Software like Melodyne Studio allows you to convert your audio to MIDI semi-automatically, you need to correct the notes, move them, add them. Melodyne studio coasts $800 and it runs slowly. To get those MIDI’s you DON’T need that software. You can do it for free!
Wave Candy is a stock (free) plugin for Fl Studio users. Wave Candy has 4 meters: Oscilloscope, Spectrum, Meter, Vectorscope. In this tutorial we will be using Spectrum.
Process
For this example I went to YouTube and found cool guitar riff.
I cut out the guitar and put it on the timeline.
Next you need to add Wave Candy plugin to your Master mixer channel.
Next you need to setup your Wave Candy properly. Copy my settings and you good to go. Also after that done you can save your Preset, so you don’t need to tweak it every time.
After that your Wave Candy should look like this.
Now make sure that your Wave Candy unfrozen (snowflake is grey). Just play your sample on the timeline and Wave Candy will give you frequency spectrum of it. After that you should quickly freeze your Wave Candy (press on snowflake it turns blue).
As you can see now we have the image of the guitar riff. If you place your mouse to those lines of spectrum it will say what note that is.
Now you probably see that those lines already look like MIDI. They have different intensity and length. If you want your MIDI to be “perfect” you should follow exact same length and velocity. I wanted it simple, so I didn’t do that.
Now all you have to do is to place the notes one by one to your MIDI clip. You can also always compare your sound to the sample. After 10 minutes I got to my point.
Please note that musical instruments have a lot of different noises. So the most of actual notes will be around C3-C6 octaves.
Please note that Melodyne does exact same thing, it analyzes spectrum of the signal and automatically places the notes, but it’s always not perfect at all. You can do better job using this method.
Production Cheats 