Humming to MIDI — Turn a Melody You Hum into Notes
Record yourself humming or singing a melody, and turn it into editable MIDI notes — capture song ideas the moment they appear.
- Voice / humming
- Melody ideas
- Songwriters
Click a note to hear it
What is humming to MIDI?
Humming to MIDI captures a melody you sing or hum and writes it out as editable MIDI notes. Instead of hoping you remember a tune later, you record it once and the pitch-detection model turns the vocal line into notes you can arrange, harmonize, or hand to any instrument.
Because a hummed line is monophonic — one note at a time — it is one of the most accurate sources for transcription. The result is a clean starting point for songwriting: a hook you can transpose, quantize, and build a full arrangement around.
How it works
Record your humming
Use your phone or computer mic to record yourself humming or singing the melody, then upload the MP3 or WAV.
Preview and refine
See your melody on the piano roll immediately. If soft notes were missed, raise the detection sensitivity and re-transcribe without re-uploading.
Export and keep creating
Fix any off notes in the editor, download the MIDI into your DAW, or sign in to export sheet music as MusicXML/PDF.
Formats & limits
- Input formats
- MP3 / WAV / WebM / M4A
- Output
- MIDI
- File limits
- 50 MB · 10 min
- Price
- Free · no sign-up
- Recording
- Microphone capture supported
Highlights
Record in the browser
Capture your melody straight from the mic — no separate recorder or file-upload step.
Pitch-bend capture
Keep slides and vibrato by transcribing your voice with pitch bends enabled.
Idea to arrangement
Export MIDI into any DAW to voice the hook with real instruments and finish the song.
Tips for humming recordings
- Hum clearly at a steady tempo — legato, connected notes transcribe better than choppy phrasing.
- Record in a quiet room; background noise is the top cause of ghost notes in vocal recordings.
- Keep it monophonic: one note at a time. Harmonizing with yourself confuses any transcription model.
- Enable pitch bends if your melody has slides or vibrato you want to preserve.
Frequently asked questions
Can I convert humming to MIDI for free?
Yes — recording, transcribing, and previewing are all free with no account required at any step. Record directly from your microphone right on this page, or upload an existing hummed recording as MP3 or WAV, and either path runs through the same Basic Pitch transcription model used across this site. You get an interactive piano roll immediately, letting you play the result back against your original humming before deciding anything else. Signing in adds persistence and export on top: your results save to a history you can revisit, full note editing unlocks, and you can export MusicXML or PDF sheet music alongside the plain MIDI download — but none of that is required just to try it, and the transcription itself is identical whether or not you're signed in.
What should I record for the best result?
A clean, monophonic humming or light singing recording in a quiet room gives the model the clearest signal, since a hummed line is naturally a single note at a time, which is exactly the kind of source this transcription approach handles most accurately. Steady tempo and clearly articulated pitch — rather than sliding loosely between notes — make onset detection more precise, so the model can tell exactly when one note ends and the next begins. Background noise, reverb from a large room, or accidentally humming a harmony against yourself are the most common causes of stray or duplicated notes, so a close microphone position in a quiet space is worth more than any post-processing setting you could adjust afterward.
Does it preserve slides and vibrato?
Yes, but only if you enable the pitch-bend option before transcribing — it isn't on by default, since capturing continuous pitch movement adds complexity that isn't needed for a simple, steady melody. With pitch bends enabled, expressive details like a slide into a note or vibrato held on a sustained pitch are captured as MIDI pitch-bend data layered onto the note, rather than being flattened into the single nearest semitone or split into several separate short notes. If a hummed line comes out with unexpected note fragments in vibrato-heavy sections, re-transcribing the same recording with pitch bends turned on, rather than re-recording the take, is usually the fix — no new upload needed.
What can I do with the MIDI afterwards?
Import it into any DAW — Logic, FL Studio, Ableton, GarageBand, or anything else that reads Standard MIDI Files — to assign a real instrument sound to the hummed idea and build a full arrangement around it, which is the most common next step for a melody captured this way. Alternatively, sign in and export the transcription as MusicXML or PDF sheet music if what you actually need is notation to read, share with a bandmate, or work from at an instrument rather than an audio file. Either export starts from the same corrected transcription, so fix any wrong notes on the piano roll first — whichever format you export afterward inherits those corrections, so there's no need to fix the same notes twice.