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Getting the progression from Audio

Posted

hey


It would be nice if you could load an audiofile and then get the progression from the audio. ( Like Band-in-a-Box)


Then save the progression with the same name as your audiofile. This way you could make a huge library of pro progressions.


Tue, 2011-02-15 - 22:39 Permalink

It would be a very nice tool for remixing, as you don't have to use your time to figure out the progression used in the song, just start to make music.


I think it would also be a nice tool for cover-bands and other musicians that want to study the different kind of progressions.
It would definitely get other kind of musicians interested of Synfire

Sat, 2011-02-19 - 19:25 Permalink

i agree this would be a great feature in Syn Fire pro and HN 2 advanced edition.  I would love this.

Mon, 2011-02-21 - 16:27 Permalink

Depending on the complexity of a song arrangement BIAB chord detect ranges from very good to almost useless. If the song is a cover song,  I first look on internet for midi files, I go to YouTube and record any videos there, I also look for 'chords for songs'. I compare them. There are obviously several chords that can be substituted in a song, using the above procedure gives you some insight into the make up and character of a song. Another technique is to raise the bass and cut off high end of song, and figure out the bass notes. This will give you insight to what chord to declare it. 

 

Sometimes BIAB is fine except for a few areas. Between these different sources, I come up with a chord progression. Often when the arrangement is complex, there are a lot grace and passing notes, making it hard to detect chords.

 

You can also import the song into your DAW, and isolate 'chunks'  where there are chord changes. Set this to loop around the isolated chord and hand figure it out. 

 

Compare these results with how Synfire Pro detects the notes and make adjustments to the MIDI file.

 

Mon, 2011-02-21 - 19:44 Permalink

 

Manual transcription of chords from audio is a lot of work. Looking for the chords on the net is easier and more reliable.

Except for very simple cases, automated transcription from audio files is very unreliable. It seems to work best for Pop where at least one keyboard or guitar plays one sustained chord after the other.

Melodyne does a good job in polyphonic pitch recognition. I don't remember how well the pitches are then mapped to chord symbols, though.

The real issue is: Even if you know all the pitches (= midi file), you still have to figure out what the progression is. This is a highly ambiguous logical and combinatorial problem (not a physical one, liek pitch recognition). Not without proud I dare to say that HN2/Synfire do a very good job in this regard, compared to other software.