Convert drum loops to midi

[jwarv]

Has anybody had much success doing the topic? I tried Mixcraft conversion and I tried saving it as a midi file in Melodyne as well. But it comes up as a shaker and nothing else. What am I doing wrong?

[cactus-head]

Hi,

If you are using the Melodyne that comes with Mixcraft, you can only convert single monophonic lines successfully. If a drum loop contains kick, snare an hi-hat playing simultaneously it likely won't translate properly - everything will be translated on 1 line.

Also Melodyne will convert based on its preception of pitch. A kick in MIDI is generally C2 but that doesn't mean the pitch of the kick in a drum loop is C2 so if Melodyne translates it, it could be A4 for example. In that case, you would have to edit the MIDI piano roll and drag that A4 down to C2.

You can get pretty close to separating stuff out with an EQ and noise reduction. I'll post a short example of converting a basic drum loop to MIDI with kick, snare, and hi hat a little later.

[jwarv]

Nice. I do have the standalone melodyne. I'll try it there.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Tip: if you find that a non-percussion audio clip is coming out as all one note, view the audio clip on the Sound tab, then click on the Algorithm menu and select Melodic, then convert it to MIDI afterwards.

Greg

[cactus-head]

Hi,

Here's a quick video of how to convert an audio drum loop or track to MIDI in MC 10. I threw this together on my lunch break in one take and I think the sound may be over-compressed but the method is still on point.

The basic premise is reduce the noise in the audio clip and also manipulate the sound as close to the basic percussive elements as possible without overlap and bleed. Then convert that clip to MIDI.

https://youtu.be/wUVML0XySHc

[Rolling Estonian]

Here's a quick video of how to convert an audio drum loop or track to MIDI in MC 10.

That was good! It made me glad that I've learned to use EZDrummer!

M

[jwarv]

Thanks for expanding on this. So, you mean to tell me the "convert audio to midi" has been a Melodyne function built into Mixcraft this whole time? I thought they were two different sources. Color me surprised.

[cactus-head]

The simple drum loop I used doesn't really need to go through the audio cleanup that I did. I just showed that because sometimes recorded loops will have reverb or extra sounds or whatever. So it's good to be armed with an idea for dealing with those situations.

For the simple loop I showed, you could achieve the same result by starting with the melodyne part and just moving the snare up a whole step. It converts pretty well even with the hi-hat (though it will be mixed into the snare and kick).

[jwarv]

Hopefully, AI tech will advance enough to make the process simpler in the near future. In any case, this has definitely moved me to just use tap 2 find in EZD and try to match up with the audio loop manually.