, I don't believe it can do chords, really.

There's also Navie D Notegrabber, which analyzes the data, then outputs a sonogram that you click on and lets you output MIDI. There's a lot of monophonic stuff, but probably all of the polyphonicc stuff is only going to be so-so.

https://www.notegrabber.com/home

 

I tried the free version of Samplab on some guitar chords I did with some heavy effects and it got them right. The site says the minimum version MacOS is v11.0 BigSur, which is correct about the plugin versions. But the Standalone version works fine on v10.15 and it can export a midi file. DeCoda doesn't have a plugin version, and Melodyne is expensive for legit and would be overkill for this function only anyway.
Samplab is a decent option.

 

The one I currently use is NeuralNote:
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/neuralnote-by-dr-audio

Drag and drop online:
https://samplab.com/audio-to-midi
https://ai-midi.com/
https://vocalremover.org/splitter-ai

 

Tryed recording audio with the VST3 version & i get no midi transcription notes. Audio output is fine but no notes appear..any ideas?

 

Decoda vs. Song master

See below, as example I took the intro guitar from What's up of 4 non blondes.

Decoda and Song master both get the proper key (A), as well the main chord progression (A-Bm-D-A), for now we ignore chord inversions.
Decoda gets an E (wrong) going to D.
Song master gets an Esus4 (a bit jarring) going to D.

They fail more or less to get the tension chords before Bm (D6(no3)/A*), before D (E7(no3)/B*), before A (Asus4).

Giving the whole chord progression including inversions:
A (doubling octave)
D6(no3)/A* going to Bm
E7(no3)/B* going to D/A
Asus4 going to A

* here you can try to replace these tension chords with:
Esus4/A going to Bm (weaker tension)
Asus4 going to D/A

I would like to point out that of three random picked YT tutorials, no one gives clues about those tension chords, but if you listen (not even that carefully) you'll get them clearly.
Decoda:

Song master:

 

I like Samplab. Using that and Scaler in the composition stage is very useful and edifying.

 

I didn't know there was AI tools to show chords. Do they work like Melodyne that gives out the midi? Melodyne can work great for chords actually, if you have a clean audio with just the chord part playing without much else, you just have to manually also edit it a bit. If I don't have clean audio with the chord part playing I might use Izotope to try to separate the part from the rest of the audio with the 'music separation' tool, also a good trick. So folks, what AI tools are there to find chords like Melodyne does, spits out midi?

 

That's a main point!

By finding bass notes you'r going to find yourself the scale key and I want to hardly remark that the easiest way is to switch between the presumed/guessed V and I while listening the song.
To be clearer: if a song is in C (M or m) and play repeatedly G and C you'll find that they match and the gravity center is C.
This whatever mode the scale is.
Then try to play the first 5 notes of the scale (or the whole scale), they match as well.
Let's say it's minor, E doesn't match, lower it (Eb), then it will.

For bass notes deCoda is awesome: use the filter to hear low freq only and toggle the octave up switch, you'll get even the most ambiguous hidden bass.