Guitar to MIDI: Why Chords Collapse and Single Notes Survive
Short answer
Guitar to MIDI covers three different jobs. Only one of them ends in a .mid file.
Playing a synth with your guitar while you play is live tracking. This converter is not that. Turning a recording into a MIDI file is the job it does, and we measured what happens to guitar-like audio: a single line came back 8 of the 8, and a six-string strum did not come back as a chord.
Turning MIDI into guitar tab is a third job again. The .mid you get here is the input to it, not the output.
Convert audio to MIDI Runs in your browser, no upload, no sign-up.
Three jobs hide behind one phrase
Typed into a search box, "guitar to MIDI" asks for at least three different things.
The first is playing. Software listens to your guitar while you play and drives a synth or a sampler, and most of what ranks for the phrase is that: real time plug-ins, hardware pickups and DAW workflows. Latency is the whole point there, and a file converter has nothing to say about it.
The second is the file. You have a recording of a guitar part and you want notes out of it. That is what the converter on this site does, and it is the only one of the three that ends in a .mid file.
The third runs backwards. You have MIDI and you want guitar tab. We come back to it near the end, because the .mid you get here is the input to that job rather than the output.
What we measured, on a guitar-like tone
Start with the honest part. These are tones we synthesised, not recordings of a real guitar.
Each one is a plucked string model: six harmonics, an exponential decay, no pick noise, no room and no amplifier. We built them to isolate two things a guitar adds that a piano test tone does not, which are a rich harmonic series and a note that keeps ringing after the attack.
Then the numbers, all from this build.
| Input | What came back |
|---|---|
| C major line, C4 to C5, plucked tone | 8 of the 8 notes at the correct pitch |
| The same line with a bend on E4 | 8 notes. The E4 ended after 0.37 s instead of 0.49 s, and the F4 after it ran 0.63 s |
| Six-string strum, Melody mode | 10 notes between C2 and E2. Nine of them were shorter than 0.3 s |
| The same strum, Chords mode | 6 voices: E2, B2, G3, B3, E4 and G#5. Five of the six are in the chord |
Read the last two rows together. The strum held pitches up to E4, and in Melody mode none of the output went above E2.
Why a strum does not come back as a chord
Because Melody mode tracks one pitch at a time. Six strings struck 20 ms apart are six fundamentals sounding at once, and the tracker has to choose one.
It chose the lowest one. The rest of the strum came back as short repeated notes while the chord decayed, which is why nine of the ten were under 0.3 s and why the pitch range never climbed past E2.
Chords mode is the other route, and it reads spectral peaks instead of one fundamental. On the same file it returned six simultaneous voices: five were pitches that were actually in the chord, the E3 went missing, and the G#5 was not in it. Each of those numbers is one run, so read them as what one file did rather than as a rate.
The three things guitar does that a piano tone does not
Ring-out
A guitar note keeps sounding long after the attack. That is the exact shape that gets written as two notes, because the tracker looks for a new onset while the old one is still audible.
One setting fixes most of it. Raise Min note length to 150 ms and ringing tails stay one note.
Bends and vibrato
Both move the pitch while a note is still sounding. Our bend test shows what that costs.
The note count did not change. What changed is where the boundary fell: the E4 ended after 0.37 s instead of 0.49 s, and the F4 that followed lasted 0.63 s instead of 0.51 s. The glide reached F before the next string was struck, so two events came out as one long note.
That is a timing error, and it is the kind you fix in a DAW rather than a wrong note.
The low register
An open low E sits near 82 Hz. Pitch tracking gets harder as the fundamental drops, and the usual failure is landing an octave away from the real note.
Narrow the range before you convert. Setting the low end to E2 and the high end to E6 takes away most of the room for that error, and a guitar part does not use the rest of the 88 keys.
Distortion
This is the one case on the page we have not measured. Heavy distortion should make things worse, because clipping adds harmonics that compete with the fundamental the tracker is looking for.
Treat that as reasoning rather than a measurement. Run 30 seconds first and read the note list.
Where drums sit on the same scale
Drum to MIDI is the same question pushed past where it works.
Most of a kit has no stable pitch. A kick, a snare and a hi-hat are noise with an envelope, so there is no fundamental to track and no note to write. Tuned parts can come through, so toms, a pitched kick and tuned percussion sometimes survive, and cymbals will not.
There is also a category problem. Writing a drum part as MIDI means writing hits rather than pitches, and General MIDI handles that by keeping percussion on channel 10 where a note number selects a sound. What this converter measures is pitch, which is the other measurement.
If you need a playable drum part out of a drum recording, that is drum replacement or a drum trigger. Ableton Live ships a separate Drums command for it, and Reaper bundles an Audio to MIDI Drum Trigger plug-in. Both are covered on our DAW page.
MIDI to guitar tab is a different file
Going the other way, the thing to know is what a .mid file actually holds.
This converter writes SMF format 1 with one track, a division of 480 tpqn, a track name, one tempo event, and note pairs carrying pitch and velocity. That is the whole file.
Guitar tab needs something that is not in there: which string and which fret. One pitch can be played in several places, and the file has no opinion about which one you meant.
So the route has two steps. Convert here to get the .mid, then open it in a tab or notation editor that does the string and fret mapping. Which position it chooses is decided there, not here.
The settings that matter on guitar audio
Four controls do most of the work, and the order matters.
Set the note range to E2 to E6 first. Then pick Melody for a single line part and Chords for a strummed or sustained chord. Then raise Min note length to 150 ms if notes are splitting or bending.
Last, run 30 seconds before you run the whole file. The conversion happens in your browser with no upload and no sign-up, so a test pass costs nothing.
Guitar to MIDI questions
Can I convert guitar audio to MIDI?
Yes, for a single-line part, and we measured it. A synthesised plucked tone playing C major from C4 to C5 came back as 8 of the 8 notes at the correct pitch. Chords are the hard case: a six-string strum in Melody mode came back as 10 low notes rather than a chord, and Chords mode returned six voices with five of them correct.
Can this converter turn a strummed chord into a MIDI chord?
Partly, and only in Chords mode. On our six-string test strum it returned six simultaneous voices: E2, B2, G3, B3, E4 and G#5, and five of the six were pitches in the chord. The E3 went missing, the G#5 was not in it, and Melody mode returned 10 notes between C2 and E2, which is not a chord at all.
Does it work in real time while I play my guitar?
No. This converter reads a file you already have and writes a .mid you download. Playing a synth from your guitar as you play is live pitch tracking, and most of what ranks for that phrase is software and hardware built for it instead.
Can I convert drum audio to MIDI?
Only the parts that have a pitch. A kick, a snare and a hi-hat have no stable fundamental, so there is nothing for a pitch tracker to lock onto. Tuned parts can come through, so toms and tuned percussion sometimes survive, and cymbals will not.
What is the best way to get a MIDI drum part from a drum recording?
Not on this page. Writing drum hits means detecting where each hit starts, which is a different measurement from detecting pitch. Ableton Live has a separate Drums command under Convert Melody, Harmony or Drums to New MIDI Track, and Reaper bundles an Audio to MIDI Drum Trigger plug-in.
Can I turn MIDI into guitar tab here?
No. This converter writes a standard MIDI file, SMF format 1 at 480 tpqn, and tab needs a string and fret mapping that MIDI does not carry. Open the .mid in a tab or notation editor to get tab, and expect to choose between positions yourself, because one pitch has several of them.
Why does my guitar part come back an octave wrong?
The note range is usually too wide. The converter will search A0 to C8 unless you narrow it, and pitch tracking is least reliable at the bottom, where an open low E sits near 82 Hz. Set the range to E2 to E6 before you convert.
What settings should I use for a guitar recording?
Set the note range to E2 to E6, choose Melody for a single-line part and Chords for a strummed chord, and raise Min note length to 150 ms if ringing notes are splitting or a bend is writing several short notes. Run 30 seconds first and check the note list before you convert the whole file.
Does distortion make guitar conversion worse?
We have not measured it, so treat this as reasoning. Heavy distortion adds harmonics that compete with the fundamental, and a pitch tracker has to pick one. If your take is heavily distorted, test 30 seconds and compare it against a clean pass of the same part.
Do I need to upload my guitar recording, and is it free?
No upload. Your browser decodes and analyses the audio, and the MIDI file is built in memory on your device. There is no account, no e-mail and no payment, and this converter is free with no cap on how many files you run and no watermark on the .mid.
This converter reads a recording and writes a .mid, and that is the whole job. It runs in your browser with no upload, no sign-up and no watermark, and it writes SMF format 1 at 480 tpqn. Single line guitar parts are the strong case, and chords, drums and tab are where the honest limits are.