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pythonmidimusic21

music21: picking out melody track

I'm processing a bulk of midi files that are made for existing pop songs using music21.

While channel 10 is reserved for percussions, melodic tracks are all over different channels, so I was wondering if there is an efficient way to pick out the main melody (vocal) track.

I'm guessing one way to do it is to pick a track that consists of single notes rather than overlapping harmonics (chords), and the one that plays throughout the song, but is there any other efficient way?

Solution

  • Depending on how your particular files are encoded, you could try filtering based on each part's name. That would look something like this:

    import music21
from music21 import *

piece = converter.parse("full_path_to_piece.midi")
for part in piece.parts:
  print(part[0].bestName()) # replace this print statement with a relevant if statement