How to transcribe piano music online for free

Piano is one of the best instruments for automatic transcription. Every key has a fixed, stable pitch, notes start with a clear hammer attack, and the instrument’s range matches the model exactly. A free online piano transcriber can turn a recording of a piano piece, a pop accompaniment or your own improvisation into a list of notes and chords in a couple of minutes.

Why piano works well

Clear attacks. Each note starts with a hammer strike, which makes note beginnings easy to detect precisely.
Fixed tuning. Unlike voices or violins, a piano can’t bend or slide between notes, so each detected pitch maps cleanly onto a key.
Full range. Noteform’s Polyphonic mode uses Spotify’s Basic Pitch model, which covers A0 to C8, all 88 keys.

How to transcribe a piano recording

Load the recording: upload a file, use Record tab audio for a performance playing in another tab, or use Record input to record a piano in the room or a digital piano through an audio interface.
Select a passage of a few bars to start with.
Choose Polyphonic mode, since piano almost always has several notes at once, and press Transcribe.
Press play. The on-screen keyboard lights up the notes sounding at each moment, which makes it easy to see chord shapes and compare them with what you hear.

The sustain pedal

The sustain pedal is the biggest challenge in piano transcription. With the pedal down, notes keep ringing after the key is released, so the recording can’t show when the pianist actually let go. Expect note end times in pedalled passages to reflect how long each note rang rather than how long it was held. For learning a piece, start times matter most. Read the notes by when they begin and use your own judgement, or the score if you have one, for how long to hold them.

Separating the two hands

The transcription lists every note together in time order, not split into left and right hand. A simple way to divide them:

Notes below middle C (C4) usually belong to the left hand.
Notes from middle C upwards usually belong to the right hand.
Where the parts cross or the left hand plays high chords, let the musical lines guide you: the melody is usually the highest note at each moment.

Cleaning up a piano transcription

Overtones. Loud bass notes can create false notes an octave or a twelfth higher. They’re flagged overtone?, and you can remove all of them in one click.
Soft inner notes. In a full chord, the quietest middle notes are the most likely to be missed. Add them with + Add note.
Fast passages. Rapid scales and ornaments are detected note by note, but very fast trills may merge. Loop the passage and check it.
Recording quality. A close, dry recording works best. Phone recordings in reverberant rooms blur endings and add noise; a digital piano recorded directly from its output is cleaner still.

Chords from piano parts

Polyphonic mode also estimates chord names from the notes, including seventh chords and slash chords such as C/E. Piano voicings often leave out the root or spread notes across both hands, so a chord label can differ from a lead sheet even when the notes are right. Check the notes first, then recompute the chords from your corrected notes.

Transcribing your own playing

Improvised something you like? Record it with Record input, transcribe it, and download the text file. You’ll have every note you played with its timing, so the idea isn’t lost. It’s also a useful practice check: transcribe a scale or a passage and see whether the notes are even and the timing is where you meant it to be.

For jazz piano in particular, read how to transcribe a jazz solo online.