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I want to make music for a video game I am creating, but I have little to no skill using a piano. But, I do know how to play tuba, and have been playing it for a while. Is there any software that can turn the notes I play on my tuba into notes on a MIDI file that I can edit?

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  • Great question. Do you have an operating system preference? Nov 2, 2015 at 4:36
  • I use Windows 8 personally.
    – The Man
    Nov 2, 2015 at 5:42
  • Sounds good... I added the Windows tag. Nov 2, 2015 at 6:44
  • Converting WAV to MIDI is a very tough task. Taking a tuba sound from Freesound and the demo version of Audioscore Ultimate, the results were not worth it (I'm not an expert though). It might be easier to enter MIDI notes directly via mouse and keyboard of the PC. See also this Audacity list of converter programs. If you find a suitable one, I'd be glad to see your answer here. Nov 2, 2015 at 22:50
  • I try to do the MIDI notes via mouse and keyboard, but I am looking for a faster and easier alternative.
    – The Man
    Nov 2, 2015 at 23:23

2 Answers 2

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Melodyne is a commercial solution (~200 USD, assistent version needed) that probably outperforms most others with regards to usability and features, although it's a bit expensive for the task you want to achieve.

At least it can save as MIDI and therefore is an answer to the question. Let's see if you get cheaper ones as well.

Taking a tuba sound from FreeSound, I first corrected the pitch, then quantized notes to 1/16 and saved as MIDI file. Find the result on TinyUpload.

Compared to other Audio to MIDI converters (see the list at Audacity), this one immediately did what I wanted while I had to experiment with too many settings on others I tried.

Here's a screenshot I took while editing the tuba.wav file (it can't open MP3 directly):

Editing a tuba sound in Melodyne

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Daft as it sounds you might be able to get better results from a video file than an audio file. If you were to film yourself playing the tuba and run it though a similar process to that demonstrated in this blog which used python and moviepy to convert old piano rolls to MIDI files and sheet music. Of course you will need to watch the valves to determine which are pressed and at your mouth to determine when you are sounding a note.

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