The Steel Guitar Forum

OK, what's the best way to import the chords from an mp3 or wav file? I've tried with pretty bad results. My older version of BIAB did a fair job with midi files but mp3's seem to be harder to do.

To import chords from MP3 or Wave files all you have to do is click on Audio Chord Wizard that has Dm emblem to the right of song name,then import file & ditto.Try it,you'l like it.
David

Try clicking on Audio Chord Wizard just to the right of song & style name.Mine has Dm & wave image on it,then import the song & should get the job done.
David

That's exactly what I've been doin with horrible results. I'm using Ray Price's song "City Lights" as a test which basically has only has three chords in it and I get a chart with all kinds of chords that don't even fit the song.????? Is there another setting that I'm missing? The help files are no help at all.

Andy,
After you used the chord wizzard to bring the song in, did you set bar 1 at the first down beat of the first measure? If you didn't, this will cause all sorts of wierd chords and combinations.
George

Hi George, yep did that too. Before I even get that far though there's already lots of chords shown that don't even go with the song. I even tried setting the sensitivity level but it doesn't help much either. Still tryin to figure it out.

There are no chords in MP3 or WAV files.

Andy,
I didn't have the song so I had to go to youtube and get a version of it from Ray Price. Any way I used the chord wizzard and this is what it came up with.



Is this what you are getting? While there are some chords in there that are not correct, it is nothing that is not usuable.
George

That's pretty close to what I came up with too. I just assumed that it would generate a chord chart closer to the actual song chords. Someone not familar with the chord progression of that song might get pretty confused with the interpretation produced. I was simply testing out the new feature as I recently upgraded to the latest version of BIAB and thought maybe there was something I needed to do to get BIAB to recognize the chord progression much closer than that. I've had better luck with midi file interpretaions of chords than with the mp3 or wav files.

Andy,
That's pretty average for a wav or mp3 file. Some songs are better and some are worse but for the most part it gets you pretty close. In the case of the above, you can throw out the F#, Em, B, E and Dsus chords and then tweek from there.
I've done some songs that only had 1 chord that was so far out in left field that I wondered how BIAB came up with it, but it was the only one and the rest of the chords fit 100%. I've done others where a lot of chords where out but it was still correct for 80% of the song.
Midi is a whole different story when it comes to translation and will generally be much closer.
Either way, it still beats trying to figure out everything by hand and entering it in measure by measure.
In this case, once you set bar one and send it over to BIAB, you only have to change the measures that are messed up and since the audio is still there, you can compare it with the audio and adjust it to get it right as needed.

Thanks George, I'll keep that in mind.

The chart isn't wrong. It's written the way a keyboard player thinks, not a guitar player. Em7 is also a G6th for example and the slash chords D/F# is a D with an F# bass note. It takes some time getting use to reading these charts. Looking at the chord progressions and taking note of where the chords are going helps me a lot in reading them. Sometime you have to trust your ears. When I played guitar with church praise team the charts would have some strange looking chords in them, Am7,C/D,G. This is a -2/5/1 progression, the C/D voicing is not a complete chord. I would play a D7. Also, the 5 (D) chord might be written as a Dsus, Dsus7 or Cmaj7/D. This is where need trust your ears. They're all extended D7 chords.
Henry

Andy Sandoval wrote:OK, what's the best way to import the chords from an mp3 or wav file? I've tried with pretty bad results. My older version of BIAB did a fair job with midi files but mp3's seem to be harder to do.

I've used this over a 100 times and can say that it is by far the most accurate "transcriber" I have used.

There are some things that MUST be done to get "great" results.

1. Convert those MP3 files to a standard wave file. Then import them. While the human ear can't tell the dirrerence it seems the PC can.

2. Listen to the content. The Wizard devides the sound into "frequency zones" which it uses to determine the chord structure. If the root note is in the base "zone" while the 3,5,7 are in the mid zone you will likely get a false reading.

In the Wizard's main menu is a menu option called "Analysis". In this you can set defaults that can improve the read. In the above case you can lower the base note "split" so the wizard reads the correct root note.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do to get great results is to insure that the bar measures are hitting on the correct beat. You do that by moving (dragging) the bars to match up to the first measure beat. Sometimes moving the first beat corrects all following and sometimes you must move several within the song. This takes some pratice (took me about two weeks to get good at it!). If the tempo "drifts" you HAVE to either stretch or shorten that measure's time. If you want to see how this effects the chord readings just move some beats around and see what happens. Looks like a different song!.

3. The Wizard will try it's best to determine the "tempo" of your song - but defaults to 4/4 TS.

If you are importing a 3/4 or 7/8 or anything other than 4/4 be sure to change that setting.

Also, don't be afraid to bump the tempo up/down a little to get a better reading. Sometimes that is all it takes.

This can be a great tool to use but does take some time - but IMHO time well spent.

........ Now if we could just get Peter to convert all that data to MIDI Notes . . .. . well then you will really have something!!??

Blessings, Bo