An open-source music transcription application.

Important Notice

AudiTranscribe was officially archived on 9 September 2023, due to mounting issues with the project that I can't solve. Interested parties that want to contribute to AudiTranscribe are welcome to make a fork of the repository. :)

Features

AudiTranscribe was built to assist you in transcribing music pieces.

• Convert supported audio files into spectrograms for easier transcription.
• Play notes alongside the music piece to get a "feel" of what notes are being played by clicking on the appropriate row on the spectrogram.
• Get a sense of how the notes are arranged in the song.

Why make AudiTranscribe?

Transcribing music by ear is hard. Tiny details in music pieces may be left out when transcribing by ear, and it takes practice to properly transcribe notes from a song. AudiTranscribe was created to ease this process and allow the average person to find out the notes of their favourite songs.

Also, professional music transcription services cost a lot, especially if you plan to use the transcription service a few times over a year. In that case, the cost of these services (which range from $40 to $120) are not worth it. AudiTranscribe is meant to be an Open-Source and free alternative.

Installation

This section will guide you through the installation of AudiTranscribe. For the dependencies required, see the dependencies below.

Using An Installer

Windows

1. Head to the latest releases section.
   • If there are no current releases, you may want to choose a pre-release version instead.
2. Under the downloads section, download the Windows installer.
3. Unzip the installer package. The package should contain one .exe file.
4. Run the application.
   • It is highly likely that an alert like "Windows protected your PC" would pop up. This is normal, and is due to AudiTranscribe not being a recognized app yet.
   • If you see such an alert, click on "More Info", and then click on "Run Anyway" at the bottom of the screen.
5. Follow the installation instructions.
6. The application should be installed once completed.

macOS

1. Head to the latest releases section.
   • If there are no current releases, you may want to choose a pre-release version instead.
2. Under the downloads section, download the macOS file.
3. Unzip the installer package. The package should contain one .dmg file. Do not open the .dmg file yet.
4. If you were to open the .dmg file now, it would likely be quarantined by Apple due to it lacking a proper signing key. To fix this, open Terminal and run the following command. The command will remove all attributes from the .dmg file and makes it no longer quarantined. (Note: You may be prompted to enter your password.)

   sudo xattr -cr path/to/the/dmg/file

5. Once the command is run, open the .dmg file.
6. Drag AudiTranscribe.app into the Applications folder.
7. Right-click AudiTranscribe.app and select "Open". You should see a message "AudiTranscribe is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin". Click on Cancel.
8. Again, right-click AudiTranscribe.app and select "Open". Now click on "Open" in the pop-up that appears.
9. In the future, you just need to open AudiTranscribe normally.

Linux

These instructions are most applicable to users on Ubuntu, or any Linux system that is running on amd64 with .deb installation capabilities.

1. Head to the latest releases section.
   • If there are no current releases, you may want to choose a pre-release version instead.
2. Under the downloads section, download the Linux file.
3. Unzip the installer package. The package should contain one .deb file.
4. Open the .deb file using the "Software Install" application.
5. Click "Install" on the window that appears.
6. Wait for the application to fully install. Then, close the installer window.
   • Make sure you read the licence information for AudiTranscribe.
7. Run the application!

From Source

This guide will assume that Apache Maven and FFmpeg are installed.

You will first need to obtain the source files. You can do this in multiple ways:

• Download the latest release/pre-release from the "releases" section of the GitHub page;
• Download the latest files on the staging branch;
• Download the latest files on the main branch;
• Download the files on any branch.

Once the files have been downloaded, you need to set up AudiTranscribe with maven. Run the following commands:

# Install custom dependencies from the "lib" directory
mvn validate

# Install the rest of the dependencies from the maven repository
mvn -B clean:clean compiler:compile javafx:jlink

# Test installation
mvn test

That should complete the "from source" setup of AudiTranscribe.

Dependencies

The only dependency needed is FFmpeg: a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. AudiTranscribe uses it to help process different audio files.

Note:

• For Windows and macOS, AudiTranscribe will attempt to automatically install FFmpeg. You do not need to manually install FFmpeg unless specified.
• For Linux and others, manual installation of FFmpeg is required.

For Developers

If you are planning to develop for AudiTranscribe, please ensure that the following dependencies are installed on your machine:

1. Java 17
2. FFmpeg (Version 4 or later)

In addition, there are some additional dependencies to install and configurations to set up for specific platforms:

• Windows:
  • The WiX Toolset 3 is needed to generate the AudiTranscribe executable for Windows.
    • Make sure that the .NET 3.5 feature is enabled on your Windows device. To enable it, follow these steps:
      1. Go to the Control Panel.
      2. Under "Programs", select "Programs and Features".
      3. Choose "Turn Windows features on or off". You may be prompted to enter an administrator's password.
      4. In the list of features, choose ".NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)" and then click "OK".
      5. If a popup asks whether to download features, select "Let Windows Update download the files for you".
  • The Apache Maven project manager needs to be installed.
    • Make sure the JAVA_HOME system environment variable is set to the JDK location.
• macOS: On macOS, the Xcode Command Line Tools needs to be installed to make AudiTranscribe run in development. You can install the XCode Command Line Tools by running:

  xcode-select --install
  

  in a terminal.
• Linux: The following instructions are most relevant to Ubuntu. However, other Linux platforms may follow these requirements as well:
  • The bin-utils package needs to be installed on your machine in order to access the objcopy command from the shell. Install it by running:

    sudo apt-get install binutils
    

  • The fakeroot package needs to be installed in order to properly generate the Linux package. Install it by running:

    sudo apt-get install fakeroot
    

  • Please ensure that jlink is properly installed on your machine by running:

    jlink --version
    

    If an error appears, please install jlink by running:

    sudo apt install openjdk-17-jdk-headless
    

    or a similar command on your Linux machine.

Once all dependencies have been installed and configurations are set, proceed to Install From Source.

Security Policy

Read AudiTranscribe's security policy at SECURITY.md.

Contributing to AudiTranscribe

Please read the CONTRIBUTING.md file.

Licences

Full licence information, including dependencies' licences, can be found here.

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public Licence V3.