How to Figure Out the Melody of a Song
Using Melodyne (free trial version works for this) and Cubase, we will extract the melody from a song and turn it into notes on the piano roll using Cubase's audio to MIDI function.
Transcript: The first thing you'll need to do if you don't have iZotope RX is download the trial from iZotopes website.
Okay now load up iZotope RX and open a song that you want to find the melody for.
Now slide the meter from half waveform half spectrum display to full spectrum display.
Click up top and locate the section of audio where the melody is most clearly heard.
Now zoom in to the spectrum and try to look for levels of visual intensity that might correspond to the melody notes you're looking for.
I am going to look for the melody in the midrange of the spectrum as the timbre of the instrument that is playing the melody is midrange heavy.
Once you have found the notes highlight them using some tools from the toolbar. Personally I find the brush tool to be the quickest for me.
The controls are similar to photoshop, hold down shift to add more to your selection while brushing, whereas holding down alt while brushing will remove parts from your selection.
Once you have your melody nice and selected, copy it, select all, and press delete.
Now hit paste and your selection will appear solo'd in the waveform display.
If you play it back you should hear the fundamental notes by themselves with minimal distortion. HOW COOL IS THAT? If you messed up no worries, just press control/cmd+z or click on one of the events from the history window in the bottom right hand corner and start over again. Now all you have to do to export the edited .wav file if you have the full version of iZotope RX is use the save as dialogue.
If you have the trial version no worries, it will just require you to playback from iZotope RX while recording the system audio into Cubase. This is explained further below. Once you've gotten your audio out of RX import it onto a new track in Cubase and double click on the audio to bring up the sample editor. Click on VariAudio and hit anilyze. And that's all there is to it! The relatively accurate notes of the melody will be displayed!
How to record system audio:
Some audio interface drivers such as RME TotalMix allows for loopback to record system audio.
Soundflower also does this and is a free download that works for both Mac and PC. The other option is to manually plug the output of your soundcard into the input and record that.
That's the end of this tutorial. If you enjoyed it remember to dislike and unsubscribe. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!
