Vocal MIDI to Sheet Music conversion and vice versa

[TigerHawk310]

A lot of singers and IRL instrumentalists might be interested in converting the note tubes in Rock Band to sheet music or standard notes, for 2 major reasons:

1. IRL musicians know what a C sounds like, but not so much what a notetube slightly below the second line sounds like..

2. IRL instrumentalists can play a pitched instrument into the microphone for a cool way of playing the vocal part. For example, if I could convert vocal parts to sheet music in Finale, then just use autotranspose to move it into a part for a Bb instrument, I could pull out my tenor sax and play the part in the game.

Also, for custom folks, this should help you put vocals into your custom manually from the sheet music; it's easy to find vocal sheet music for most songs, and this can let you code your vocal part more or less mechanically.

I haven't been able to figure out how to rip the parts from my disc, so I started with the sample vocal part for "Say It Ain't So" at the top of this thread:

http://rockband.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1711

Pitch matching by ear was easiest for the part starting at "Somebody's". I was able to match a 58 to an F#; the octave doesn't matter for gaming purposes but I'd have to work to figure out what octave it's supposed to be in. Putting an interval of 1 equal to a half-step works correctly and sounds right when I manually enter it into Finale--so the "Somebody's" is all on an F#, the "Hei-" is on a G#, and the "ne'" is on a G.

Next, timing. The phrase "Somebody's Heine'" should be, with the quarter=78 speed used in the game, a sequence of 3 eighth notes then 2 quarter notes, but that's obviously not how the game works. A better way of figuring out note lengths is to use the measure length and divide appropriately. Measure 11 starts right on "Some", Measure 12 starts right on "crowd-". "Some" has a noteon at 19200, "crowd-" at 21127, for a difference of 1927. For the 4/4 time Say It Ain't So, this would make a quarter note ~ 480 and an eighth note ~ 240. This matches up somewhat well with the note durations encoded in the game:

"Some-" = eighth = 228
"bod-" = eighth = 212
'y's" = eighth = 117
"Hei-" = quarter = 449
"ne'" = quarter = 156

The notes that are held nearly full come out right, but the "-y's" and "-ne'" syllables are actually cut off early. If you were actually writing out the sheet music nearly exactly to the Rock Band notechart, the "-y's" would be a 16th note followed by a 16th rest, and the "-ne'" would be a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th rest. You can do it that way, or you can make life a little easier for yourself by ignoring rests and using noteon to noteon intervals to set timing. In this case:

19200 4 lyric Some-
19200 4 noteon 58 75
19428 4 noteoff 58 0
19460 4 lyric bod-
19460 4 noteon 58 96
19672 4 noteoff 58 0
19688 4 noteon 58 79
19688 4 lyric y's
19805 4 noteoff 58 0
19914 4 noteon 60 80
19914 4 lyric Hei-
20363 4 noteoff 60 0
20379 4 noteon 59 75
20379 4 lyric ne'
20535 4 noteoff 59 0
21034 4 lyric is
21034 4 noteon 58 100

"Some" = 19460-19200 = 260 = eighth note
"bod-" = 19688-19460 = 228 = eighth note
"y's" = 19914-19688 = 226 = eighth note
"Hei-" = 20379-19914 = 465 = quarter note
"ne'" = 21034-20379 = 655 = 480+175 = quarter + dotted sixteenth note

Also messy, but more like how the ear hears the notes. Because the timing is inexact, it may not be feasible to transpose either way automatically, but a program could list recommended note length which the user could override--sometimes you'll want the rest, sometimes you won't.

I'd like to check that the pitch correspondence is the same between songs, but haven't been able to figure out how to rip the disc (X360) based on the other files...how do I get at the vocal midi parts? I don't actually care about any of the other parts for modding purposes.

[TigerHawk310]

A lot of singers and IRL instrumentalists might be interested in converting the note tubes in Rock Band to sheet music or standard notes, for 2 major reasons:

1. IRL musicians know what a C sounds like, but not so much what a notetube slightly below the second line sounds like..

2. IRL instrumentalists can play a pitched instrument into the microphone for a cool way of playing the vocal part. For example, if I could convert vocal parts to sheet music in Finale, then just use autotranspose to move it into a part for a Bb instrument, I could pull out my tenor sax and play the part in the game.

Also, for custom folks, this should help you put vocals into your custom manually from the sheet music; it's easy to find vocal sheet music for most songs, and this can let you code your vocal part more or less mechanically.

I haven't been able to figure out how to rip the parts from my disc, so I started with the sample vocal part for "Say It Ain't So" at the top of this thread:

http://rockband.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1711

Pitch matching by ear was easiest for the part starting at "Somebody's". I was able to match a 58 to an F#; the octave doesn't matter for gaming purposes but I'd have to work to figure out what octave it's supposed to be in. Putting an interval of 1 equal to a half-step works correctly and sounds right when I manually enter it into Finale--so the "Somebody's" is all on an F#, the "Hei-" is on a G#, and the "ne'" is on a G.

Next, timing. The phrase "Somebody's Heine'" should be, with the quarter=78 speed used in the game, a sequence of 3 eighth notes then 2 quarter notes, but that's obviously not how the game works. A better way of figuring out note lengths is to use the measure length and divide appropriately. Measure 11 starts right on "Some", Measure 12 starts right on "crowd-". "Some" has a noteon at 19200, "crowd-" at 21127, for a difference of 1927. For the 4/4 time Say It Ain't So, this would make a quarter note ~ 480 and an eighth note ~ 240. This matches up somewhat well with the note durations encoded in the game:

"Some-" = eighth = 228
"bod-" = eighth = 212
'y's" = eighth = 117
"Hei-" = quarter = 449
"ne'" = quarter = 156

The notes that are held nearly full come out right, but the "-y's" and "-ne'" syllables are actually cut off early. If you were actually writing out the sheet music nearly exactly to the Rock Band notechart, the "-y's" would be a 16th note followed by a 16th rest, and the "-ne'" would be a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th rest. You can do it that way, or you can make life a little easier for yourself by ignoring rests and using noteon to noteon intervals to set timing. In this case:

19200 4 lyric Some-
19200 4 noteon 58 75
19428 4 noteoff 58 0
19460 4 lyric bod-
19460 4 noteon 58 96
19672 4 noteoff 58 0
19688 4 noteon 58 79
19688 4 lyric y's
19805 4 noteoff 58 0
19914 4 noteon 60 80
19914 4 lyric Hei-
20363 4 noteoff 60 0
20379 4 noteon 59 75
20379 4 lyric ne'
20535 4 noteoff 59 0
21034 4 lyric is
21034 4 noteon 58 100

"Some" = 19460-19200 = 260 = eighth note
"bod-" = 19688-19460 = 228 = eighth note
"y's" = 19914-19688 = 226 = eighth note
"Hei-" = 20379-19914 = 465 = quarter note
"ne'" = 21034-20379 = 655 = 480+175 = quarter + dotted sixteenth note

Also messy, but more like how the ear hears the notes. Because the timing is inexact, it may not be feasible to transpose either way automatically, but a program could list recommended note length which the user could override--sometimes you'll want the rest, sometimes you won't.

I'd like to check that the pitch correspondence is the same between songs, but haven't been able to figure out how to rip the disc (X360) based on the other files...how do I get at the vocal midi parts? I don't actually care about any of the other parts for modding purposes.

[ajanata]

Quarter notes should always be 480 MIDI pulses (the times for noteon/noteoff events are given in MIDI pulses), but even if it isn't this is provided in the MIDI's header.

I believe I saw somewhere (I forget exactly where) that the pitches are the same on every song. It would not make sense for them to have it different on every song. I would not be surprised if the canonical pitch of each of the MIDI notes is the actual pitch that the game wants, but I don't know enough about MIDI files to say that for certain. Also, there's no guarantee that they actually mapped them to the proper octaves.

As for ripping the content from the disc, there's a thread about a program that can detect MIDI files in a larger archive file... Being able to read the archive file from the 360 disc is left as an exercise to the reader.
_________________

Rock Band 1/2/3/LEGO/Green Day charts The Beatles: Rock Band charts (including DLC!) Guitar Hero: On Tour charts

[ajanata]

Quarter notes should always be 480 MIDI pulses (the times for noteon/noteoff events are given in MIDI pulses), but even if it isn't this is provided in the MIDI's header.

I believe I saw somewhere (I forget exactly where) that the pitches are the same on every song. It would not make sense for them to have it different on every song. I would not be surprised if the canonical pitch of each of the MIDI notes is the actual pitch that the game wants, but I don't know enough about MIDI files to say that for certain. Also, there's no guarantee that they actually mapped them to the proper octaves.

As for ripping the content from the disc, there's a thread about a program that can detect MIDI files in a larger archive file... Being able to read the archive file from the 360 disc is left as an exercise to the reader.
_________________

Rock Band 1/2/3/LEGO/Green Day charts The Beatles: Rock Band charts (including DLC!) Guitar Hero: On Tour charts

[GuestWednesday]

The pitches in the RB MIDI files are the normal MIDI pitches - if you take the vocal channel of an RB MIDI file in a normal MIDI editor like Anvil and eliminate the extremely high and low notes (their meaning is described here http://rockband.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1711 ) you basically have the exact sheet music the game is expecting you to sing! It doesn't do the diagonal notetubes correctly, so playing the MIDI with a normal program synced to the game doesn't always get you 100% (beats my own score in the likes of Gimme Shelter though!). It's easy to get these MIDI files from a PS2 disc (see other threads), not so easy from a 360 or PS3 disc (usually needs special hardware I believe).

I was considering writing a program that automatically processed the MIDI files in various ways from the PS2 disc, eg outputs a file with just the "sheet music" in, perfect robot singing, tells you the range to advise octave changes, maybe even calculates optimal OD paths (not just for vocals) etc. but I gave up quickly when Java's builtin MIDI library throws exceptions on the RB MIDI files. Might try again soon.

[GuestWednesday]

The pitches in the RB MIDI files are the normal MIDI pitches - if you take the vocal channel of an RB MIDI file in a normal MIDI editor like Anvil and eliminate the extremely high and low notes (their meaning is described here http://rockband.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1711 ) you basically have the exact sheet music the game is expecting you to sing! It doesn't do the diagonal notetubes correctly, so playing the MIDI with a normal program synced to the game doesn't always get you 100% (beats my own score in the likes of Gimme Shelter though!). It's easy to get these MIDI files from a PS2 disc (see other threads), not so easy from a 360 or PS3 disc (usually needs special hardware I believe).

I was considering writing a program that automatically processed the MIDI files in various ways from the PS2 disc, eg outputs a file with just the "sheet music" in, perfect robot singing, tells you the range to advise octave changes, maybe even calculates optimal OD paths (not just for vocals) etc. but I gave up quickly when Java's builtin MIDI library throws exceptions on the RB MIDI files. Might try again soon.

[ajanata]

Yeah, I was originally going to use Java for my chart generations/path optimization program until I found out that it doesn't like RB .mids for some reason. I ended up using PHP and a nice library to parse the MIDI files. You could use this library to parse to a text file and then do the rest in Java if you so choose, but for the time being I'm doing it all in PHP.
_________________

Rock Band 1/2/3/LEGO/Green Day charts The Beatles: Rock Band charts (including DLC!) Guitar Hero: On Tour charts

[ajanata]

Yeah, I was originally going to use Java for my chart generations/path optimization program until I found out that it doesn't like RB .mids for some reason. I ended up using PHP and a nice library to parse the MIDI files. You could use this library to parse to a text file and then do the rest in Java if you so choose, but for the time being I'm doing it all in PHP.
_________________

Rock Band 1/2/3/LEGO/Green Day charts The Beatles: Rock Band charts (including DLC!) Guitar Hero: On Tour charts

[GuestWednesday]

Thanks, might give that a go. Although I was too lazy to get this far so I don't know what I'll actually do!

[GuestWednesday]

Thanks, might give that a go. Although I was too lazy to get this far so I don't know what I'll actually do!

[Kawigi]

[Kawigi]

[GuestWednesday]

I always forget to read this forum. Still didn't get round to doing much outside some very basic php scripts but I'd like to see any java stuff you've come up with.

Going to try some simple sheet music generation programs now.

[GuestWednesday]

I always forget to read this forum. Still didn't get round to doing much outside some very basic php scripts but I'd like to see any java stuff you've come up with.

Going to try some simple sheet music generation programs now.

[GuestWednesday]

I have an ugly PHP script which takes the game MIDI files and strips out everything except the vocal track notes and lyrics. This can then be used directly in the MIDI/notation software of your choice. I don't think I should upload these MIDI files for the forums because they directly contain too much information straight from the game.

I only have Anvil really and the free version won't print/export the sheet music from a MIDI anyway (you can screenshot a couple of bars). I tried GNU lilypond, but the included scripts to convert the MIDI to its own format don't work perfectly and miss out important things like rests. Lilypond should be fine for rendering if it can be given an appropriate input though. Plus it's command line so I can run it 58 times quite easily. Anyone have any other suggestions that produce sheet music from MIDI or MusicXML or similar, are free and can be run as a batch?

The MIDI probably needs processing to somehow show the diagonal parts of the note tubes. Haven't quite figured out how they work yet - you don't hear them in a MIDI player. Guess they should be shown as glissando but it could get very messy, but sheet music autogenerated from a recording someone playing (seems to be what these MIDI files are) is rarely going to be perfect.

I'll release the scripts and/or sheet music (not the MIDI files) when they're a bit more polished.

[GuestWednesday]

I have an ugly PHP script which takes the game MIDI files and strips out everything except the vocal track notes and lyrics. This can then be used directly in the MIDI/notation software of your choice. I don't think I should upload these MIDI files for the forums because they directly contain too much information straight from the game.

I only have Anvil really and the free version won't print/export the sheet music from a MIDI anyway (you can screenshot a couple of bars). I tried GNU lilypond, but the included scripts to convert the MIDI to its own format don't work perfectly and miss out important things like rests. Lilypond should be fine for rendering if it can be given an appropriate input though. Plus it's command line so I can run it 58 times quite easily. Anyone have any other suggestions that produce sheet music from MIDI or MusicXML or similar, are free and can be run as a batch?

The MIDI probably needs processing to somehow show the diagonal parts of the note tubes. Haven't quite figured out how they work yet - you don't hear them in a MIDI player. Guess they should be shown as glissando but it could get very messy, but sheet music autogenerated from a recording someone playing (seems to be what these MIDI files are) is rarely going to be perfect.

I'll release the scripts and/or sheet music (not the MIDI files) when they're a bit more polished.

[ajanata]

Diagonal tubes are indicated by the lyric being only a + -- the diagonal extends from the stop time of the previous note to the start time of the current note.
_________________

Rock Band 1/2/3/LEGO/Green Day charts The Beatles: Rock Band charts (including DLC!) Guitar Hero: On Tour charts

[ajanata]

Diagonal tubes are indicated by the lyric being only a + -- the diagonal extends from the stop time of the previous note to the start time of the current note.
_________________

Rock Band 1/2/3/LEGO/Green Day charts The Beatles: Rock Band charts (including DLC!) Guitar Hero: On Tour charts

[GuestWednesday]

[GuestWednesday]

[GuestWednesday]

[GuestWednesday]

[FortisVenaliter]

What do you think about expanding the program? Maybe, take a dB chart file, take the syncing from it, convert it to the sheet music format, allow changes, and then supporting conversion to MIDI/chart (once TurkeyMan implements vocals)...
_________________

Louis Ingenthron
Fortis Venaliter

Developer of Unsigned
Unsigned Forums

[X] Get Unsigned up
[_] Get Unsigned online
[_] Get Unsigned Vocals working
[_] Sleep

[FortisVenaliter]

What do you think about expanding the program? Maybe, take a dB chart file, take the syncing from it, convert it to the sheet music format, allow changes, and then supporting conversion to MIDI/chart (once TurkeyMan implements vocals)...
_________________

Louis Ingenthron
Fortis Venaliter

Developer of Unsigned
Unsigned Forums

[X] Get Unsigned up
[_] Get Unsigned online
[_] Get Unsigned Vocals working
[_] Sleep

[GuestWednesday]

[GuestWednesday]