Convert MP3 to Midi

I have not used it that way but Audacity is supposed to have the ability to do MP3 to MIDI
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

See a discription of the process here:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5143729_convert-mp-midi-open-source....

This web site looks like it will do it.

http://www.hamienet.com/midi2mp3

Thanks Evert and Don B we will give them a try and see what happens. Really appericate the information.

I don't think you are going to find any good answer. The site that was given above seems to go (from the url) the other direction. And I don't believe Audacity does it. The problem is that it is straight forward to take a midi file and produce audio from it, as the file spells out a very well defined subset of all possible audio. But you can't just take any wav or (even worse) mp3 file and hope to go the other way. The software would have to deal with many issues. Just some are, it would have to define what instrument is being used in the source. It would have to get the timing right of each note, and make decisions about notes that are not perfectly timed. It would have to be able to ignore things that are not in the midi instrument set, including singing and even spoken word, as well as other sounds. It would have to be able to separate multiple instruments played at once, either playing the same note or different notes.

It certainly might be possible for a program to listen to audio and produce a simple midi file, at least in some simple cases, much as OCR can look at a picture of text and produce a text file with some level of accuracy. But it is an even harder problem, unless you limit the source input to something very simple like a monophonic source. And I don't know of anyone who has done it. Overall there are far easier ways to produce midi files, such as midi authoring software.

we are finding that out. All we have been able to find is eithe wave to MP3 or MP3 to wave and some others but none to MIDI. we just may have to break down and buy some but don't really care about doing that. Just like to play and see what we can do. Thanks for the input.

If you are looking for tunes, try this site:

http://freemidi.org/

They claim to have tons of free midi songs. The one I sampled had a pretty simple structure. Try it and see what you think.

Thanks jackj180 What we want to do is take a number of songs we have and make them into ringtones for our cell phones, but don't want to have the added cost on the cell bill. (just cheap I guess)

Are you sure the format can only be MIDI? I've loaded mp3 audio files on my Samsung flip-phone and they work fine as ringtones.

Right now, it plays my wife's favorite song - about 15 seconds of George Thorogood - Bad To The Bone. That's "her song."

What kind of phone(s) do you have?

Midi to MP3 is relatively easy
MP3 to Midi is not practical (especially vocals)

As a musician for many years I have hoped for such a program for years. I believe you will not find anything (free or commercial) that can do a decent job by any standard. All the examples you might find are very simple instruments, not comples, and not realistic. The transformation is far to complicated.

There is a ton of excellent midi music (instrumentals only) on the web but it is all composed from scratch with/on midi instruments and not converted from another format. The quality varies wildly based on the skills of the performer.

There are a lot of Midi ringtones of popular music (instrumental) that have been "composed" and not converted. Most phones will also play MP3 clips/samples.

We are using a samsun courier. It played a couple of MP3's but the wife cant find then on her phone after loading them on her card. I just load the songs into my file on my computor and then hool the phone by usb and it puts the on it. I think she need to read a little more or just call verizon.

Just go here http://tinyurl.com/btzyd and send the tone to yourself. I used this for a lot of ring tones. I just took songs I liked and cut pieces out of them using free software from the web and then saved the pieces of the song. I then went the site linked above and sent them to my phone. I use Verizon and have done this with a Samsung phone and a Motorola phone. It worked perfectly with both phones. I used .mp3 files for both phones.