Okay, first of all, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I hope you and yours are doing well and having a great time and all that.

Now, on to the topic at hand. I know this isn't the case with all RealTracks, but it is with many of them. You know how, when you click on the Notation icon, then a RealTrack track, often the notation information will be displayed? Well, just how hard would it be for BiaB to go ahead and create a MIDI track from this info, if the user so desired? Seems like BiaB's already done it, in order to display the notation information, right?

Or maybe this is possible, and I just haven't found a way yet how to do it?

Why would I want to replace a RealTrack with a (possibly inferior) MIDI track? Simple. I can edit the MIDI track, and with a decent synth and other controls, you can get MIDI track sounding very nice. But mostly, I can EDIT it. I can move it around, rearrange it, and place elements of it where I want in a piece of music. Can't easily do that with a RealTrack. Well, I suppose you can chop up a RealTrack, but it isn't so easy changing what's being played.

Currently, if I wanted to copy a RealTrack, I'd have to print it to a .pdf file, then load that file into a character recognition program like SmartScore X Pro or PhotoScore & NotateMe to produce a MIDI file. Both of these packages tend to be problematic, but they work, more or less. Or, I could just do it the manual way and notate the chart into a notation package, like MuseScore. But it would sure be nice if I could just save the track(s) as a MIDI file, which it appears I'm not able to do.

So I guess that would be a big wish list item of mine for a future version of BiaB.

If the Realtrack has MIDI notation associated with it, it's very easy to create a MIDI file of that track.

Simply click on the track on the top display of tracks (not the tracks in the mixer), hold the mouse button down, and drag the track to the MID quadrant of the dropbox.

The MIDI is created in a click of the fingers and you'll find it in \bb\DragDrop (which can be accessed by right-clicking on the dropbox).

I do this regularly -- especially with piano, drums and bass. As you've already pointed out, editing is really powerful with MIDI and a good softsynth can achieve excellent results.

The image below shows how I do it with notated Realdrums.

Regards,
Noel

Look for the underline in the track header.

If the RealTrack does not have MIDI notation attached to it, one can pull the track into Melodyne then export it as MIDI. However for this Melodyne is required. If the part is polyphonic (eg piano, guitar) you will require at least the Editor version of Melodyne.

Tony

Thanks Dan, I figured out the answer to my question, and then deleted my post...
I realize now I should not have done that... No stupid questions, right?

Thanks Tony, that's a great tip...

I was always taught that it is easy to recover from a stupid question but often difficult to recover from a stupid mistake. Also, a common saying is “there are no stupid questions just stupid answers”.

Tony

Wow! Thanks, Noel! Something told me there had to be a way to do this within BiaB. Glad I was right and I'm really glad I asked the question because I would have never figured that one out.

Cool, so I just now converted a half dozen tracks to MIDI. Looks like I'm gonna have some editing fun in the next few hours.

I had one more question, but I think I answered it. I was wondering if I could do this conversion for tracks that did not display any musical notation data, and apparently the answer is "no." I've just tried a few different RealTracks where notation data is not displayed and, instead of that little MID box in the DragDrop turning green it turns red and there's a note that pops up in the bottom right corner of the screen, saying basically that there's nothing to be displayed. Too bad.

As mentioned, Melodyne Editor could do it. Much better results will be on tracks of a single instrument.

I don't know if I have a copy of Melodyne Editor -- probably don't. I just discovered earlier today that apparently I have a Melodyne VSTi -- it came up in Cakewalk, as I was having it scan for VSTi's.

So if the track is of an ensemble, such as a horn section, Melodyne won't work as well? Seems to me it could be treated about the same way a piano score would.

The freebie versions given with daws are usually Melodyne Essential. Melodyne Essential won’t do polyphonic. It is ok for vocal, bass or a single horn and that sort of thing. Right now (29th Nov 2019) the upgrade from Essential to the Editor version is US$149 at Pluginboutique. With the editor you can do polyphonic tracks so converting piano tracks or guitar tracks is possible.

I don’t often convert to MIDI but this discussion had my interest up. I dropped a guitar RealTrack to MIDI then used Addictive Keys to play it back. It gave me a really nice addition to the song. Thanks for sparking a thought.

Tony

This link shows a functionality comparison between Melodyne versions.

It would seem that Assistant or upwards is required for Audio to MIDI. The base version that came with Cakewalk (Essential) doesn't seem to have that support feature.

Thanks for that I never even considered the Essential version does not do Audio to MIDI. Whilst the Assistant version does I don’t think it can do Polyphonic note editing or MIDI conversion. (It’s been a long time for me as I’ve owned the Editor version for years).

Tony

Band-in-a-Box can transcribe audio to MIDI, as long as it is a monophonic instrument. In the Audio Edit window, click on the [Edit] button and choose Transcribe. This will transcribe the entire track, or the selected region, into MIDI on the Melody or Soloist track.

This feature is available in version 2018 or higher.

To first get a RealTrack copied to the Audio track, one way is to right-click on the Master radio button (top-left), and choose Render Song to Audio Track.