Basic Pitch

About

Spotify's lightweight instrument-agnostic polyphonic note transcription model (ICASSP 2022). Harmonic CQT + CNN architecture, ~15MB, runs on CPU. Detects pitch bends. Outputs MIDI. GitHub: spotify/basic-pitch (5k stars). Install: pip install basic-pitch.

Relevance

Best starting point for banjo solo transcription. Instrument-agnostic — works on banjo without modification. Pitch bend detection handles slides and chokes. Outputs MIDI but no string/fret assignment for tab.

Mentions

• ../sources/2026-05-19-basic-pitch — ingested summary
• ../entities/tabcnn — complementary: provides string/fret assignment
• ../entities/torchcrepe — alternative for monophonic F0 only