Re: [Denemo-devel] How to input Audio in Denemo

[Richard Shann]

On Sun, 2012-02-26 at 10:24 -0600, Wally Lepore wrote:
> Hi Members,
> 
> This is a better email address to contact me.
> 
> I just subscribed to the list today. Thank you.
> 
> I recently downloaded Denemo and would like to know how I can input
> audio
> (via playing my guitar into the microphone)
I suspect you will get too many spurious notes using to make this
quicker than typing note names at the keyboard - every scritch and
squeak may trigger a note detection.
>  so it results in notes being
> automatically displayed on the music staff.
> 
> Denemo claims that this feature is available but I don't see any
> documentation on how to accomplish this.
Under Help menu there is a Browse the Manual option (or use Fn1)
it has this section:

Playing Notes into Denemo - Audio (Souncard Mic Input)

Denemo can listen for, and detect the pitch of notes on the mic input of
the computer; it doesn't attempt to guess the rhythm - such systems do
not work well - but you will find that playing the notes in time will
help you to play them in, as well as make playing them in a musical
experience rather than a chore.

Playing the notes in can be much quicker than using the keyboard since
the note octave and accidental are all given just by playing the note.
If you are able to play a musical instrument then this will probably be
much faster for you than typing note names, octave shifts and
accidentals at the computer keyboard. Using the headphones out of an
electronic keyboard avoids "noises-off" interfering with the pitch
detection. Many microphones and pickups benefit from some
pre-amplification - it is worth getting the level right before you
begin.

When you select the Input->Audio on the Main Menu the Pitch Recognition
window pops up. While the mouse pointer is inside the score drawing area
the score is sensitive to pitches heard via the microphone input. The
background colour of the score changes to show that the notes will be
entered into the score.

There are two ways of using the pitch entry - Overlay mode (default) and
Insert mode. The button marked Insert causes notes to be entered into
the current measure in the prevailing rhythm - the mode is set to Insert
for this. The button marked Overlays overlays the notes already present
with the pitches you sound. There is a third button, marked Tuning,
which is a state-of-the art musical instrument tuner.

Music is entered into the measure which holds the cursor. If you are
overlaying a rhythm already entered, then the first un-overlayed note in
the measure is overlayed by the note detected. You can delete the
overlay using the regular delete keys, or clear them altogether if you
want to start over in a measure. If you are in Insert mode then the
notes detected will be inserted at the cursor position.

Use the enharmonic shift to select whether Bb or A# should be entered
when you enter the given pitch - you can usefully go as far as B# and
Fb.

Use the transpose control to shift up or down by octaves.

Most of the other settings would require study of the Aubio
documentation to understand, but the one marked threshold may be useful
to make the detection less sensitive to ambient noises if using a
microphone with an acoustic instrument.

The best set-up is to plug the headphones-out socket of an electronic
keyboard into the mic input, and choose a piano setting on the
electronic keyboard.

If you don't have any musical instrument that you can plug directly into
the mic in, then you can use an acoustic instrument with a microphone,
in which case move your microphone closer or further from your
instrument to get reliable detection. Too close and you get double
detections, too far and you get missed ones. To check for good detection
open a piece of music, set Overlay mode and put the cursor in the first
measure and play the piece in – the notes should all turn blue if you
have perfect detection. It is worth while getting perfect detection –
more than one or two miss-detects per piece of music and you may want to
use the Insert rather than the Overlay method.

The Audio Input button introduces a special entry mode where the pitches
you play in will overlay the rhythm, appearing as blue notes. You can
delete any wrong pitches using the usual delete keys, without deleting
the rhythm. In fact if you have an "interloper" (an extra spurious note)
you can delete it and the other pitches will all move along to their
correct places.

Another method of playing music in acoustically doesn't involve entering
the rhythm separately. For this select Input->Audio and then choose
Insert instead of Overlays on the Pitch Recognition Panel that pops up.
With Insert the sounded notes are entered as in the prevailing rhythm.
The same applies if you have MIDI, only you just need to select Insert
mode to enter the notes in that case. So by choosing a rhythm (e.g.
half-note, quarter-note, or a custom rhythm pattern) and playing in the
pitches you can enter the music into a blank score.
> 
> I've looked on the forums and help guides but see nothing explaing how
> to
> configure Denemo to accomplish this task.
> 
> Thank you kindly for your time and thank you for creating this
> wonderful
> program.
The manual is somewhat out-of-date, but as we are now at version 0.9.14,
your version may well be too :)


Richard Shann


> 
> Wally Lepore  NJ USA
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