Turn any recording into piano notes

How free piano transcription works

Play Piano Live uses Basic Pitch, an open-source automatic music transcription model created by Spotify’s Audio Intelligence Lab. It listens to short slices of audio, estimates which pitches are sounding in every frame, and detects where each note begins. Those frames are joined into notes with a start time, a length, a pitch and a loudness — exactly what a piano roll and a MIDI file need.

The whole model runs inside your browser using your device’s graphics chip. That is why it is free, why there is no upload queue, and why your recordings stay private. The model (about 1 MB) downloads once and is cached, so the next transcription starts instantly — even offline if you installed the app.

Getting the best results

• Solo piano is easiest. A clean piano recording gives the most accurate notes. Full mixes with drums and vocals work, but expect extra notes from other instruments.
• Use the Notes setting. “Fewer” removes faint and very short notes; “More” keeps quiet inner voices. It updates instantly, without running the AI again.
• Record close and quiet. Put your phone near the piano, away from fans and TVs, and avoid heavy reverb.
• Check by ear. Mix in the original recording with the Original slider to hear where the transcription differs.

We go deeper in how AI music transcription works and 10 ways to get cleaner transcriptions.

What you can do with the result

Press play to hear the notes on our grand piano while they fall onto the keyboard. Slow the song to 50% or 75%, loop a tricky passage, mute one hand to hear the other, then send it to Practice mode to learn it with a wait mode that holds the music until you play the right note. Download MIDI gives you a standard file for MuseScore (for sheet music), GarageBand, Logic, Ableton, FL Studio or any DAW.

Which audio can I use?

Use recordings you made yourself, music you own, or audio you have permission to use. Transcribing for personal study is a long tradition in music. Publishing or selling someone else’s song as sheet music or MIDI usually needs a license, so check before you share.