Dan Ellis : Sound Examples :

Music - original and synthetic

One `holy grail' of automatic sound analysis is music transcription, which could be defined as trying to convert a real recording of music into an equivalent MIDI representation. As it happens, a large amount of pop music has already been converted into MIDI - not automatically, but by fans and hobbyists. These MIDI replicas are an intriguing information source for music research, as discussed in our paper on MIDI alignment.

This page brings together a few examples of actual musical recordings along with their MIDI equivalents, both as MIDI files and synthesized into audio. We also provide hand-marked labels for the major segment breaks for this music, for some of both the original and MIDI-synthesized audio.

TrackArtistOriginal audioTranscript of originalMIDIMIDI audioTranscript of MIDI
Africa Toto africa-toto.wav (13M) africa-toto.phn africa-toto.mid africa-toto-midi.wav africa-toto-midi.phn
Around the World ATC around_the_world-atc.wav (9M) around_the_world-atc.phn around_the_world-atc.mid around_the_world-atc-midi.wav around_the_world-atc-midi.phn
I ran so far away Flock of Seagulls i_ran_so_far_away-flock_of_seagulls.wav (13M) i_ran_so_far_away-flock_of_seagulls.phn i_ran_so_far_away-flock_of_seagulls.mid i_ran_so_far_away-flock_of_seagulls-midi.wav i_ran_so_far_away-flock_of_seagulls-midi.phn
Temple of Love Sisters of Mercy temple_of_love-sisters_of_mercy.wav (21M) temple_of_love-sisters_of_mercy.phn temple_of_love-sisters_of_mercy.mid temple_of_love-sisters_of_mercy-midi.wav (not available)
Beautiful Life Ace of Base beautiful_life-ace_of_base.wav (9.5M) (not available) beautiful_life-ace_of_base.mid beautiful_life-ace_of_base-midi.wav beautiful_life-ace_of_base-midi.phn
Don't Speak No Doubt dont_speak-no_doubt.wav (11M) (not available) dont_speak-no_doubt.mid dont_speak-no_doubt-midi.wav dont_speak-no_doubt-midi.phn
Mambo No. 5 Lou Bega mambo_no_5-lou_bega.wav (9.6M) (not available) mambo_no_5-lou_bega.mid mambo_no_5-lou_bega-midi.wav mambo_no_5-lou_bega-midi.phn
Evangeline Matthew Sweet evangeline-matthew_sweet.wav (13M) evangeline-matthew_sweet.phn (not available) (not available) (not available)

Notes on data

The audio files (*.wav) are in MS-WAVE format, downsampled to 22kHz mono from the original CD tracks.

The transcript files (*.phn) are text files where each line has the format


  <start-sample> <end-sample> <description>

..where the samples are at 22kHz, so you convert those numbers to time in seconds by dividing them by 22050.

Notes on sources

The track selection and MIDI file processing was done by Rob Turetsky. The manual transcriptions were created by Angel Umpierre during an internship in Summer 2003. Thanks to them both.

Acknowledgment

This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-0238301. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).


Last updated: $Date: 2004/03/14 05:41:01 $

Dan Ellis <dpwe@ee.columbia.edu>