Becoming All the Instruments

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:52:23 +0530

I’ve been working on a tool using very simple math to convert humming or human whistles into musical MIDI notes.

Here’s how the idea morphed into its current form.

First, I tried using Fourier transform over chunks of the audio, which is known as the STFT. I wanted to get close to straight lines for each humming pattern or whistle. To isolate these lines, we could chunk the audio by note boundaries. I wanted to something simple that the user can supply, preferably without using any neural networks or fancy math.

MIDI on lavafroth

Becoming All the Instruments