A Gear Luddite with a specific Vocal to MIDI question

[VeroniqueC]

Greetings to all. I am here as a fish out of water, but I seek specific answers that no one in my real world sphere seems to know, and I know many highly trained and accomplished musicians indeed, as I work full time in the music industry as a performer and lyricist.

Let me do the preliminaries: I am a trained ballet dancer (that means my body is a percussion instrument) but I am not trained in music theory and I have no time nor desire to be, because being a "hummer" suits me just fine. I am an award-winning singer/lyricist and record producer.

I have successfully co-written with many other accomplished musicians, but I am at the point want to be able make my own compositions without depending on someone else for that.

What I need and want is software or a plug in that allows vocals to be converted to other instrument sounds and from those files to be able to print out the sheet music so that I can hire real musicians to play what I've composed.

The only thing remotely like this that I've found is the V2M, Vocal 2 Midi device here: index

I know this is probably the result of someone's hobby, and I know the instruments sound lame, but since all I need is something that will help me SKETCH, rather than make concert-hall ready compositions, it seems this item would do the trick for me.

Unless someone here knows of something else. Someone in another forum already suggested Auto Tune and Melodyne but they are more than I want to deal with learning.

And of course someone else suggested I learn to play an instrument. With all due respect to everyone here who has endured countless hours of lessons and practice, etc. I say no thanks. My time is too precious to beat that dead horse. I've already tried, and repeatedly shown no aptitude for guitar and piano.

Please remember, I am interested in low to no learning curve. I am a gear luddite and avowed hummer. I just want to hum and have something convert that into some sort of instrument sounds from which can be made sheet music.

Thank you kindly for your assistance.

Best regards to everyone here!

Veronique

[richiebee]

There are various software titles out there - look for WAV to MIDI conversion. WIDIsoft is one company that makes several products. Most are monophonic which should suit you. Those that are polyphonic can typically only detect one kind of sound at a time (eg, it might detect all piano, but not piano bass and drums).

I can understand why musicians are trying to get you to learn the basics. Your sheet music will probably mean nothing to a musician if it is not accurate. If you don't sing perfectly in time (by the software's own metronome), if you haven't set the tempo correctly... your music might play back with a midi device exactly as you sung it, but the notation could be complete gibberish if you haven't set the tempo correctly and stuck to it while you were singing. Similarly, if you go off key (no, I know singers never do that, but just say that you do...), even the pitch will be meaningless within the context of music.

You don't have to understand the whole language of music to get a message across - heck, rock musicians have been working without knowing notation forever, but if you do print out a score, it needs to be correct. Otherwise, you'll blame a bad performance on the musician, when in fact its probably the notation that is at fault. So, you need to at least be able to read music, understand the concept of pitch and rhythm, and how in music, they are usually formed by following rules or concepts. That way you can check the score that prints out to make sure it makes musical sense.

If you're not prepared to learn the basics of notation and music, you should either pass your musicians an audio recording of your singing, or let someone else do the transcription for you. Its much easier for a musician to pick up what you're trying to convey by playing audio, than it is to show them inaccurate notation because they can detect a meter even if its not accurate... notation is too black and white to provide that.

By the way, MIDI has no sound - it is a language. Sound is produced by devices that decode the MIDI language. The quality of those sounds is governed partly by the quality of the device, and partly by the extent of the programming.