MIDI question

[WSSH]

Is there a way to take recorded kick drums on a track (or any real drums) and somehow convert it to midi for it to be used with a drum program vst?
Basically I'm not getting the right kick sound in mixing due to bleed and other things and thought it might be worth trying to get the same kick drums played through a drum program..

Or if there is any other method of doing it that doesn't involve midi conversion

[b2001]

Kenny Video on converting guitar single notes to midi:

https://archive.org/details/reaper_v...MIDI_Converter

Not sure how well it will work if your drums are very “busy” but worth a shot.

You will have to do some editing to remove all else except kick drum. You will also have to map the kick drum vsti to match up to the resulting midi notes.

This works well for guitar and might not work as well for drums but should be easy enough to try out…

[Fabian]

For a recorded kick drum I would use ReaGate, with the option to "Send MIDI on open/close" and adjust the note sent to match the drum VSTi that I was going to use the MIDI with. Record the MIDI output of the track with the recorded kick, the track where ReaGate is on.

[dug dog]

I've had good luck using JS Audio to MIDI Drum Trigger. Don't know if there's a tutorial on how to use it but it's relatively intuitive. In some cases, I've used ReaEq in front of the trigger to filter out a loud snare drum that's bled into the kick drum track.

[mschnell]

I once saw a video using dynamic split for this.
-Michael

[dug dog]

I take back what I said about JS MIDI Drum Trigger. While it's true that I've had good luck with it in the past, I used it today on a different project and had a very tough time with it.

[Sid]

Audio to MIDI Drum trigger JS Plugin (Rapid-fire Reaper Tutorials Ep65)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtnuecwO8hM

[dug dog]

Thanks for posting the tutorial, Sid.

After more testing, I have concluded that, if your drum part has any significant dynamics to it, the Dynamic Split method is, by far, the most accurate method. I thought it was also the easiest to use.

JS Drum to MIDI, ReaGate, and Cool MK Slicer all struggled to get consistent timing accuracy and, even with a drum part composed entirely of repetitions of the same sample, the accuracy was not great.

Of course, "your mileage may vary..."

[jrk]

I've used dynamic split to help tidy up the track, to get clean hits without missing any. And a bit of manual tweaking. Then JS MIDI Drum Trigger can work really well. If the part is overly dynamic, compress it before the trigger / use transient controllers / whatever.

Of course, if you put the work in cleaning the track up, you may find it's useable without doing any replacement

[Tod]

You'd be better off doing it manually. By the time you read all the posts and try all the proposals you'd have been done if you'd have just done it manually.

Also doing it manually, you could also adjust the proper velocity.

[bolgwrad]

You need to do 3 things:

Find your desired kick sample - maybe your original recording has a clean instance. Have your 'Kick.Wav' file, or whatever format you prefer.

Insert it in ReaSamplomatic5000 on its own track

Put ReaGate on your drum recording kick track and configure it to send the MIDI note you have set in RS5000 when it's triggered.

The tricky part will be isolating the kicks cleanly enough; you could try ReaGate settings to mute the original. The even more laborious (and brain-mangling) way would be to insert a new MIDI track, matching the notes visually to your original kick drum.

[jrk]

Originally Posted by bolgwrad

The tricky part will be isolating the kicks cleanly enough; you could try ReaGate settings to mute the original. The even more laborious (and brain-mangling) way would be to insert a new MIDI track, matching the notes visually to your original kick drum.

I think I'm right in saying that ReaGate sends a fixed velocity? Which is maybe not what you want. But obviously, you could edit the midi later.

What I'd do, if I was triggering, would be to filter the kick quite hard, a tight bandpass at the big bump (in the area of 80Hz) and use this to feed JS: Audio To MIDI Drum Trigger. I'd set the open threshold to catch my quietest kick hits, not worrying about any misfires due to spill at this point, but probably using the re-trigger interval to stop (most of the) flamming.

I'd record this midi. (probably apply fx as new midi take)

Then I'd edit the midi. Simply deleting any mis-fires. (and adding any I missed)
Scale the velocity to taste.

If there's any significant (constant) offset (due to the filtering?) I'd just drag the midi track a little.

Yes, it's a bit time-consuming (I find it quicker than a purely manual approach). But that serves us right for not recording it properly

[bolgwrad]

Yes, to save time you could even just have a sample of four, eight or whatever slightly varied kick beats, or different sets for different song sections - doesn't have to be the single one.

[jrk]

Indeed. Of course, you could send the midi to any drum vst or sampler (or whatever).
Just make sure you're sending the right note

[S.L.I.P.]

Here's a link to a video that Kenny put out today. It doesn't involve midi.

Replacing Drum Sounds in REAPER

https://youtu.be/PTNy4SYRNbo

I also just saw that he put out another video today. (Kenny, you're a busy boy) that does involve Midi:

Replace Drum Sounds - Audio to MIDI Drum Trigger in REAPER

https://youtu.be/PTNy4SYRNbo