Is there software that can reliably create standard notation on its own? (I.e. you plug the guitar into, say, a DAW, play whatever you like, and the program generates standard notation for what you’ve played)
Not without a guitar MIDI system. Ableton Live can transcribe single note (monophonic) audio to MIDI, which could be exported to Notation software, but not without a ton of manual adjustment to create a professional looking transcription.
Audio to Notation transcription is in a rather primitive state of tech evolution. The real answer is No, you have to use your ears.
I see. I hope audio-to-notation programs are coming to us at some point in the not too distant future. (Though I know that music folks who believe strongly in the benefits of old-fashioned transcribing won’t like it.) Okay, patience then. Thanks:)
Jam origin has pretty good audio to midi software…and it’s polyphonic. I bought it years ago - hella fun. Its$100…I can say the support is good.
I’m not that familiar with MIDI. Can you describe how audio-to-midi works?
The short answer is no.
Here’s the detailed answer -
There have been attempts
e.g.
http://www.sibelius.com/products/audioscore/ultimate.html
But they don’t work very well, Artificial Intelligence would be required to do this, maybe one day.
The software would have to seperate the guitar from the rest of the song, identify all the pitches, work out which string the note is on, if it was picked or legato, clean or distorted, if a whammy bar was used and which pickup e.g. Neck or Bridge, etc.
You need a human with great ears, great chops who understands written notation to do that. The elite transcribers can also get the rhythms accurate e.g. dotted 16ths, complex tuplets, notes tied across bars, etc.
You will have to pay someone or learn how to do it yourself, it will take 10 years of transcribing to get good at it.
Check out Levi Clay - he’s that man!
“The hardest arsepect of transcribing is understanding where notes fall relative to a beat” - Levi Clay
On the other hand, if you know the notes you’re playing on the guitar, and know the rhythmic subdivisions of those notes (or can work it out via trial and error by listening to MIDI playback), something like Guitar Pro will let you enter guitar tab and note duration, and give you the results in tablature with accompanying standard notation.
You should also spurn such thing should it ever exist.
Transcribing music (your own or other peoples) will make you a much better musician. 