Sound Engineering & Making Music: Converting Audio to MIDI In Your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to Perfectly Intertwine Organic and Virtual Instruments Plus a Lesson on Audio Plug-ins
Monday, November 24th, 2008
I’ve written a lot about the future role of MIDI in popular music. Two weeks ago I wrote about a software plug-in that I wanted created that would convert audio to MIDI in real time, and then play the MIDI as if it were coming from a real MIDI controller thereby allowing you to control a synthesizer with an organic instrument such as a guitar.
It already exists.
In my wanderings on the Internet it wasn’t like I didn’t find it right away, but it did take a while for me to understand what I was looking at… hey, is that a hole in the ground?
It took longer to write the blog posts than it did to download, install, and implement the conversion software. I feel a little strange about that, but the one consolation is that I predicted EXACTLY how the software would work.
Plus, it’s something I really wanted, and so now I have it. That’s a win.
First the lesson on audio plug-ins:
1. Steinberg created the Virtual Studio Technology (VST) plug-in system for Cubase. It had complicated and expensive licensing, it only became popular after third-party developers started to disregard the licensing rules. VST is now the standard plug-in format for most DAWs in the windows environment, including Adobe Audition 3.
2. Apple went their own way and created a new system for plug-ins on the Mac, which they call Audio Units (AU).
These plug-ins work at the operating system level and should work with whatever sound recording software you have installed at the time (that use plug-ins).
So, now the plug-in (this is really cool and I recommend that you try it even if you are not a musician)…
Widisoft makes an Audio to MIDI conversion audio plug-in to be used directly in the sound recording suite (DAW) that you are using. They have VST and AU versions of the plug-in.
I am going to focus on the Mac, if you need this for windows (or VST) you can find instructions on the Widisoft website.
You can try the plug-in for free. It will last 20 days, but will only work for 15 seconds before cutting out for 15 seconds, working then not working etc. It costs $80 dollars to purchase, which I recommend, it works well and I’ve not seen anything like it.
The whole thing should only take a few minutes.
1. Download the audio to MIDI conversion plug-in here.
2. Install it with the instructions (a few seconds).
3. Follow these instructions to get it to work with GarageBand.
That’s it. Now you can control a MIDI Synthesizer with an organic instrument in GarageBand.
Plus… Audio Unit Plug-ins breathe new life into GarageBand eliminating many of the things that make it suck. True.
-J Roland Kelly
