How to Convert Audio to MIDI (Free, 2026 Guide)

You hum a melody, record a piano riff on your phone, or find a loop you love, and you want the actual notes so you can edit them, change the instrument, or write sheet music. That is exactly what converting audio to MIDI does: it listens to a recording and writes down which notes were played and when. The good news is you no longer need expensive software or a music degree to do it. Below is how to convert audio to MIDI for free, what to expect, and how to get a result that is actually usable instead of a mess of random notes.

What audio to MIDI conversion actually does (and what you need)

Audio is a recording of sound. MIDI is a set of instructions: play C4 at this moment, hold it this long, at this velocity. Converting one to the other is really a transcription problem. Software analyzes the pitches in your recording and guesses the notes. If you want the deeper version of this, read what audio to MIDI actually is for the full picture.

To follow along you need two things: an audio file, and a browser. That is it. Supported formats include MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A/AAC, and OGG, so most recordings, exports, and downloads will just work. You do not need to install a plugin, create an account, or pay anything.

One honest expectation to set now: transcription works beautifully on clear, isolated parts and struggles on dense full mixes. A solo piano, a single vocal line, a guitar, or a synth lead will come out clean. A finished song with drums, bass, vocals, and three layered synths all at once will come out approximate. This is true of every audio-to-MIDI tool on the market, not a limitation of any single one. More on getting clean results below.

The fastest way: convert audio to MIDI in your browser

The quickest method is the converter on this site. It is an audio to MIDI converter that runs entirely in your browser, which has two real benefits. First, it is fast, with no waiting in a queue. Second, and more important for a lot of people, your audio file never leaves your computer. The file is decoded locally and is never uploaded to a server. No sign-up, no daily limit, no watermark on the output.

Under the hood it uses Spotify’s open-source Basic Pitch model running through TensorFlow.js. A couple of things make that a good fit. Basic Pitch is polyphonic, so it can detect chords and several notes playing at once, not just a single melody line. It is also instrument-agnostic, meaning it does not care whether you feed it a violin or a Rhodes. And it is a small, fast model, which is why it can run right in a web page instead of needing a big cloud GPU.

Step by step

1. Open the audio to MIDI converter and drag your audio file onto the page (or click to browse). MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, and OGG all work.
2. Let it process. The file decodes and runs through the model locally.
3. Look at the piano-roll preview. This shows the notes the model detected laid out over time, so you can sanity-check the result before you do anything with it.
4. Download the standard .mid file. You can also grab a piano-roll PNG if you want a quick visual reference of the transcription.
5. Open the .mid in your DAW or notation software and start editing.

That is the whole flow. For most people, dropping in a clean recording and downloading the MIDI takes under a minute.

The manual and DAW alternatives (and why they are harder)

You can convert audio to MIDI without a dedicated tool, but it is more work. Some digital audio workstations have a built-in audio-to-MIDI feature: Ableton Live can convert audio to MIDI (Melody, Harmony, or Drums to MIDI), Logic Pro has Flex Pitch you can bounce out, and various paid plugins like Melodyne can detect notes and export MIDI. These can be excellent, especially Melodyne for monophonic lines, but they cost money, they have a learning curve, and they tie you to one piece of software.

The fully manual route is to load your audio into a DAW, listen back, and play or draw the notes in by ear on a MIDI track. This gives you total control and the most accurate result if you have the ear for it, but it is slow and it requires you to actually know the part. For a quick idea capture or a loop you just want to riff on, opening a browser tab and dropping in the file is dramatically faster, which is why the in-browser approach is usually the better starting point.

How to get a clean result

The single biggest factor is what you feed it. A clean source beats clever settings every time.

Isolated parts beat full mixes. If you can, run a single instrument or vocal through the converter rather than a complete song. If you only have a full mix, separate the parts first using a stem splitter, then convert the stem you care about (the piano, the vocal, the bass line). Converting an isolated stem will dramatically improve accuracy.

Use the Advanced settings to clean up the output. The tool exposes a few controls that map directly to common problems:

• Onset confidence decides how sure the model must be that a new note started. Raise it if you are getting too many spurious notes; lower it if real notes are being missed.
• Note confidence filters how certain it must be that a note exists at all. Higher values give you fewer, more confident notes.
• Minimum note length throws out very short blips. Raise this to kill the machine-gun stutter of tiny false notes that often appear on a busy recording.
• Tempo lets you set the BPM so the exported MIDI lines up to a grid in your DAW.
• Pitch bends can be turned on for expressive, sliding parts like vocals or lead guitar, or left off for cleaner, quantized notes on something like piano.

A good first move when a result looks noisy is to nudge up minimum note length and note confidence. That alone clears out most of the clutter. For a piano or other percussive, clearly-pitched instrument, the defaults usually get you most of the way. See convert piano to MIDI for piano-specific tips.

What to do with the MIDI file

A .mid file is a universal format, so it opens in essentially any music software. Drag it onto a track and you can change the instrument, fix wrong notes, quantize the timing, or transpose the whole thing.

• Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro: drop the .mid onto a MIDI/instrument track and assign any virtual instrument. Now your phone-recorded piano can become a synth, strings, or anything else.
• GarageBand: import the MIDI to a software-instrument track to edit and re-voice it for free on Mac or iOS.
• MuseScore: open the .mid to turn your recording into editable sheet music and export a PDF or print it.

This is where the real value shows up. Once a performance is MIDI, it is no longer fixed audio. You can quantize a sloppy take, swap a piano for a pad, or pull individual notes out to reharmonize.

A few honest answers

Will it be perfect? No automatic tool is. Expect to do light cleanup, especially on busier material. Treat the output as a strong head start, not a finished score.

Is MP3 good enough, or do I need WAV? Either works. A clean recording matters far more than the file format, though a higher-quality source never hurts. If you specifically have MP3s, the MP3 to MIDI page walks through that case.

Is it really free and private? Yes. There is no account, no limit, and no watermark, and because the conversion happens in your browser the audio is never uploaded. The simplest path is to just open the audio to MIDI converter, drop in a file, and see what you get. For a clear, isolated part, that first result will probably surprise you.