作者分享了自己创作并转写音乐的经历。他尝试使用AI工具将录音转化为乐谱，但发现现有AI技术在旋律和节奏的准确性上仍有不足。随后，他转向手动转写，详细记录了使用MuseScore将自己创作的几首曲子（如“The Duck Pond”、“Truncated Piano”、“Polka No Bears”和“Highland Rd”）从纸面草稿或脑中旋律转化为标准乐谱的过程，并分享了部分音频。作者认为，尽管AI辅助转写尚不成熟，但手动创作和转写仍是保留和分享音乐创意的有效方式。

🎵 AI在音乐自动转写方面尚不成熟，作者尝试了多种AI工具（Claude Opus 4.1, Gemini Pro 2.5, GPT-5）将录音转化为乐谱，但结果均未达到理想精度，尤其在节奏方面存在较大偏差，表明当前AI技术难以完全替代人工的精细调整。

📝 作者通过手动方式将自己创作的乐曲（如“The Duck Pond”、“Truncated Piano”、“Polka No Bears”和“Highland Rd”）转化为标准乐谱，详细记录了从纸面草稿到MuseScore软件输入的整个过程，展示了音乐创作和记录的实践经验。

🎶 作者在转写过程中，特别是“The Duck Pond”一曲，遇到了节奏上的困难，通过与朋友的交流和反复修改，最终满意地完成了乐谱的制作，体现了音乐创作中反馈和迭代的重要性。

🎧 作者分享了部分作品的音频演示，包括使用曼陀林和钢琴演奏的“The Duck Pond”，以及其他曲子的音频版本，让读者能够直观感受其音乐创作的成果和风格。

💡 作者认为，及时将音乐创意通过手动转写记录下来，比积累想法等待大型项目更有效，这是一种保留和分享音乐创作成果的务实方法。

Published on August 17, 2025 5:00 PM GMT

I play by ear, and when I write tunes I normally save them by making arecording. This isn't ideal for sharing, though, especially withpeople who are more comfortable learning tunes from dots. I last hada go at this ten yearsago, and decided to give it another try.

I was first curious whether AI advancements meant I didn't need tolearn how to do this at all: could I just give my recording to aprogram and have it figure it out? I tried several things withoutsuccess (each in Claude Opus 4.1, Gemini Pro 2.5, and GPT-5):

Uploading an mp3 and asking for sheet music.Running basic-pitch (open source pitch to midi converter), uploading the midi,and asking for sheet music.Running basic-pitch, then midi2ly to convertto LilyPond score format, uploading that, and asking it to clean it up

I ran these all on the tune I used last timesince I had "ground truth" there. The one that came closest was thelast in Claude, which got the melody mostly right but the rhythm wayoff:

It ought to look something like this:

The Duck Pond

Seems like automation isn't there yet, at least not the tools Itried. I decided to go ahead manually.

I started with a tune I wrote on vacation this summer, after Nora hada closecall in a duck pond. I was still pretty shaken up, playing washelpful emotionally, and this tune came out. It only has four notes(she's four) and with the combination of range and specific notes Ithink it would land correctly for (Scottish) bagpipes. I started onpaper:

Then I typed it into MuseScore:

MuseScore file

Initially (as you can see on paper) I had the rhythm wrong, but it washard for me to tell. The issue is that hearing a fiddle tune playedrobotically by the computer always sounds some amount of wrong, andthe tricky thing is telling whether the issue is the quantization vshaving written the wrong thing. A friend (hi Charlie!) and I playedsome tunes at a party and I got him to take a look, and after he saidthe issue was definitely in the writing I came back, gave this anotherchance, and am decently happy now.

Here's some playing it slowly, on mandolin (electric but not pluggedin) and piano, to give a sense of how I'm imagining it:
(mandolin, mp3)
(piano, mp3)

Truncated Piano

I had another go, on a tune I wrote about a year ago. I'd just gottenmy new 73-keypiano for gigs, and was excited to play it a lot. Again I startedon paper:

This one has several mistakes, including that I wrote out twice asfast as it actually goes, and it doesn't actually use triplets. Butoverall it was much easier to get down than the previous one. Gettingit into MuseScore went smoothly, partly because this one is simplerand partly because I'm starting to get the hang of the tool. Here arethe dots:

MuseScore file

Here's what it sounds like:
(mp3)

Polka No Bears

This was starting to get fun, so I did another. This is a tune I wrotelast summer on vacation with my family in the Poconos. We saw a lotof bears, and even more evidence of bears, mostly of interactions withinsufficiently secure trash containers. Again starting on paper:

I realized after writing it down that it felt too repetitive, and infact I had often been playing it AAB without thinking about it. Sothis afternoon I added a third part to go in between the two parts Iwrote before. This has had much less time to gel, and I'm not surewhether I'll still be happy with it in a few days.

MuseScore file

And an audio version:

(mp3)

Highland Rd

In late Summer 2019 a marchy Englishy tune was bouncing around myhead. I didn't end up doing anything with it other than whistling itinto my phone, but now that I can write things up it seemed like agood time to get it out. Named after a Somerville street that isan unusually nice place for a walk.

No paper this time: I tried starting right in with the computer sincethis one seemed like it would be easy enough.

MuseScore file

And an audio version:

(mp3)

I'm excited to share these; while a more prudent approachwould be to hang onto ideas and save them up for Kickstartercommissions and gifts, most likely if I tried that they'd never getout.

Other tunes I'd like to transcribe at some point: Nora'sWaltz, Julia'sWaltz, TurkeyStrumstick.

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