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.
Start with a clear, isolated part. A solo piano, vocal, guitar, or synth lead usually gives the model a simpler task than a finished song containing several instruments. Even a simple source can produce missing notes, extra notes, or incorrect timing. Compare our three reproducible conversion examples with their source audio and raw MIDI before judging what the tool might do with your recording.
For a sung line, use the voice and vocal to MIDI converter, which starts with the Voice preset. For recording technique and false-note cleanup, follow the voice recording guide. The general workflow below covers choosing a source, comparing the detected notes and moving the result into music software.
The fastest way: convert audio to MIDI in your browser
The audio to MIDI converter on this site processes your recording on your device, without an upload queue. Conversion and Raw MIDI downloads are free without sign-up or daily limits. Saving a project to your account uploads its edits, settings and MIDI; original audio is uploaded only if you select audio backup.
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
- 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.
- Listen to the recording, select a short phrase, and press Convert selection to MIDI. The file decodes and runs through the model locally.
- 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.
- Download the free Raw MIDI
.midfile. If you want to refine it first, transpose, adjust tempo and timing, or edit individual notes, then listen to the edited MIDI and preview the automatic piano score. - Open the
.midin your DAW or notation software and start editing.
Start with a short phrase while you check the result. The first conversion downloads the model; processing time then depends on the clip length, browser, and device. Raw MIDI downloads are free. The optional one-time Music Export Pack includes the current edited MIDI, score PDF, MusicXML, a labeled note-map PNG, original- and half-speed synthesized practice WAVs, a note list CSV and guide, as a ZIP or individual files. MIDI and score previews are free before purchase. Cleanup refines detected notes rather than running a more accurate transcription model.
The score is an automatic piano draft with fixed tempo, a sixteenth-note grid and suggested hand assignment, so review the notes and rhythm. You can buy the optional Music Export Pack without signing in, or purchase credits through an account. Check the current export offer for its price and scope; Raw MIDI remains free. Choose Save project for cross-device access to edits, settings and MIDI. Original audio is backed up only if you select the audio-backup checkbox. Keep a downloaded backup of unsaved work.
For the converter and a short listening checklist together, use the audio-to-MIDI tool page.
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 with DrumRemover’s in-browser 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. Compare the result before and after: stronger thresholds can also remove quiet or short notes. See convert piano to MIDI for piano-specific tips.
What happens to nuance, timing and expression?
Audio-to-MIDI transcription can miss quiet notes, add harmonics as extra notes, choose a wrong octave or split one sustained note into several events. It estimates a performance; it does not recover the original MIDI session or preserve the recording’s timbre. Chords in one instrument and several instruments mixed together are different levels of difficulty.
Compare the same short phrase in the source and Raw MIDI before applying cleanup. Keep Raw as a reference. Pitch-bend detection may help a sliding line, but check the receiving instrument’s bend range. Quantization moves note starts toward a grid and can remove timing you wanted to keep; it is optional cleanup, not proof that detection improved. No fixed accuracy percentage is established for your recording by our small controlled examples.
For a quality-versus-speed comparison, record correction time as well as processing time using the same-input worksheet.
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
.midonto 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
.midto 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
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? Conversion and Raw MIDI downloads are free, without an account or daily conversion limit. Audio stays in your browser during conversion; optional cloud saving and AI arrangements are separate. The Music Export Pack is optional and paid; listen to the edited MIDI and preview the automatic score before deciding whether its files help with your recording. Start with a short file in the audio to MIDI converter and compare the notes with the original.