Music Staff Visual Properties

Use Music Staff to transcribe music. It displays peak pitch information over time on a grand staff. The horizontal axis is time, the vertical axis is pitch (notes), and the colour intensity represents volume of the pitch, explained in Mode below.

This visual works best with simple, monotonic audio. More complex audio will be more difficult to read and it will take time to learn how to interpret the graph. Due to the logarithmic scale of the music staff and the linear scale of the FFT, higher pitches are resolved at much higher resolution than lower ones. Setting FFT Size higher (13) may improve accuracy for low pitch tones. Use Pitch to raise the music by one octave to improve the resolution.

Use Time to stretch the music. Use filters to remove noises or other sounds or to boost a frequency range to make the visual clearer.

Use the Speed Fader to adjust the overall key of the music to shift the spectrum up or down to more closely align the grid/sharpes.

Music Staff Settings
Setting Description
BPM Sets the measure in beats-per-minute. A vertical line is draw at this interval.
Divisions Set the number of divisions within the beats-per-minute measure. Darker lines are drawn at this sub-interval.
Range
To
Limits the frequency/pitch range to search. Any pitches outside the range are not shown. Use this setting to narrow down the range for vocals or a specific instrument.
Threshold Sets the minimum volume for the pitch to be detected. Any pitches with a volume below this level are not shown.
Mode Sets the graph mode.
  • Top 5 Peaks shows the highest peak in red (or orange for a sharp/flat note). Other peaks are shown grey-scale (or tinted yellow for sharps/flats) based on the volume relative to the highest peak. Peaks are adjusted to fit the closest note and are more distinct, making it easier to discern sharps.
  • Top 10 Peaks is the same as above, but shows more peaks.
  • Highest Peak is the same as above, but shows the highest peak only.
  • Spectrogram shows a gray-scale spectrogram on the staff, making it easier to follow the flow of notes. Sharps are shown with a tint of yellow. Due to limited resolution, bands of both white and yellow may show for a single pitch. The brightest, middle band is usually the correct one. Switch to one of the Peak modes above for a different view.