Convert Stereo Drums to Midi

[crossovercable]

Has anyone had any success converting stereo drum tracks to midi accurately ?

Any feedback will be appreciated.
CC.

[NystagmusE]

MIDI isn't audio.

[emef]

Ableton Live can convert audio files to midi files pretty well

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/conve ... o-to-midi/

[lfm]

Best result is probably if you make two identical stereo tracks of the same stereo track - and switch phase of one. This allows you to blend and pan to make a certain instrument stand out better. So you could probably detect simultaneous hits if panned differently, and maybe use eq as well.

With this technique you can fairly well detect a certain instrument/voice in a full mix even.

Then use audio to midi converting plugin, which there are many.

But if you are lazy you might run audio to midi first, and just listen and add what wasn't detected by ear. Assign the midi to a drum plugin. If a snare or hihat when kick and one was missed, just add the missing one manually.

[chokehold]

The magic word is "triggering". There are several trigger plugins around, ranging from free to f'ing expensive and from limited functionality to quite flexible. Some can only play a sample after a hit (in the audio material) was detected, but some will also output MIDI notes which you can then record.

When using a trigger plugin, it may help to get better results if you copy the source track several times and then filter/EQ each track to highlight one certain instrument on it and trigger each instrument individually. Dynamic EQs are pretty good helpers for this.

[lfm]

XLN Audio just released a Trigger:
http://www.xlnaudio.com/addictivetrigger

Designed for drum replacement - have no idea how good it is.

Sonar also released some drum replacement functionality - but not sure if it includes midi or is just replacing certain drum instruments audio. There are some video tuts for this as I understand.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/Drum-Replacer

[ParticleRay]

I don't how easy this is to do but I am curious to know why you'd want to do it instead of programming drums. Since I use FL Studio I would just take the drums I want to make midi into slicer to save groove template, then I'd program the drums and use the groove template to quantize what I programmed.

[LawrenceF]

What chokehold said, band pass the kick and snare to isolate for triggers or transient detection. The other parts become progressively more difficult or near impossible to isolate because of the overlapping frequencies.

As to why, often enough you just want to supplement the drums with midi, especially if the stereo premix isn't that great of a mix.

[crossovercable]

. . near impossible to isolate because of the overlapping frequencies.
As to why, often enough you just want to supplement the drums with midi, especially if the stereo premix isn't that great of a mix.

I think that's it !

Tried XLN when it came out but silly them forgot to put Hi Hat & Cymbal Detection in, said it might be in future version.

Tried Ableton some time back and it came the closest to being good but misses on the fills Cymbals, Toms.

"two identical stereo tracks" tried that with Audition it has a Center, Left, Right, Surround Extractor.

Thanks All, I appreciate your help very much.
Will keep trying.
If anyone wants a headache, here is a sample:
Drums120Even16.rar

[LawrenceF]

Actually, Melodyne might do it pretty well, or maybe better or faster than doing it manually, but there will still probably be some overlap and require some editing because the pitches won't be precise enough for everything to just line up.

[chokehold]

I think the Slate Trigger has some inter-track interaction that suppresses detected hits from other tracks on the current track. So say you have a Slate Trigger on the kick, a Slate Trigger on the snare and a Slate Trigger on the hi-hat, when the Triggers on the kick and snare detect hits, the two of them will interact with the one on the hi-hat track and help avoid falsely detected hits.
Didn't try it myself, but so I've heard.