A melody drawing puts pitch against time
On the DrawMusic canvas, a mark near the left plays earlier and a mark near the right plays later. A higher mark produces a higher note. Drawing a rising line therefore makes the musical phrase rise; moving the line upward does not simply make it louder.
The selected scale constrains the pitch choices, and the instrument controls the tone. Melody brush adds a rhythmic treatment to your contour. Free drawing follows the contour more directly, while still mapping pitches to the chosen scale. Neither mode edits the individual samples of an audio waveform.
A waveform puts amplitude against time
A waveform is a graph of the signal’s changing amplitude. Zoomed out, it helps you see when a sound starts, stops, or gets stronger. Zoomed in, it can show individual cycles. It does not put one musical note on each row in the way a pitch canvas does.
If you draw a sine-shaped line across the DrawMusic canvas, you hear notes rise and fall. You have not created a sine-wave oscillator by sketching its cycles. To set raw amplitude values or design a single-cycle oscillator shape, you need a waveform editor with those controls.
A spectrogram puts frequency and energy against time
A spectrogram separates a recording into frequency components. Time runs from left to right; frequency increases from bottom to top. Brightness represents energy at a particular frequency and moment. One held note can produce several horizontal bands because an instrument also creates harmonics.
In the free DrawMusic spectrogram maker, choose an MP3 or WAV up to 20 MB. The first 30 seconds are analyzed locally in your browser, and the picture can be downloaded as a PNG. This lets you inspect a recording; it does not turn an arbitrary uploaded picture into music.
Try a comparison with your own short melody
Use one simple phrase so the difference between the pictures is easier to follow.
- Draw three separated lines in the canvas, each a little higher than the previous one. Listen to the rising phrase.
- Choose WAV to download the sound. Three downloads per day are free.
- Open that file in the spectrogram maker. Look for changes in the frequency bands at the times when the notes change.
Choose the tool from the result you need
To invent a melody from lines, use the drawing canvas. To see frequencies in a recording, use the spectrogram maker. To estimate editable notes from a clear single melody, use Audio to MIDI and check the detected pitches and lengths by ear.
Audio to MIDI estimates one pitch at a time. Chords, drums, and overlapping instruments can produce incorrect notes; a complex spectrogram is not proof that every band will become a separate MIDI part. Analysis and editing are free, while MIDI downloads require Pro when checkout opens.