Question How do i go about making covers when i can't find a MIDI for the song i want?

[REDD]

Hi, absolute beginner to making covers with Vocaloid here. Just to preface this, i have very minimal music theory knowledge, so please bear with me.
I want to make a cover of a song, but I cant seem to find a MIDI of it.
Now, I don't know music theory, so I tried tuning it by ear, and its just not working out, and it's quite tedious. Is there any way around this or am I just gonna have to get better at recognizing notes on my own?

Also, I know that some people use a MIDI keyboard to make their own MIDIs, but i sadly do not have this available to me at the moment. And again, i don't know much about music theory to the point where i can tune things by ear.

 

[uncreepy]

You don't have to have a MIDI keyboard to make MIDIs. You can draw the notes by hand in a DAW (ex: In Studio One, double click and a note appears, then drag the sides to make it smaller/larger).

I'm gonna list some advice, but I want to get this out of the way and mention that some people in the community do MIDI commissions.

Anyway, I strongly recommend starting to learn some music theory and picking an instrument to practice on. Playing by ear is not an easy task. It takes practice, which takes a lot of time. This is my experience, but it took me about a year to be able to figure out singing melodies by ear and make them into MIDIs (I still can't get the timing correct, but I can get the notes correct and the timing close enough to satisfy my curiosity). I could not do it at all until I started taking guitar lessons (only a bit over a year's worth) and actively attempting to transcribe singing melodies on guitar. It's just too hard to know what a music note "feels" like with having zero practice. (Note: I know instrument lessons are expensive. I'm just kind of uhh, dumb in the music department and really needed help, especially with something like guitar. There are a lot of amazing tutorials on YouTube for many instruments.)

I don't know how to describe it, but each note has a different feeling to me. Like F feels sad and kind of flat, but not an actual F flat note. The G sound annoys me. So I pick up the guitar and play a note and it "feels" right, like it matches the same emotion of the singing. On top of that, notes have intervals between them which also have their own feeling depending on how far apart they are. When you play an instrument enough, you "know" where each emotion/sound is and how far apart other sounds are from the note you just played. (This is really hippy dippy sounding, I am so sorry, but I just don't know how else to explain it.) So I strongly believe you can't transcribe a song without "knowing" the sound/feeling of the notes and "knowing" where to get that sound out of your instrument. The more you do it, the faster each song is.

Lastly, if you do decide to get a MIDI keyboard, I recommend picking one that has velocity sensitivity and is more than 25 keys (I had a beginner piano book and a 25 key MIDI keyboard, but quickly outgrew this in like 2 weeks because you can only play 2 octaves at once, couldn't even play Christmas songs with it because it was too small. )

Oh yeah, there are some software that you can use to sort of try to detect pitch for singing, but it's pretty cruddy and is really frustrating/the results are messy and not helpful. So I don't recommending trying to "cheat" with software. (I think that's all the advice I have. Sorry for rambling.)

 

[inactive]

There are a bunch of programs that do automated and/or semi-automated MIDI transcriptions. But I can't give any recommendations because I've never used them. Just google and see what you find.

 

[AALLF]

Hello,

I can only speak to the music theory/ear training aspect of this. I've only done the most basic things in the Vocaloid program so far. I hope you find what you need in the short term, but for the long term if you decide to go down the ear training route:

I'd second the idea of using an instrument like a keyboard or a guitar to help you learn. It will be very useful to you eventually in conceptualizing musical intervals, for as you are playing and hearing the notes, you'll see the distance between the pitches on your instrument. You will get used to what different scales/modes sound like, so you will be able to identify that in songs you want to emulate.

The Vocaloid program has a keyboard on the side that you can use to play notes, so until you can acquire a keyboard for yourself, you can maybe use that.

I hope you can find what you need. I'm here to help if you have any questions on the theory/ear training front. I also think there are resources in this forum that you can read on music theory.

EDIT: I just found these links in the Resources tab at the top of the page:

Tutorial - General Music Theory

This guide is intended to provide a list of resources as a starting point for studying music theory. After that bit of introduction, let's move on to the resources. Below are resources I've either used or likely will be using to learn music...

vocaverse.network

Resource - How to use the major scale for songwriting

(Note: This post is a work in progress as I learn more music theory. I also don't have time to write it all in one sitting.) WHAT IS C MAJOR / WHAT IS AN OCTAVE?: "C major" is all the white keys on the piano. C D E F G A B C = one octave. Note...

vocaverse.network

 

[REDD]

Hello,

I can only speak to the music theory/ear training aspect of this. I've only done the most basic things in the Vocaloid program so far. I hope you find what you need in the short term, but for the long term if you decide to go down the ear training route:

I'd second the idea of using an instrument like a keyboard or a guitar to help you learn. It will be very useful to you eventually in conceptualizing musical intervals, for as you are playing and hearing the notes, you'll see the distance between the pitches on your instrument. You will get used to what different scales/modes sound like, so you will be able to identify that in songs you want to emulate.

The Vocaloid program has a keyboard on the side that you can use to play notes, so until you can acquire a keyboard for yourself, you can maybe use that.

I hope you can find what you need. I'm here to help if you have any questions on the theory/ear training front. I also think there are resources in this forum that you can read on music theory.

EDIT: I just found these links in the Resources tab at the top of the page:

Tutorial - General Music Theory

This guide is intended to provide a list of resources as a starting point for studying music theory. After that bit of introduction, let's move on to the resources. Below are resources I've either used or likely will be using to learn music...

vocaverse.network

Resource - How to use the major scale for songwriting

(Note: This post is a work in progress as I learn more music theory. I also don't have time to write it all in one sitting.) WHAT IS C MAJOR / WHAT IS AN OCTAVE?: "C major" is all the white keys on the piano. C D E F G A B C = one octave. Note...

vocaverse.network

Im only going to be a cover artist to start out with, so I just need to know music theory for transcribing purposes. (though im prolly gonna be paying for MIDI comms/working with what's available until i get the hang of it)

I used to have a really old MIDI keyboard but i dont even think it's still around... Im not sure what other instruments i have lying around.. I do have a DAW though. I have Mixcraft!

I also use Vocaloid1, so the piano roll isn't clickable, sadly.
Thanks for all those resources, btw. I really appreciate your help.

 

[Krin]

One thing I'd recommend is FL studio's piano roll for making midis. (although I'm sure lots of DAWs have this). I've gotten fairly good at midi-making for USTs and my music theory is absolute sh^t aside from the fact that I know my keys.

What I do to make my midis;

1. Load up an "on vocal" of the song you want to cover

2. Set the tempo to match the song tempo (look it up, or FL Studio has this feature where you tap to the beat to try and get close to the actual tempo.)

3. Line up the on vocal with the with the beat. Sometimes using a metronome (within the DAW) helps

4. Add a instrument/synth (I use "3 osc") to your channel rack

5. Open the piano roll, and start mapping out the notes as you hear them.

• It starts out super slow for your first few midis, but it gets faster very quickly every time you make another midi.
• Sometimes if I cant figure out a note, I hum it to myself and try to match the note with my voice lol. One good site I found EXTREMELY helpful with this is Tonescope

5. After I'm done, I prepare tracks for midi output (FL Studio has a macro that does it)

6. Export!! And then I just import it into UTAU. It's been awhile since I used a midi I made in Vocaloid but I think there's a place where you can import midi's just like UTAU. (although that was V4, not sure about V1)

Hopefully my explaining gives you somewhat of an idea on how to start your midi haha. I think the little guide I wrote above would work for most other DAWs too and not just FL Studio. gl on your midi making!!!

 

[Vegetaljuce]

Tbh i'm gonna be the lone voice with this claim but don't think you need to know any music theory at all. All you need to do it sing the note you need out loud and hold it while you check different notes until you find a match. Of course the drawback to this is you sound like an idiot to anyone in the vicinity but... these are the sacrifices we musically challenged must make.

Most DAWs have a virtual midi keyboard option where you can use your computer keyboard to input notes. But I personally don't find it very useful to do it that way because, like I said, I have to test every note by singing before I lay it down. I guess you'd probably be faster if you learned music theory, but you can do it without. Also yeah, the fact that the side-piano isn't clickable in Vocaloid1 is kind of infuriating LOL

Additionally, like Krin said, I think it's necessary to have the original on-vocal lined up in the background if you're playing it by ear.

 

[Cyana]

If you have a copy of the song you're trying to cover, drop it into a daw, then load up a basic piano/other vst and copy the notes onto the piano roll, playing it along with the reference track to check. There'll be a lot of trial and error, especially early on, but when you finish you'll have a midi you can load into Vocaloid.

Music theory is a big topic, but if you're only interested in transposing melodies, the one part of it I absolutely recommend is intervals. It's so, so much easier to recognise an interval than it is to guess/trial and error every note. There's a bit of a misconception that learning music theory means you can hear a random note and instantly know what it is. Very few people can do this, even amongst experienced musicians. What they do is recognise the interval, because the sound of intervals is very distinct - they trial and error only the first note, and for the second, they hum the song to themselves, and instead of hitting random keys until they find the matching one, they can say "oh, that's a minor third, it must be x note" and put it in straight away.

 

[REDD]

so, quick update:
Thanks to everyone who helped me out by giving advice! I really appreciate you guys takin' the time to help a newb like me lol

So what I've been doing is trying to transpose a MIDI for this song:
And seeing as i have (well, technically HAD, but i'll get to that in a moment) a copy of Mixcraft 8, and it wonderfully offers musical typing as a feature! So i tried to think of anything that could give me a better idea on where the notes would be, and I tried looking on YT to see if there was any synthesia versions of the song, and surely enough,
So i've just been looking for the vocal tracks in this video, (as well as some backing vocals) and visually looking at the piano roll, listening for the right scale, and it's turned out pretty nicely! The only iffy thing about it with me is getting the timing right, but i've been managing to get by, switching between the original song to check the pitch and guess how long the notes are, and switching to the off-vocal to see how the MIDI sounds on its own with the instrumental.
Speaking of, i found an almost perfect off vocal for the song:
Its almost perfect for what i want, with the only flaw that it still has the backing vocals included. I was hoping to do ALL of the vocals with my vocaloid, so if anyone knows of a reliable way to edit those backing vocals out, i'd love you forever.

But now, here comes the (potentially) bad news.
Today, when i booted up my computer, it wouldnt load properly. It started up, but there was a problem starting the OS properly, and i couldn't get inside. I took it in to one guy my dad knows of to see if he would fix it, but he had no luck. We're gonna take it into the place i got it from to see if they can fix it, but if not, the hard drive's going to have to get wiped. Completely. Which means i'm going to lose all the progress i made on the cover, which was about a few days worth of work. Not to mention, more urgently, that I'm going to lose my Vocaloids.

You see, I bought Leon, Lola and Miriam just before they were discontinued, so it would be an understatement to say that it would suck if i had to wipe my HDD. Nevertheless, if it does come to that, at least i have their backup DL files on a USB somewhere in this house.(i just have to bust my ass looking for it) I'll work on this cover regardless.

Again, thanks to everyone who helped me out, and let's hope things turn out better from here on out!