Turn an audio file into a MIDI file

[Taylor322ce12fret]

New user to Cakewalk. Anyone have the steps on how to turn an audio file into MIDI?

Watched to separate methods on YouTube, the functionality worked but the file didn’t load into the second track.

Thank you,

Edited July 10, 2021 by Taylor322ce12fret

[Promidi]

1 hour ago, Taylor322ce12fret said:

New user to Cakewalk. Anyone have the steps on how to turn an audio file into MIDI?

Is this a monophonic source or a full mix.

If it's a monophonic source , then you can drag the audio clip to the timeline (This is assuming you have Melodyne Essentials installed)

If it's a full mix, then really the only way to do it properly is painstakingly transcribing it by ear.  There are programs that claim some success, but the results usually sound like a cat walking up and down the keyboard.

[scook]

4 minutes ago, Promidi said:

If it's a monophonic source , then you can drag the audio clip to the timeline (This is assuming you have Melodyne Essentials installed)

This will produce a tempo map

To extract MIDI note data, the clip must be dragged to an instrument or MIDI track.

[Promidi]

6 minutes ago, scook said:

This will produce a tempo map

To extract MIDI note data, the clip must be dragged to an instrument or MIDI track.

Yeah, you're right ...  instrument track.....  it's been a stressful week....

[John Vere]

The conversation of a monophonic audio track, example bass, can be done with Cakewalk. You do not need a Melodyne license, it’s built in to the core program. 
You drag the audio track to a midi track or a Simple Instrument track. 
If the audio track is polyphonic, as in guitar chords,  then you need a version of Melodyne that supports chords. At least I think this works with drag and drop. It might be a different process for chords. 
If what you are looking for is a full song converted to midi , good luck. There is software that claims to do this but I’ve never heard of any good results unless the song is super basic

Edited July 8, 2021 by John Vere

[scook]

4 minutes ago, John Vere said:

The conversation of a monophonic audio track, example bass, can be done with Cakewalk. You do not need a Melodyne license, it’s built in to the core program. 

It is not built into the DAW, it relies on the Melodyne VST3 plug-in.

CbB includes a time limited trial version of Melodyne as an Add-on. When the trial expires, the plug-in still works for monophonic drag and drop audio-to-midi and tempo map.

[John Vere]

Ok. but as I said you don’t need a license which was stated above. 

[scook]

What is not clear from the OP is if the Melodyne VST3 is installed.

[John Vere]

5 hours ago, Taylor322ce12fret said:

the functionality worked but the file didn’t load into the second track.

ya this statement is a mystery!  It implies a second track but was that a midi track? And in what way did the functionality work if it didn’t create any midi ?? 

Edited July 8, 2021 by John Vere

[Taylor322ce12fret]

On 7/7/2021 at 10:14 PM, John Vere said:

ya this statement is a mystery!  It implies a second track but was that a midi track? And in what way did the functionality work if it didn’t create any midi ?? 

Thanks to all for the responses. I inserted a MIDI track in CW. I dragged the audio file into the inserted MIDI track. The pop up dialog box comes up stating that the conversion to MIDI may take awhile, click Y/N. I click Yes. Another pop up shows the transfer progress and after completion the new MIDI track is now blank. The audio (mono graphic) file that was showing in the MIDI track disappears. You can see on the original audio track something about Melodyne processing but nothing happens. I downloaded the Melodyne (free) plug in that is offered with the original set up.

I was able to accomplish using an outside link for Bear File Converter which worked quite well. It allowed me to upload the audio file from CW, convert it to MIDI, and then auto download back to CW. Obviously needed minor editing to get what I wanted.

Thanks again to all. The journey continues.