| 1. Why are there two flavors of IntelliScore? |
IntelliScore comes in two editions: standard and polyphonic.
The polyphonic edition is designed to recognize polyphonic WAVE
and MP3 files and live audio, that is, music that contains several
notes at a time, such as chords, music played by a group of
people such as a band or orchestra, or a single person playing
an instrument that produces more than one note at a time, such
as a guitar or piano. Most music is polyphonic. IntelliScore
Polyphonic is the world's most advanced WAVE to MIDI and
MP3 to MIDI converter capable of converting live or recorded
polyphonic music into usable MIDI data.
If you don't need polyphonic recognition capability,
consider the bargain priced standard edition of intelliScore.
For example, if you want to use intelliScore with solo
singing or an analog instrument that can only create one note
at a time, such as a flute, monophonic recognition is all you
will need. The standard edition of intelliScore includes
all the same advanced features as intelliScore Polyphonic,
except that it is limited to recognizing WAVE, MP3, and live
audio music that contains one note at a time per stereo track.
You will only need one of the editions of intelliScore
to fit your purposes. The polyphonic edition not only recognizes
polyphonic WAVE, MP3, and live audio, but also monophonic music
with the same level of accuracy as the standard edition. If
you choose the standard edition and decide later you need to
move up to the polyphonic edition, you will find that the transition
will be easy, as the two editions work similarly.
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IntelliScore works in two modes: live and prerecorded.
In live performance mode, intelliScore allows you to
control a MIDI-enabled instrument or your computer's sound card
in real-time while you play an acoustic instrument. In conjunction
with the included Hubi's MIDI Loopback Device under Windows
96/98/Me, you can record MIDI directly into your favorite sequencer,
such as the included Anvil Studio. If your computer is running
Windows NT/2000/XP, we recommend using intelliScore in
conjunction with MIDI Yoke instead (which can be downloaded
free of charge for non-commercial use). Traditionally, this
capability would require an expensive, specialized MIDI pickup
hardware for your acoustic instrument. IntelliScore saves
you the expense of hardware MIDI pickups and additionally works
with any instrument.
In prerecorded mode, intelliScore listens to WAVE and MP3 files
containing recordings of music and helps figure out the notes
played, as well as their duration and dynamics, tempo changes,
likely chord names, and the prominent key, and writes them to
a MIDI file. This saves you much of the time and trouble required
to figure out and write down the notes, so you can spend more
time making music and pursuing other creative endeavors. Once
your WAVE and MP3 files are converted into MIDI, you can do
things that are impossible with audio files, such as changing
individual notes and swapping instruments. You can also play
the MIDI file, notate it, print it, and study it if you have
the appropriate software.
IntelliScore is particularly useful in helping you figure out
the notes present in prerecorded WAVE and MP3 files, especially
when you don't know (or don't remember) how to play it. The
music could come from live performance, an audio CD, a tape
recording, an existing WAVE or MP3 file, or another source.
When the audio is monophonic, intelliScore has the additional
capability of accurately tracking expressive changes in volume
and pitch while notes are being held, faithfully recreating
effects such as pitch bend, vibrato, tremolo, and portamento.
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| 3. What does IntelliScore not do? |
To give you a fair representation of intelliScore's capabilities,
we want to tell you a few things that it cannot do (yet).
First, it is important to understand that MIDI cannot
store as much information as audio. MIDI data can indicate
which notes to play, but not the sound of the notes or
all the possible nuances of expression. MIDI merely tells
sound cards and synthesizers what notes to play, when
to play them, and some basic instructions on how to play
them. It is up to the sound card or synthesizer to create
the sounds, which may sound different from the instruments
used to create the original music. MIDI is not capable
of recreating sung words, although it can represent the
pitches that were sung.
Although
intelliScore can recognize WAVE, MP3, and live audio
containing several different instruments, it cannot
at this time differentiate one instrument from another.
No software currently exists that can separate instruments.
However, intelliScore allows you to assign recognized
notes to different MIDI tracks (or ignore them) depending
on their pitch and position in the stereo image. This
will save you editing time if you wish to separate the
notes in the generated MIDI file manually using a sequencer.
Additionally, intelliScore recognizes only those instruments
that have a strong pitch. Therefore, it cannot recognize
most drums and percussion (nor can any other software).
Finally, intelliScore can convert WAVE and MP3 files to MIDI,
but not the other way around. To convert MIDI to WAVE, we recommend
WAVmaker.
Also see the FAQ on accuracy.
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IntelliScore employs three different recognition algorithms
based on several new discoveries in psycho-acoustic physics
and are very complex. For example, intelliScore includes 95
instrument filters obtained by analyzing over ten thousand recordings
of musical instruments. IntelliScore 5.1's specialized monophonic
algorithm is remarkably accurate on WAVE, MP3, and live audio
that contains only one note at a time, and even detects slight
variations in pitch and volume. Nevertheless, some instruments
and forms of music are recognized better than others. Some WAVE
and MP3 files may simply refuse to be recognized. Recognition
is best on audio files that are recorded at a good volume,
are not too fast, and contain only a few instruments and minimal
drums and percussion. To find out if intelliScore will work
for you, we recommend you download our free demo. You can also
evaluate some of the unedited results from our own sample MP3
files.
Don't expect intelliScore to convert a CD to a finished MIDI
file, but intelliScore will get you well on your way. Although
after using intelliScore you may need to clean up the MIDI file,
users say this saves them an average of 35% over having to figure
out and enter the notes into a sequencer without intelliScore's
help. You can use the time you save to pursue more creative
endeavors than picking out notes.
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| 5. Don't I need a supercomputer to run it? |
Although intelliScore performs millions of calculations to
generate a single MIDI file, all you need is a Pentium class
computer to handle the job or a Pentium II for live performance
mode. The faster the CPU, the faster the recognition speed.
In fact, most computers today are fast enough to recognize in
real-time, so that each second of audio takes less than a second
to process. See the system requirements for a full list of what
your computer needs to run intelliScore.
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6. Do I need to be a rocket scientist to use it? |
No. IntelliScore is designed for use by musicians with average
computer skills, not physicists. All program settings
use familiar musical and MIDI terminology. You don't need
to know how to read music to use intelliScore, although
it would be helpful. Most musicians become comfortable
using intelliScore and creating MIDI files in less than
an hour, followed by learning the more advanced settings
at a comfortable pace later on. In fact, intelliScore
is so intuitive, many users start using intelliScore without
ever using the help system or reading the manual. IntelliScore
includes a wizard to guide you through the process of
preparing intelliScore to recognize your WAVE, MP3, or
live audio. IntelliScore also includes context-sensitive
detailed descriptions of all settings, troubleshooting
tips for error messages, examples of several conversion
projects with settings, handy solutions to common problems
and questions, and several tutorials.
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It has been said that automated music recognition is the musical
equivalent of speech recognition. If this is true, then polyphonic
music recognition is like listening to several conversations
going on at once and figuring out all the words spoken by everyone.
Perhaps it is due to this extra complexity that the technology
of music recognition has lagged behind speech recognition.
Conventional wisdom suggests that Fourier transformation and
wavelet theory would be the best approaches to polyphonic
music recognition and wavelength determination for monophonic
recognition. If these methods really worked, however, there
would be many more programs out there that claim to recognize
music.
Due to the inherent limitations of the above methods,
intelliScore uses a combination of new, revolutionary approaches
based upon several new discoveries in psycho-acoustic physics.
The core technology is patented. IntelliScore is now in its
fifth generation and combines additional proprietary capabilities.
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8. What else do I need to use IntelliScore?
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It depends how you intend to use intelliScore. First,
be sure you are using a Pentium PC with 16MB of memory
and a sound card. If you are recording from a microphone,
connect the microphone to the "mic in" jack on your sound
card. If you are recording from a CD, place the CD in
your CD-ROM drive. After converting your recording to
MIDI, you can use a sequencer program to edit the MIDI
and/or convert the MIDI file to notation and print it
out. The full versions of intelliScore include the award-winning
Anvil Studio program, but just about any sequencer will
suffice. If you want to use your analog instrument as
a realtime MIDI controller, be sure you are using a Pentium
II or higher and have a MIDI interface to connect your
playback synthesizer to your computer's sound card. If
you want to use your analog instrument to record directly
into your sequencer, you will also need to install Hubi's
MIDI Loopback Device (included with intelliScore) if your
PC is running Windows 95/98/Me. Alternately, if your computer
is running Windows NT/2000/XP, we recommend using intelliScore
in conjunction with MIDI Yoke instead (which can be downloaded
without charge for non-commercial use).
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| 9. How do I see the chord names detected by IntelliScore? |
Not only does intelliScore detect the notes present in
prerecorded WAVE and MP3 files; it also attempts to identify
the names of 144 different chords and the prominent key.
Even if your audio file is monophonic, intelliScore determines
the names of implied chords based on the groupings of
notes. These chord names are written to the MIDI file
as marker events. The included Anvil Studio displays the
chord names directly above the staff. Some other sequencers
will show the chord names with the notes in the notation
or piano roll views. If your sequencer can't do this,
it should still be able to display the list of detected
chords as a list. Check your sequencer's documentation
for instructions.
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| 10. Does IntelliScore run on a Macintosh computer? |
We do not currently offer a native Mac version of IntelliScore.
However, people have claimed that intelliScore runs properly
on a Mac if used in conjunction with Windows emulation software,
such as Virtual PC.
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