iChords chord recognition software

Found an interesting piece of software by D'Accord: iChords 2.0. It recognizes chords from music and presents them on a virtual guitar or keyboard display.

Anyone know this product and can comment on it?

Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with this app. It's too bad it doesn't have a trial period. Looks interesting though.

I believe a 20-use trial is available.

Reviews on CNET / Download.com aren't great. That said, one poor review was from a guy who was complaining that an old version didn't work on Win Vista... No sh*t? Like that's surprising for any software!

Another complained that it wasn't immediately easy to use.

Neither sounds like a very experienced user, so the trial may well be worth a look.

I downloaded the 20-use trial. I'm going to give it a go. More info to come.

Chord Recognition

I've been looking for some useful software that can help me to recognize chords from mp3 files. I've tried "iChords", but I don't like it too. It sucks. If you have a Mac or PC, try Chord Pickout. The best one I could advise - "AnySong Chord Recognition" for android devices. Works amazingly well. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egBk1Fv29Sw

Chord Recognition

ichadwick said:

Found an interesting piece of software by D'Accord: iChords 2.0. It recognizes chords from music and presents them on a virtual guitar or keyboard display.

Anyone know this product and can comment on it?

Click to expand...

I've been looking for some useful software that can help me to recognize chords from mp3 files. I've tried "iChords", but I don't like it. It sucks. If you have a Mac or PC, try Chord Pickout. The best one I could advise - "AnySong Chord Recognition" for android devices. Works amazingly well.
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egBk1Fv29Sw

I haven't tried that particular product but I've used similar packages and even written some primitive software in that problem space for my own education.

Basically the technique used by all of these programs is to use LaPlace transforms to convert the audio from time domain to frequency domain - thus producing a "waterfall" of the frequencies in any given sample. It gets pretty complex because you have to trade off between reasonable sample size and a reasonably precise frequency slice.

Once you have the waterfall of frequencies then it is fairly simple coding to go through and examine the intervals between the strongest notes and come up with the most reasonable "guesses" at the chords - often times using "hints" such as certain chord combinations being more likely and so on.

Unfortunately, real world music tends to have an awful lot going on at any one time - this is especially true of modern rock and pop music where you have all kinds of harmonics flying around from the overdriven instruments. Then, add voice for some truly complex waterfalls!

I've found that every program I've tried that attempts chord guessing does somewhere between poor and middling. I finally decided that a program like "Transcribe!" is far more useful as you can get it to display the waterfall over a piano keyboard. It can also be instructed to attempt to guess chords but it's not any better at that than the other programs are. However, I find that I can usually figure out the chords from the waterfall better than a program can - our brains still have far more processing power than hour home computers. Also, with a program like Transcribe! you can view the audio waveform and manually select samples so it's easy to force it to produce a waterfall for a very specific sample.

Someday someone is sure to solve the complexity issues and bring us a better chord guesser - maybe this is it - I'd love for that to be the case!

John

John

Howdy

Any thoughts or experience with either of these two recognition programs?

Power Tracks: http://www.pgmusic.com/powertracks.htm

and

Chord Pickout: http://www.chordpickout.com/get-chords-to-any-song-with-chord-pickout.html

Looking for a magic wand since my ear isn't cutting it.

How about this site?

http://www.ukulele.nl/

Click on the chord finder, choose the appropriate tuning (under the pitch-pipe icon), click where the string positions are on the fretboard and it will tell you the chord. Use the yellow pick icon to hear what it sounds like.

This is a fun site to explore.

I've been playing with a 99c iPad app called Uke Chord Detector, results are mixed but when it's on the money it's surprisingly good!

Gillian said:

How about this site?

http://www.ukulele.nl/

Click on the chord finder, choose the appropriate tuning (under the pitch-pipe icon), click where the string positions are on the fretboard and it will tell you the chord. Use the yellow pick icon to hear what it sounds like.

This is a fun site to explore.

Click to expand...

You are not wrong!!! And it is so well done. You can choose between the four commonest tunings to display chords on the Uke neck and you can print the song off with lots of options. It would be perfect if you could transpose instantly - you can't always match the original mp3s with your singing voice.

Neil Young fans should try "Harvest Moon" - it was made for the Uke (wouldn't be surprised if it was written on it).


As for Powertracks. I used to have that as a sequencer, didn't know it had the chord recogniser option. PT links seamlessly to Band in a Box BTW. I must download and try PT again, as I bought a legal copy, but forgot all about it when my hard drive crashed last year.

NOTE: It is a good idea to list all of your software and the URL of the site you got it from, in case your HD ever goes phut - crack and fizz.

I ran across the- http://www.ukulele.nl/ -site a while back but didn't quite understand the concept and think I still don't. I entered the url for an mp3 of the song I want and the application recognized the mp3 but asked for lyrics and chords from me. Finding the chords is what I had hoped this application would do. Didn't seem to. The mp3 was in a dynamic url so maybe that screwed things up, but it did recognize the file and could play it back. Hmmmm. If I'm missing something here please straighten me out. I used to feel relatively competent - and then I picked up the ukulele...

Thanks for the iPad app suggestion but I don't have any iAnything and my phone has a chord that connects to the wall in my office. Quaint, huh?

TG&Y said:

Thanks for the iPad app suggestion but I don't have any iAnything and my phone has a chord that connects to the wall in my office. Quaint, huh?

Click to expand...

LOL! I can relate - I have most of the technology stuff but I use it for very specific things and my daughter is always showing me new stuff that the gear I have will do. This wouldn't be quite so embarassing except that I've been a tech dude my whole life and a software engineer for over twenty years.

Whoah! I stumbled across a game-changer for this iDinosaur last night. I was doing some searches and research on recognition software and in the course of that found this recent thread on a mandolin forum:

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?88305-chord-detection-recognition-software

It's gnu/free software that does much of what I was hoping to find. Fair warning that it is absurdly non-intuitive to install (unless you are of a certain technical bent) but the people responding to the original post go to great lengths to explain how to install. I ran into the same wall one of the posters did - then followed instructions in the thread and VOILA! I can't find a way, yet, to export the chords but it's still a huge help already. Check it out if you are scouting around for something like this. The price is right. Name of the software is Sonic Visualizer and needs a plug-in called Chordio. Info is all in the thread linked above. Enjoy.