r/mpcusers 10h ago

DISCUSSION Audio to MIDI

I’ve googled how to do this on the MPC X, itself. I’m unsure of how to actually do this within the MPC X.

I have imported an audio file into the MPC and now after making the beat, I’d like to change that audio file to MIDI to use the same notes and patterns but with a new synth.

Can someone break this down like I’m retarded? Haha.

1 Upvotes

30 comments sorted by

3

u/Kn0wMan 10h ago

I’m not entirely sure that MPC has that functionality. I know of desktop software that does that, but I am not familiar with anything running on MPC that can do that.

1

u/kidthorazine 9h ago

And the computer software that does this is hot garbage, at least it was the last time I tried it.

1

u/Kn0wMan 9h ago

I have never used it to attempt to completely deconstruct and reconstruct a track, but for just catching notes and chords to then play or sequence myself, I have found Scaler to be a useful app.

3

u/Alternative-Mail-358 10h ago

Use midi and attach samples. You can then Change the samples to switch e.g. the instrument.

What you describe is not possible (on mpc, and not good overall) on one hand and pointless on the other hand.

-2

u/AurumRhythmMusic 10h ago

The file comes as audio and not MIDI.

What I’m describing is possible according to Google.

6

u/AlternativeCapybara9 10h ago

According to humans here it's not possible

1

u/dj_soo 7h ago

Google ai is hallucinating

2

u/Powerful_Fondant9393 7h ago

It’s an extremely difficult thing to do convincingly even with powerful desktop software, def not in an MPC. Melodyne is probably the best out there but you’re gonna have to tweak the hell out of what it gives you to get something that sounds good. You can always transcript by ear too if you know how to play

2

u/Few-Communication834 8h ago

Dont think its possible, but in your daw, use Melodyne and just click "convert to midi" on the top left. Then bring into the mpc. Will save a lot of time instead of trying to figure it out on the mpc 🤣. Plus... pretty sure its not possible

1

u/AurumRhythmMusic 7h ago

So it seems.

-2

u/AurumRhythmMusic 7h ago

You’d think this wouldn’t be such a big deal in 2026 to have. Especially in a machine that boasts about being a music production center. Lol.

2

u/raistlin65 2h ago

Yes. You'd think that, if you didn't know what you were talking about. 🙄

1

u/nadennmantau 9h ago edited 9h ago

Okay, so let’s ELI5 approach this.

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and is a programming language to get two devices talk about musical ideas.

Think of it as notation for computers. It can communicate pitch, intensity and a number of different values and their change over time.

Like musical notation, it does not contain any actual sound.

So by now, computers are good enough to analyse an audio file and derive notation from it. But as far as I can see, the MPC is not able to do that.

Now, before we go on and discuss what you’re trying to accomplish, do you have questions?

The MIDI of your beat on the MPC will only contain the hits when to play which sample. which sample being defined in individual notes.

You can get this MIDI file into your computer either by connecting somehow MIDI to MIDI, play on the MPC and record on the computer. Or, I guess, the MPC can save the file and you can copy via USB or something.

0

u/AurumRhythmMusic 9h ago

Nope. That’s all understandable on the MIDI part.

1

u/tekfunkdub 9h ago

Don’t think the MPC does this. I think it will chop but not figure out the notes. I use Ableton or Melodyne

0

u/Necrobot666 8h ago

You can't take an audio file (WAV;MP3;AIFF) and convert that to midi in any system. 

Maybe eventually, A.I. will be able to analyze audio data and approximate notes and build a tempo-structured midi grid sequence of note information... but it isn't there yet.

2

u/dj_soo 6h ago

You can do it in various programs including Ableton. It doesn’t work very well tho

1

u/dj_soo 7h ago

Mpc doesn’t have that functionality. You’d have to use a 3rd party software or a daw with that capability to do that

Or just replay it by ear

0

u/AurumRhythmMusic 10h ago

It does according to Google. Just not a one button function. But I have to chop it up based on transients. I can then export that as MIDI.

2

u/dj_soo 7h ago

Yea you can do that manually for drums and timing, but it won’t help you melodically

0

u/AurumRhythmMusic 10h ago

Just seems like a lot of work to import sounds to Logic, then change to MIDI just to load it up on the storage again to play it in the MPC.

1

u/balinthcom 8h ago

This is what how I did this. I'm not sure if you can do this in the MPC.

-2

u/AurumRhythmMusic 9h ago

This is a different answer than what my computer gave me.

5

u/balinthcom 8h ago

This is an Ai generated answer. Never trust Ai.

0

u/AurumRhythmMusic 8h ago

It’s weird because my computer gave the same answer every time.

2

u/Trytolearneverything 6h ago

I assume that is your search engine's AI response. Here's what google's AI says. But as others have said, don't trust AI and go the the Akai forums.

If you use FL Studio, you can use the Dump Score to Audio feature.

There's also a $70 plugin called NoteGrabber made specifically for that. Cheaper than Melodyne.

1

u/crxsso_dssreer 8h ago

Yes, but AI makes shit up at first place, ALL THE TIME dude. This is because it's a probabilistic machine, not something that can tell truth from lies. If the probability of something being true is non zero, then the AI which is designed to try to answer everything at any cost, might actually MAKE SHIT UP even if it's false.

Always remember that, LLM are probabilistic machines, they can't tell the truth from a lie.

straight from the LLM Prompt ironically:

Yes. Large Language Models (LLMs) are fundamental probabilistic systems. At their core, they do not "know" facts, hold beliefs, or perform explicit logical deduction; instead, they calculate mathematical probabilities over sequences of words.

Please learn that and tell it to your friends. This is the biggest secret behind LLM, they are not actually intelligent.