software that will write/transpose recorded music into sheet music?

You're going to be hard pushed for a program that can do that. What is your goal? do you want scores to songs you like in order to learn them? do you want to score your own music? etc.
 
There is pitch-to-midi software, but it's not going to handle much more than a single line. It won't handle multiple instruments or voices (or, at least, not well at all). There is also software that will create written music from midi files. Again, it is not going to be accurate enough to result in playable sheet music -- it will require heavy editing to make it usable by musicians.

What you are looking for simply does not exist at this time and, likely, will not exist any time soon. The technical name for what you're looking for is, "dictation," and even most highly trained musicians cannot do it 100% accurate in real time.
 
we are looking to transpose our original recorded rock songs to write sheet music for our marching band to play...
 
to transcribe one of our songs top sheet music for our brass section took 5 hours...6 horns, guitar, bass, drums...we have a few dozen songs....

by the way we already know how to transcribe..

check out chef's delight, a song we posted here and there on
HomeRecording.com...
 
we are looking to transpose our original recorded rock songs to write sheet music for our marching band to play...

to transcribe one of our songs top sheet music for our brass section took 5 hours...6 horns, guitar, bass, drums...we have a few dozen songs....

by the way we already know how to transcribe..

check out chef's delight, a song we posted here and there on
HomeRecording.com...
There is no single program that will do what you want, and no set of programs that will produce anything usable in less time than manual transcription. There are third-party programs that will transcribe an audio track into written notes -- I believe Finale and Sibelius both come with light versions of such software. I suppose you can try to transcribe one instrument part at a time, but you will still have to do considerable manual correction to get it accurate and correctly-notated. Though software like this is pretty good at detecting note pitch, and both Finale and Sibelius are very good at correct spelling of enharmonics, software in general is very bad at accurately detecting note duration.

Any way you look at it, transcription takes time. You're not really going to gain anything by doing it programmatically.
 
There is no single program that will do what you want, and no set of programs that will produce anything usable in less time than manual transcription. There are third-party programs that will transcribe an audio track into written notes -- I believe Finale and Sibelius both come with light versions of such software. I suppose you can try to transcribe one instrument part at a time, but you will still have to do considerable manual correction to get it accurate and correctly-notated. Though software like this is pretty good at detecting note pitch, and both Finale and Sibelius are very good at correct spelling of enharmonics, software in general is very bad at accurately detecting note duration.

Any way you look at it, transcription takes time. You're not really going to gain anything by doing it programmatically.

You refer to the Audioscore program. This kind of software isn't cheap and you have to conclude that the algorithms that transcribe the songs are only so accurate (I foresee more editing and corrections). Too bad there weren't MIDI files scored out to start with, as they could easily be transposed. In any kind of DAW with scoring functions or any dedicated scoring program should make it a whole heck of a lot easier than scoring out the parts by hand. Yikes.
 
As noted, no software can transcribe a whole band. Additional thoughts:

- Software like Sibelius, or various cheaper products, are quicker and produce a nicer product than doing it manually, but they're like using a word processor instead of a pen ... they're not like using speech recognition software (at least not in this application).

- As I'm sure you realize from transcribing one song, moving from a rock band to a marching band isn't a simple matter of transcription anyway: there's a fair bit of arranging involved. I suppose I can see how an automatic transcription - if possible - would have some value in quickly producing a working transcription that you would then use a starting point in arranging for traditional band instruments. But I don't think you'd be shortening a 5-hour project into an hour in any event.
 
Back
Top