Ask HN: Transcribe bass guitar parts from stems?

7 points by mostelato 4 years ago | 6 comments

I play in a rock band, and people often ask for bass tabs to my parts. I was wondering if anyone knows of a good way of auto generating notes or tabs from isolated bass guitar tracks. I tried some tools, but the results were really bad.(https://rickyhan.com/jekyll/update/2020/05/23/algorithm-for-fretboard-arrangement.html)

You would think since bass guitar plays one note at a time, it would be reasonably easy to transcribe the notes, but I haven't been able to find anything that does the job.

Here is an example of bass stem I'm trying to auto transcribe: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1__20KijfHcg56A-HCtlehL_exur9AL0t/view?usp=sharing

and here is the original song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0cRlhqaV1k

fathyb 4 years ago |

If you're using Logic Pro (GarageBand might do it too): you can use the Flex Pitch feature [1] to generate MIDI data from your Audio track, then use the Score Editor [2] to view the generated MIDI track as sheet music. Select "Bass Guitar" in the "Style" setting, and you should get bass tabs that you can polish using the editor.

You can use other tools for any step, ie. use Flex Pitch, but use another software to create MIDI, and keep Logic for the MIDI to Tabs conversion.

This works well enough for me with a clean track and proper muting. It'll get confused as soon as you play multiple notes, do slides/pull offs or use a pick.

[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/logicpro/create-midi-from-au...

[2] https://support.apple.com/guide/logicpro/view-music-notation...

jasmes 4 years ago | |

Yah, bang on correct.

this is why I usually suggest just doing it the old fashioned way. As you mentioned slides, hammer-ons/pull offs, picking, sliding… basically everything that makes a baseline unique and stylish will confuse software.

jasmes 4 years ago |

It is 100% reasonably easy to transcribe the notes. Just give ppl who ask for tabs a stem and leave em to it. Maybe offer a beer to someone to transcribe one for ya.

Unless you wanna futz with tech for fun, a human with a good ear can transcribe bass a lil faster than real-time, can indicate accents and other techniques, and won’t make mistakes.

If you don’t do a lot of slapping, bending/sliding, Melodyne will be able to spit out a roughly accurate plot of your music but humans are still the golden standard for transferring recordings onto paper.

onedognight 4 years ago |

Melodyne[0] is very good at this.

[0] https://www.celemony.com/en/melodyne/what-is-melodyne

danbmil99 4 years ago |

https://github.com/Music-and-Culture-Technology-Lab/omnizart

jasmes 4 years ago | |

Yeah that isn’t a thing yet.

The math just gets too big.