A reflection about automatic transcription of music (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: A reflection about automatic transcription of music (2018)

#21

Post by bertr4nd » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 11:23 AM UTC

I’d love to work on automatic transcription for drum set. I trained in classical percussion, but I’m self-taught when it comes to rock, so I have trouble figuring out how to reproduce fills that I want to play.

I remember using Transcribe!, created by the author of this article, to try to figure out some of the fills in ZZ Top’s La Grange, which isn’t a complicated song exactly, but I can’t figure out how to make the fills feel right. Transcribe! Is great, btw.

Anyways, I’d be very curious to hear if there’s any existing work in this area. I feel like drum transcription could be easier in some ways than “pitched” instruments, but possibly harder in some unique ways too.

Re: A reflection about automatic transcription of music (2018)

#22

Post by dekhn » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

Rather than targeting formal music notation, I think it makes a lot more sense to use modern digital audio workstation representation (horizontal bars representing individual tracks). I believe this can represent everything music notation can (for practical purposes) and has the advantage of being easily visually readable by people with little musical training (I've spent the time to learn basic music notation and I find it has a very high cognitive overhead for people who didn't learn it during early childhood).

Here's a lovely representation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2tEVVeGCk0&feature=share

It would seem to be likely that given enough training data (labelled scores) you could make a net that took raw complex music in and generated that out.

Re: A reflection about automatic transcription of music (2018)

#23

Post by kazinator » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

Transcription to accurate MIDI rather than notation is useful: MIDI that captures portamentos, legatos, vibratos and such details of expression.

Re: A reflection about automatic transcription of music (2018)

#24

Post by adrianh » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

bertr4nd wrote: post #21

I’d love to work on automatic transcription for drum set. I trained in classical percussion, but I’m self-taught when it comes to rock, so I have trouble figuring out how to reproduce fills that I want to play. I remember using Transcribe!, created by the author of this article, to try to figure out some of the fills in ZZ Top’s La Grange, which isn’t a complicated song exactly, but I can’t figure out how to make the…

Yes, there is indeed work in this area! Check out the academic papers published in association with ISMIR.