Chiff and Fipple Forums

Hi,

I've been composing tunes for years. To preserve them, I play them on one of my flutes (recorder, ocarina, or tin whistle) and tape record them.

I'd like to translate my solo tunes to either ABC notation or sheet music.

I tried computer programs that automatically translate from the captured MP3 or WAV file to sheet music, but they do a poor job of it.

Meanwhile, I've discovered that the free EasyABC program will translate MIDI input accurately into both ABC notation and sheet music.

So I'm starting to think my approach should be to create MIDI output from an electronic wind instrument (EWI) and then feed it into EasyABC.

This leads me to several questions ----

-- Is this the best way to translate my tunes to ABC and sheet music, or is there a better approach?
-- Do the popular EWI's from Akai and Roland all create MIDI output?
-- Are there EWI's that don't require you have to Windows or Mac (I use Linux)
-- When EWI's and keyboards create MIDI files, do they write them to a USB stick you plug into the instrument?

Any other advice, I'd be grateful. I've been stumbling around on this on my own for awhile. Thank you.

(PS-- I can write sheet music by hand but it's a slow process for me and therefore something I'd prefer to avoid)

If you can write notation, it may be easier to write your tunes as ABC notation, & quicker once you understand it.

Learning to play an electronic wind instrument can be difficult, a whole new experience, I've read, not much like whistle/recorder.

Hi Keith,

Thanks for your feedback.

I'll keep in mind your advice that EWIs are a whole new experience. I've played many different woodwinds, but I understand that EWIs may not be similar to them at all.

Nevertheless, if I can figure out some of the basic parameters for EWIs (posted in my original query), I think that might work better for me than writing traditional music notation or ABC. For me, that's a slow error prone process.

Thanks again.

If the recordings are clear enough then maybe they could be converted to midi and then annotated. I just tried an mp3 to midi conversion online and though not perfect (it added a few similar extra notes in higher octave) it was surprising to find the whole melody there, and as a piano score after loading it onto Audio Evolution. From there extra notes could be edited out. I used bearaudiotool online, for no particular reason. It's just an idea and the whole theme is not something I am familiar with.

Thanks, @Greenwood.

I tired Bearaudio and several other mp3 -> midi and wav -> midi converters, but they didn't work well enough for me. They added too many extra notes to deal with, at least in my case. I did find that certain flutes worked better with them than others. For example, my alto ocarina seemed to convert more accurately than my soprano recorder, which picked up all the overtones as notes. So I think I'll keep looking, but thank you for your feedback.