Piano transcription

Transcribe piano music to sheet music in your browser: record yourself or drop a recording, and get a two-hand score with key, meter and tempo. PDF, MusicXML or MIDI. Nothing uploaded.

AudioRinse · sheet musicOn-device · 0 B uploaded

Drop a piano recording here

MP3 · WAV · M4A · MP4 · MOV · WEBM — up to 20 min. Nothing is uploaded.

How it works

Record the piano on your phone, or drop any piano recording onto the box above (MP3, M4A, WAV or video).
The transcriber hears every key pressed and released, on your own device. The first time, the models download once.
It finds the beat and the bar lines, gives each note to the right or left hand and spells it for the key.
Read the score on the page, then download it as a PDF, as MusicXML for MuseScore or Sibelius, or as MIDI.

Write down what you played

Improvised something you want to keep? Worked out a song by ear? Record it on your phone and drop the file here: the transcription is a starting point you can tidy in a notation app, instead of writing every note out by hand.

It also works the other way round: transcribe a recording of a piece to see what the pianist plays, then check it against your own ears.

For teachers and students

Turn a student's recording into a score to show what they played: wrong notes and rushed beats show up on the page.
Write out an arrangement you play but have never notated.
Make a practice copy of a simple piece from a recording, then correct it in MuseScore.

How a recording becomes a score

A piano check listens first. The transcriber writes any pitched sound as piano notes, so a recording without a piano is turned away instead of becoming a page of nonsense.
A transcription model trained on hundreds of hours of piano (Kong et al., 2021) hears when each of the 88 keys is pressed and let go, to about a hundredth of a second, and how hard.
PM2S (Liu et al., 2022), a model that reads a performance the way a musician does, finds the beats, the downbeats, which hand plays each note and the key signature.
Rules from engraving practice turn that into notation: each beat is snapped to 16ths, or to triplets only where the beat really is in threes, chords played a little apart become one chord, and every chord is made playable by one hand.

Getting a good score

Solo piano works best, acoustic or digital. A voice over the piano is fine, but it may add a few stray notes.
Record close to the piano in a quiet room: a phone on the music stand is enough. Heavy room echo blurs the notes.
A steady tempo helps the bar lines land in the right place. Strong rubato, fermatas and big tempo changes make the bars drift.
Trim talking and long silence from the start and end of the recording.

What to check

The notes are usually right; the rhythm is the hard part. A piece can come out with some bar lines a beat off, or in a neighbouring meter (2/4 for 4/4, 4/4 for a slow 3/4), and fast ornaments and grace notes come out as plain short notes. Play the first few bars against the score before you trust it.

To correct it, download the MusicXML and open it in MuseScore, which is free, or in Sibelius, Finale or Dorico: every note is editable there. The MIDI file opens in any DAW.

How accurate it is

We tested it on seven freely licensed recordings by real pianists, each against its printed score, through a phone-quality copy of each recording (the originals score within two points of it):

Notes that match the printed score, phone-quality copy of each recording
Piece	Pianist	Notes matching
Bach, Prelude in C major, BWV 846	Kimiko Ishizaka	99.6%
Bach, Prelude in C minor, BWV 847	Kimiko Ishizaka	99.1%
Chopin, Prelude Op. 28 No. 20	Ivan Ilić	95.9%
Clementi, Sonatina Op. 36 No. 1, I	Alessio Cesaroni	95.1%
Chopin, Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72 No. 1	Luke Faulkner	89.7%
Satie, Gymnopédie No. 1	Daria Baiocchi	82.8%
Joplin, Maple Leaf Rag	William J. Leslie	77.8%

Questions

Is my recording uploaded anywhere?

No. The models run inside your browser, on your own computer. Your recording and the score never leave your device; the only downloads are the models themselves, the first time.

Is it free?

Transcribing and reading the score on the page are free and unlimited. You get 3 free downloads a month for recordings up to 10 minutes (1 without an account), and a score's PDF, MusicXML and MIDI count as one. Pro adds unlimited downloads and recordings up to 20 min.

How accurate is it?

On seven recordings by real pianists, from 78% to 99.6% of the notes matched the printed score, 92% on average, through a phone-quality copy of each recording. Clear, steady playing does best (Bach's preludes, 99%); dense ragtime by an amateur pianist who adds notes that aren't in the score, the hardest (78%). The rhythm is harder than the notes: check the bar lines and the time signature.

Does it get both hands?

Yes. PM2S, a model trained on piano performances and their scores, decides which hand plays each note; then a key struck again keeps its hand, and every chord is checked to fit one hand's reach. On a recording of a Bach prelude, 91% of the notes land on the same staff as in the printed score; most of the rest are in the middle of the keyboard, where either hand could take them.

Can I edit the score?

Yes. Download the MusicXML and open it in MuseScore (free), Sibelius, Finale or Dorico, where every note, bar line and time signature can be changed. The MIDI file opens in any DAW or in Logic, GarageBand and Ableton.

How long does it take?

It depends on your graphics chip. A 3-minute piece takes about 15 seconds on a gaming laptop, under a minute on a 2020 laptop's built-in graphics, and one to two minutes on the processor alone, in browsers without WebGPU. The page shows the time left as it goes.

Why does the first recording take longer?

The models download once, 131 MB in all, and stay in your browser. The next recording starts at once.