Basic Pitch Gives You MIDI, Not Sheet Music

Basic Pitch is a good piece of software that does exactly what it says, and it is regularly recommended to people who want something else. If you searched for "Basic Pitch sheet music" and landed on a MIDI file you cannot read, this is why.

What Basic Pitch actually gives you

Straight from the project's own repository: "Provide a compatible audio file and basic-pitch will generate a MIDI file, complete with pitch bends. Basic pitch is instrument-agnostic and supports polyphonic instruments... Basic pitch works best on one instrument at a time."

The command line tool can additionally save a .wav rendering of the MIDI, the raw model outputs as an NPZ file, and the predicted note events as a CSV. The Python API returns three things: the raw model output, the MIDI data, and a list of note events. It is free and open source under the Apache License 2.0, and Spotify hosts a browser demo that describes it as "a free audio-to-MIDI converter".

Two details from the source code are worth knowing before you open the file, because they explain most of the confusion:

• The MIDI tempo parameter defaults to 120, so unless you pass your own value, the file is written at 120 BPM whatever you actually played.
• The notes are written into a MIDI instrument using the Electric Piano 1 program, which is why the playback in some apps sounds like a cheap Rhodes rather than a piano.

Neither is a flaw. They are defaults in a tool designed to hand MIDI to a DAW, where you set tempo and choose a sound anyway.

The five things a score has that this file does not

1. A key signature, and therefore note names

MIDI stores note numbers. Middle C is conventionally 60, and the black key above it is 61 — but 61 is not "C sharp" or "D flat" until something decides which. That decision is harmonic: the same pitch is spelled differently in F sharp major and A flat major, and getting it wrong turns a readable page into a puzzle of accidentals.

Basic Pitch writes no key signature at all. Open the MIDI raw and the notation software has to guess a key and a spelling for every black-key note, and it often guesses differently from what you would write.

2. A time signature, bar lines and rhythmic spelling

MIDI note events are timestamps. A score is a grid of bars and beats. Converting one to the other means deciding the tempo, the meter, where beat one falls, and then how to write a note that began a fraction late — as an even quaver, or as the tied thirty-second the microphone actually measured.

This is the single biggest source of ugly automatic notation, and it is worst exactly where music is most expressive. A rubato phrase, honestly quantised, looks insane on the page.

3. Two staves, and a decision about hands

A piano score is two staves with a decision behind every note: which hand plays it. MIDI has tracks and channels, but a converter listening to audio has no idea which finger did what. Everything arrives as one undifferentiated stream of pitches.

A rule like "everything below middle C goes to the left hand" is where most automatic splits start, and it is wrong the moment your left hand crosses over or your right hand takes a tenor line.

4. Voices, rests and stems

Written music shows you the inner life of a texture: a held soprano line over a moving alto, rests that make a phrase legible, stems that tell you which line is which. MIDI has none of that structure — just overlapping notes. Reconstructing voices is an interpretive act.

5. Engraving

Everything that makes a page playable: beaming that follows the beat, sensible bars per system, page turns in rests, slurs, staccato, dynamics, pedal marks, fingering. MIDI velocity is a number from 0 to 127; a dynamic is a p under the staff, and they are not the same statement.

MIDI, MusicXML and a PDF, side by side

If you want the longer version of this distinction, our explainer on what a MIDI file is covers what MIDI does store — velocity, pedal, controllers — and why it is the right file for a DAW.

Turning Basic Pitch MIDI into notation, step by step

This is doable and free. It is just work, and what MuseScore offers depends on the version.

1. Set the tempo first. If you know the piece was at 84 BPM, say so, either by passing a tempo to Basic Pitch or by setting it in your notation software. Everything downstream depends on it.
2. Open the MIDI file in MuseScore Studio. Its handbook lists MIDI among the formats it can open, and says you can customise import settings under Preferences, then Import; the preferences page mentions a shortest note value for imported MIDI. Set it to the shortest note your piece really contains, not shorter.
3. Do not expect the old import panel. MuseScore 3's handbook documents a panel with a quantisation grid, maximum voices, tuplet search, "Split staff" ("suited mainly for piano tracks - to assign notes to the left or right hand of the performer") and "Is human performance". The MuseScore 4 handbook page on MIDI import says the panel is "not currently implemented". We have not tested Studio's import, so plan to split the hands and fix rhythms manually.
4. Then do the musical work: set the key signature, respell accidentals, fix hand assignments, rebuild voices, add dynamics, pedal and phrasing, and lay the page out so it can be read.

The time this takes depends on the piece, and we have not timed it.

When Basic Pitch is the right tool

None of this is an argument against it. Use Basic Pitch when:

• Your destination is a DAW. You want MIDI to trigger an instrument, and tempo and sound are your decisions anyway.
• You want free and local. It runs on your machine; nothing is uploaded.
• You are building something. There is a Python API and a command line tool, and the licence is permissive.
• You need note events, not notation. The CSV output is genuinely handy for analysis.
• You enjoy engraving. Some people do, and MuseScore Studio is free.

When a transcription service saves the work

The difference is not accuracy — it is which decisions are already made when the file lands. A tool that produces notation has committed to a key, a meter, a bar structure, a hand split and a rhythmic spelling. You are correcting a draft rather than assembling one.

For a pianist who wants a score to read at the instrument, that is most of the job. And the format you should care about is MusicXML, because it is what lets you open the draft in MuseScore, Sibelius or Dorico and fix the two bars that are wrong. You can hear the difference on a real recording, and our pricing is one piece at $4.99 rather than another monthly plan.

We are not going to publish an accuracy percentage, ours or anyone's. Clean solo piano transcribes well; dense pedalled passages, heavy reverb and other instruments in the mix all need correcting, which is exactly why shipping MusicXML matters more than any number on a marketing page. If you want to see the whole route from recording to finished score, read how to convert a piano recording to sheet music, and for the wider field of tools, our audio to MIDI converter comparison and browser alternatives to AnthemScore both list current prices.

Frequently asked questions

Does Basic Pitch produce sheet music?

No. Basic Pitch generates a MIDI file with pitch bends, and optionally a sonified WAV, raw model outputs as NPZ, and note events as CSV. Nothing in that list is notation. To get a score you open the MIDI in notation software and make the engraving decisions yourself.

Why does my Basic Pitch MIDI open at 120 BPM?

Because that is the default. In the Basic Pitch source, the MIDI tempo parameter defaults to 120, so unless you pass your own tempo the file is written at 120 BPM regardless of how fast you played. Set the real tempo before quantising, or every bar line will land in the wrong place.

What is the fastest way to turn Basic Pitch MIDI into a score?

Open it in notation software, set the tempo, and expect to fix rhythms, hands and spelling by hand. MuseScore 3 documented an import panel with quantisation and split-staff options; MuseScore Studio's handbook says that panel is not implemented, so we do not promise those settings there.

Is Basic Pitch accurate?

For a single instrument recorded cleanly, it is good. The project describes it as instrument-agnostic with polyphonic support and states it works best on one instrument at a time. Dense pedalled piano, heavy reverb and full mixes all degrade it, as they degrade every transcription tool.

Is Basic Pitch free to use commercially?

The code is released under the Apache License 2.0, and the web demo is free. Read the licence and the repository terms yourself for your specific use, and remember that a transcription of someone else's composition raises separate questions about the rights in that composition.

When should I use a transcription service instead?

When the file you want is a score rather than MIDI. A service that outputs an engraved PDF plus MusicXML has already made the key, meter, hand-splitting and rhythmic-spelling decisions, so your job is correcting a draft rather than building the notation from raw note events.

Sources

• Basic Pitch repository — outputs, flags, licence and the "one instrument at a time" note
• Basic Pitch web demo
• basic_pitch/inference.py and basic_pitch/note_creation.py — the 120 BPM default tempo and the Electric Piano 1 program
• MuseScore 3 handbook: MIDI import — quantisation, split staff, tuplets, "Is human performance"
• MuseScore 4 handbook: MIDI import — the panel is "not currently implemented"
• MuseScore Studio handbook: Opening and saving scores and Preferences — MIDI can be opened; Import preferences
• MuseScore Studio
• W3C MusicXML 4.0
• MIDI Association: about MIDI

Checked 16 and 19 September 2026.