MusicScribe is an open source project, attempting to develop a tool to help musicians transcribe music. This project emerged from a hobby for jazz piano coupled with a passion for signal processing as well as years of software development experience.
The main application for this type of software is in situations where we do not have a music score available. In particular jazz music, since in classical music the score is usually available or obtainable. In jazz, however the musician is often improvising, and it is often interesting for the listener with an untrained or primitive ear (like myself!) to decipher the music.
The current software, has only been tested with piano music, since that's what interests me. As such some optimizations have been made for piano, however the principle is extensible. Piano transcription poses a number of challenges including:
- Multiple notes playing at the same time
- Multiple strings being hit by the hammer for a given note
- Multiple harmonics (very strong in some cases) generated for a given note
The Current release is an alpha version. It works, but the todo list (see the contribute section) is much longer than the features. It is mainly a working proof of concept. We are currently several developers and researchers in the Geneva area working on improving the algorithm. And much improved versions including an interface are already in the pipeline and should be release within a few months.