Can anyone recommend any progs that can convert mp3 or wav files into midis?

Sorry, that kind of conversion isn't possible. MIDI files only tell the computer to play (for example) a "piano" instrument at a certain pitch for a certain duration. MP3/WAV files contain the sound of a piano, but the computer doesn't know it's a piano that's being played, it just knows that some sort of audio is being reproduced.

Maybe some day computers will be smart enough to recognize the instruments in a piece of recorded audio, but AFAIK that day isn't today. So you can convert MIDI files to WAV/MP3 (search the forum for "MIDI" if you want to find out how), but not the other way around.

Mint, check this out:

"Wav-2-Midi is a stand-alone application that converts a wav file
containing audio of a guitar playing, to a Midi file with the same
information.

This version of Wav-2-Midi is capable of monotonic note detection, as
well as an auto-velocity detection feature (which can be turned off, if
the user wishes). Also the sensitivity of the note detection algorithm
is adjustable, allowing you to configure the conversion to your own
playing style."

Read more here: http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/14268.html

As you can see, it is possible to convert "single voice" wav or mp3 files to midi, but a regular multiple voiced or "mixed" song will sound like garbage.

Later.

There are several commercial programs that purport to be able to do this also... likely with varying degrees of (lack of) success. It's a more difficult problem than voice recognition even...

... but Wav-2-Midi is shareware. And there is another option.

It's called ScoreExtractor (1.1), and is not quite an "automatic" conversion, but allows for tweaking of the MIDI translation before saving the results. Here is the "brief help" file the author posted on the site:

ScoreExtractor 1.1 brief help
=============================

Loading data
------------
After the ScoreExtractor starts, click File->Open and select a WAVE file
source (ScoreExtractor can only work with PCM 44kHz mono WAVE files), then
select a time-frequency picture(TFP), or press "Calulate TFP" button
if you haven't calculated one. Calculation process can take several minutes.
You can also continue your previous ScoreExtracting, for that select
the MIDI file and press "Continue ScoreExtracting" button.

Recognizing
-----------
After you load data, you can easily draw and delete notes
using left and right mouse button accordingly. Press "Z" key
to show half and double frequency(often you can see wrong peaks where
there are lines). Press "X" key and click on a point from which you want
to play WAVE and MIDI files simultaneously(change the volume level
to help yourself) then click to stop. Use "A" and "S" keys to play
WAVE and MIDI files separately.

Click File->Save to save whole MIDI file.

Temporary MIDI recording
------------------------
(firstly you need to select MIDI in Record Control,
and set a record level to maximum)
Press "C" and click a mouse button on a point from which you want to check
the conformity of the MIDI file (caution: don't record long time period -
that can take a large amount of time for calculations), then click to stop.
Click to temporary picture to change view from original WAVE TFP to calculated
from MIDI and vice versa. You can move source picture using mouse drag.
(this can be help is you have displacement between these two pictures)

Known bugs:
-----------
- using different TFP resolution/colors during one project will cause many problems;
- calculating several TFPs at the same time is impossible;
- you can set any settings at your own risk using registry editor;

End of brief help
=================

Another fun option - although not terribly useful - is to play with the output of Gunter Nagler's wav2midi (not to be confused with Wav-2-Midi, as described by ger@co). This little freeware command-line program can even use a stereo WAV file as input (whereas most other conversion programs require a monophonic signal), and provide multi-instrument, polyphonic MIDI output. Of course, that output will sound more like the experimental score from a fifties science-fiction movie than whatever the original song was supposed to be, but as I said, this is for fun.

The upside to its being a command-line program is that wav2midi could be incorporated into something like Speek's Multi frontend. And some of the sounds it produces are interesting enough to be entertaining....

- M.

Wow, there were many more tools available for this application than I thought! Thanks to ger@co, fewtch, and M for correcting me

Thanks! I'll go try the mentioned progs now.