Guitar Chords and Melodyne 5

[John Vere]

Has anyone here successfully used Melodyne 5 Editor to drag guitar chords to midi?  
 

I want to archive a lot of my backing tracks as midi only files so it would speed things up not to have to draw chords the slow way. 

I have Assistant but can upgrade next time a sale happens. 

Edit - added for clarity= 

Can Melodyne 5 Studio convert clean Acoustic guitar chords to midi with minor editing required afterwards

 

UPDATE 9-11 2021-  Conclusion= Yes this works with all versions of Melodyne even after your demo expires with Cakewalk.  

You do not need Melodyne Studio to convert Polyphonic audio to midi in Cakewalk.

But you do need Studio for working with Polyphonic Audio tracks. 

Melodyne 5 seems to do a much better rendering than Melodyne 4. 

Edited September 11, 2021 by John Vere

[Jacques Boileau]

36 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Has anyone here successfully used Melodyne 5 Editor to drag guitar chords to midi?  
 

I want to archive a lot of my backing tracks as midi only files so it would speed things up not to have to draw chords the slow way. 

I have Assistant but can upgrade next time a sale happens. 

I have assistant, tried it and it worked for me. I created an instrument track and dragged the audio from a guitar track to it. Melodyne converted it to midi notes. I used the Polyphonic decay algo. The results were rather poor though. It probably depends on how complicated the guitar track is.

[treesha]

I have studio and have used it to turn guitar audio parts into midi. I agree with post that its not great and does depend on the guitar parts complexity and which algorithm you use. I use it not to preserve guitar parts but for the opposite, to take a guitar sample into  melodyne it to make something else out of it so I don’t mind that it isn’t great, sometimes the “mistakes”  are good.  For simple chords it might be ok but for phrases its not great. 

[John Vere]

It’s a huge jump in price for what seems to be that one feature. 
These are backing tracks used for live performance and not recording. I would never suffer a listener to a VST guitar in a recording. 
But being a one man band I needed full band back up So I often added a rhythm guitar part and I would then play fills and lead as I sing. I use Wave files for my tracks so that can contain real instruments. 

I’ve already converted all the real bass into midi but now it would be perfect to somehow use those rhythm guitar chords  and use Strum Session. 
I want to archive all 300+ songs as midi files.  That way they are future proof and can be used with any DAW. I will share these openly . 

So what I want to hear from someone is that it works brilliantly not so, so ?

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by John Vere

[Glenn Stanton]

i use the Melodyne get MIDI from guitar parts for adding bass, piano, organ, pads, solos, etc especially where its quicker to just lay down parts i know will be used for something else while i have my guitar in hand. because it's sourced from the guitar, keyboard parts will be different than if i played them on the keyboard. and if i use a keyboard to drive a guitar instrument VST (e.g. Strum GS-2 or the Kontakt Session Guitarist), those parts also have differences you don't  normally get from a guitar performance. so like anything, it depends on the effect you're going for...

[treesha]

Last night i opened a 12 yr old song to redo and i melodyned the guitar chords to see what chords i had used as my written notes were unclear. It is 4 chords simple ones like c dsharp d c sharp according to melodyne studio 5 findings, but the blobs are everywhere. This is electric guitar with many fx so I wanted to comment that i think the nature  of the guitar part will also matter very much when rendering in melodyne, like this one with blobs octaves both up and down from the main notes are likely representing reverb distortion etc. i think a clean guitar part would render much better. 

[John Vere]

Thanks for your replies. 

Yes I totally understand the "very squeaky clean" part because I played  guitar synth back in the 80's on my Roland GR 50 which I still have. I've had this ability for years. Now you can do it for free with Midi  Guitar VST - https://www.jamorigin.com/ 

But these parts are already played, lots of them,  and they are Acoustic Guitar and recorded dry. I realize it won't work for faster strumming etc.  

So let me re phrase- @Glenn Stanton and @treesha

Can Melodyne 5 Studio convert clean Acoustic guitar chords to midi with minor editing required afterwards?  

[John Vere]

I am an idiot- You can try Melodyne full version for 30 days free!  So Lets see if I can make this work and I'll report back, downloading right now. 

[Glenn Stanton]

21 hours ago, John Vere said:

Can Melodyne 5 Studio convert clean Acoustic guitar chords to midi with minor editing required afterwards?  

while you're trying it... yes, unless i'm really sloppy, the conversion works quite well and editing the individual notes - pitch, timing, noises, etc all work as expected. i have the editor version but presumably the studio version (multi track polyphonic vs single track polyphonic)

[pbognar]

Here is a video showing Melodyne Essential (included with Mixcraft Pro Studio) converting guitar audio to MIDI, so yes it is possible, but results will vary...

https://youtu.be/LvALF5oAB6s

 

[John Vere]

Thanks @Glenn Stanton 

Last night Installed the full version. At least so I thought! Read on.

I chopped the guitar audio track into short sections to experiment. This is a clean acoustic track no effects.  I then dragged it to Strum Session Midi track.  

I tried both the Polyphonic Decay and Polyphonic Sustain and results seemed identical to me. But it did create a midi track that sounded about 70%  correct. Mostly timing artifacts and jumped octaves,  just like the Bass tracks I've made a hundred  times.. 

BUT_ I wasn't exactly sure which version the 30 day trial was so I created a regional effect and opened the Melodyne screen. I checked and it was showing I was still using Assistant?  So this tells me that even though Assistant is Monophonic it still creates a Polyphonic midi track with drag and drop! 

Truth be told I had never just tried this before as my understanding was I won't work unless you had Studio. I guess @Jacques Boileau was correct when he said he used assistant. I read into that post that it gave them pour results and that's because it was not studio.

Any how within Melodyn screen under help there's a tab takes you to your product page and there I found a tab to "Activate 30 day Trail. 

When I returned to Cakewalk it now said I have the Studio trail version.  OK, that was never included in the instructions. 

So I made a new midi track and dragged again. The algorithm dialog is identical to Assistant. I would have thought there would be different options?  

It seems there's no point in the upgrade if this is all you want to do. I will explore the audio editing a bit which is what I now think will be the only difference.  It's not a feature I really need. 

If you look at my screen shot you can see that both midi tracks look the same. The top red one is with Studio, the lower Green one is with Assistant There is a small difference because I had worked on the Assistant track and moved a few notes to correct timing.. 

But my conclusion is that Assistant will do this just fine. 

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by John Vere

[treesha]

John, wondering what you think about how the rendered midi sounds to you when you play it with strum session? You say its about 70% accurate and has artifacts and jumped octaves. Since it is a clean guitar recording with no fx ( unlike mine) i just wonder if how it sounds at 70% is acceptable to you? 

[pbognar]

Just a thought - perhaps making a new copy of the audio track, dedicated to MIDI conversion, and preparing it for analysis/conversion with EQ / dynamics processing could provide more accurate MIDI?

[Jacques Boileau]

34 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Truth be told I had never just tried this before as my understanding was I won't work unless you had Studio. I guess @Jacques Boileau was correct when he said he used assistant. I read into that post that it gave them pour results and that's because it was not studio.

Yes, that was my understanding. The functionnality is the same to convert to midi. Since you can 'see' the polyphonic notes in Assistant, it has already the info to convert to midi. What Studio bring, as far as polyphony goes, is the possibility to edit the notes. Which you don't need in the task you are doing.

[pbognar]

53 minutes ago, John Vere said:

 

@John Vere One more thought - since you own MIDI Guitar 2, you may want to try that to convert the the audio to MIDI by playing the audio into the VST and capturing the MIDI, though I'm not certain that Cakewalk has all the audio and MIDI routing needed. 

[scook]

27 minutes ago, pbognar said:

since you own MIDI Guitar 2, you may want to try that to convert the the audio to MIDI by playing the audio into the VST and capturing the MIDI, though I'm not certain that Cakewalk has all the audio and MIDI routing needed. 

CbB has all the routing needed to capture MIDI from MG2.

[Roger Jeynes]

Hi John - just to endorse what's already been said: I've found it makes a reasonable job of interpreting clean acoustic guitar chords, but still quite a bit of editing to do to tidy them up. And you don't need the top level of Melodyne for this.

[user 905133]

4 hours ago, pbognar said:

Here is a video showing Melodyne Essential (included with Mixcraft Pro Studio) converting guitar audio to MIDI, so yes it is possible, but results will vary...

https://youtu.be/LvALF5oAB6s

Are you saying that in Mixcraft Pro Studio Melodyne Essential will do polyphonic audio to midi conversion?

[John Vere]

4 hours ago, treesha said:

John, wondering what you think about how the rendered midi sounds to you when you play it with strum session? You say its about 70% accurate and has artifacts and jumped octaves. Since it is a clean guitar recording with no fx ( unlike mine) i just wonder if how it sounds at 70% is acceptable to you? 

It sounds like I expect it to sound,,  Like  midi guitar if that makes sense. As I said I've from time to time recorded my GR 50 and created midi tracks with that so I'm no stranger to this sound. When I get a chance I'll post a short clip with the original guitar and then the Strum session.

Of course Strum Session is probably a very basic guitar VST and not the best example,  I also have Ample Guitar Lite which I will also try. Being a actual guitar player means I've never had to pay close attention to these types of VST instruments.  I've never tried to make them work and I'm sure there's better samples out there but for this project which is archiving midi tracks the player really doesn't matter. I'm not using these midi tracks for recording,  they are for backing tracks and to share the files.  Down the road someone can use whatever VST instrument they want.

As you are saying you can even use these parts to play non guitar sounds. I've done just that plenty of times with downloaded files. Often turning them into Wurly Piano parts.  

 

@pbognar   As I have said I have a GR 50 guitar synth as well as a Godin guitar with built in Roland connection port. It works much better than Midi Guitar. I've played with Midi Guitar a little bit and it works fine with Cakewalk but way more fussy to set up than the GR50 which is dead simple because it's already midi. But truth be told there seems to be absolutely no difference in the results either way.  Recording a midi guitar, or converting a clean guitar track = same midi track .

Advantage of playing and recording a midi guitar in real time is you will immediately hear your sloppy playing as glitches and adjust your technique on the fly.  

The whole point is I need to convert a whole lot of already recorded tracks. Having to re play them is not something I'm that interested in. As long as I can make this work with minimum editing required it will be a huge time saver. 

[pbognar]

1 hour ago, User 905133 said:

Are you saying that in Mixcraft Pro Studio Melodyne Essential will do polyphonic audio to midi conversion?

Yes.  The difference between Essential/Assistant and Editor/Studio is that with the latter, you can edit polyphonic audio, so for instance, you could do crazy things, like take a piano performance in a major key and change it to minor.