Tune to Notes: Sing or Play and See the Notes
Sing, hum, whistle or play a tune one note at a time – or open a recording – and see it written out as letter names, doh ray me, numbers or colour notes, with the rhythm in crotchets and quavers. Play it back, tidy it, download it, or turn it into a lesson for your instrument.
The microphone is used only to hear which notes you play, on this device. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent. Audio files you open stay on this device too.
How to use it
- Press Listen. Your browser asks if the page may use the microphone – choose Allow.
- Sing or play your tune, one note at a time. The big letter shows the note you are playing now, and the needle shows if it is a little sharp or flat.
- Press Stop listening. The microphone switches off and your notes appear, bar by bar.
- Tap a note to change it (up, down, longer, shorter, join, delete), then press Play my tune to hear it.
No microphone? Use Open an audio file (WAV, MP3, M4A or OGG) or Try a sample recording, which makes a short recorder-like tune in your browser.
Speed, time signature and rhythm
The page works out the speed for you (in crotchets a minute) and fits the notes to the nearest semiquaver, quaver or crotchet – you choose the shortest note. If the rhythm looks wrong, untick Work out the speed for me and type the speed you played at, or choose a longer shortest note. Pick 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 or 6/8 to set the bars. The key is a best guess from the notes you played; you can choose another.
Ways to see your tune
Notes by bar shows each bar as a row of boxes – a wider box is a longer note – with the rhythm word (ta, te-te) under each note. Falling notes shows the tune falling onto a piano keyboard. Recorder shows the fingering for each note on a descant recorder, and Guitar tab and Ukulele tab show the string and fret. There is no stave view yet.
Make it a lesson
Choose an instrument and press Make this a lesson: your tune opens in the falling-notes piano or the play-along page for recorder, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, violin, singing, guitar or ukulele, with fingering, slow-down and wait mode. The tune is passed on inside this browser tab only. You can also download it as MusicXML (for music-writing programs) or MIDI.
Getting good results
- A quiet room helps most. Keep talking, music and tapping away from the microphone.
- Start each note cleanly (tongue it on a recorder or wind instrument, sing “la” or “doo”), and hold it steady.
- Two notes of the same pitch in a row need a tiny gap between them, or they join into one long note.
- If the page says it can’t hear you, move closer or play a bit louder; if it says the room is noisy, find a quieter spot.
How it works, and how well
The page looks for the repeating pattern in the sound about a hundred times a second (a pitch-finding method known as YIN, published by de Cheveigné and Kawahara in 2002), turns steady stretches into notes, and guesses the key from how long each note sounds (using published key profiles by Krumhansl and Kessler). It is all done by simple maths in your browser – no AI model and nothing sent anywhere.
In our tests on 139 computer-made recordings (1,899 notes: recorder, flute, clarinet, violin and sung-vowel sounds, with vibrato, background noise and room echo) it found 99.4% of notes at the right pitch and time; 0.4% were an octave out. Clean recordings scored 100%. Real instruments in real rooms will do a little worse – always check the result.
Recordings with chords
This page writes down one note at a time. A better transcription for recordings with chords or a band (using an open-source note-finding model that would run on this device) is planned as an optional extra download – it is not part of this page yet. For the chords of a recording, use the Chord Player.
The microphone and your privacy
The microphone is used only to hear which notes you play, on this device. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent. The microphone only starts when you press Listen, and stops when you press Stop listening, leave the page or switch to another tab. There is no speech recognition and no words are kept. Your settings (speed, time signature, reading style) are remembered in this browser only.
Questions
Does it record me?
No. The microphone is used only to hear which notes you play, on this device. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent. The sound is measured in tiny pieces (about a hundredth of a second each) and each piece is thrown away straight after. There is no speech recognition and no words are written down – only notes and their timing.
What can I play into it?
One note at a time: singing, humming, whistling, recorder, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, violin, or a single line on guitar, ukulele or piano. Chords (several notes at once) are not written down yet.
Which audio files can I open?
WAV and MP3 work in every modern browser; M4A and OGG work in most. Files are opened on this device only and never uploaded. Recordings up to 10 minutes.
How accurate is it?
On clear single notes it gets almost every note right (see the test results below), but real rooms, other sounds and very fast or sliding notes cause mistakes. Treat the result as a first draft: tap a note to fix it.
Does it work without the microphone?
Yes. Open an audio file or try the sample recording. Every other music tool on the site still works with the keyboard and on-screen buttons and needs no microphone.