drum software

dobro

dobro

Well-known member
Is there drum software that will register drum hits so that you can map, for example, synth stuff onto the hits?
 
dobro said:
synth stuff onto the hits?
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"synth stuff onto the hits?" WTF are you talking about?? :wtf:

There might be a way to configure midi channels so your synths stuff triggers at the same time your drums triggers. Try using the same midi channel for both drums and synths.

But honestly, I'm not sure I know what you're asking.
 
I'm asking if there's software which will register drums hits in a way so that you have a track of drum hit mappings which will then allow you to drop samples into the track so that the samples are triggered by the drum hit mappings.

Look, indulge me. I'm drunk. But it's a great idea. If such a software existed, I could map synth sounds or *anything* onto the drum hits in a track. It'd be awesome.
 
Um, i might be barking up the wrong tree here, but do you mean a software that will map an audio recording of a drum beat to midi data? I know there is software that will do that, drumagog for example, and i think ableton and some other DAWs including Reaper have that function natively.

Sorry to be vague, but i've never used it, and from what i've heard it can be a bit imprecise sometimes. You could always just transcribe the track to midi manually which is what i would do, but that could take some time for complex rhythms. Then you could just copy that midi data to any track/channel and trigger any midi device, virtual or hardware - sampler, keyboard whatever. That should allow you to play almost any sound you can imagine or record instead of drum hits. Otherwise what Chili said makes sense to me too, particularly if you have external devices.
But if you are drunk, you probably don't care anyway and i can't criticise you for that :drunk:
 
lol you guys need to speak better noob.

Yes there is drum programs that will play using a keyboard with midi outputs.

No there is nothing that will play from recorded synthesizer audio because synth audio has no hits to detect.

Yes there is software that will trigger drum sounds from recorded audio, but it has to have enough of a transient to detect. Sausage audio will not work.

:)
 
Hold on, you could technically take a MIDI drum track and route it to a Keyboard and then the analog back in. Probably would sound like poo, but it would work. Better idea if this were the case it take the hits, look at where they are being triggered and determine what note you want to play.

But drum hits are just MIDI notes mapped to trigger a sound. Plus in Ableton Impulse is exactly what this does. One song I did I took a drum track and mapped it to trigger sound effects. Bomb explosion for Kick, Machine Gun for Snare, and Swords for Hi Hat.
 
Anders Erisian said:
Um, i might be barking up the wrong tree here, but do you mean a software that will map an audio recording of a drum beat to midi data?
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Yes, that's it exactly. I woke up at 4 am this morning and the phrase 'beat detection software' appeared in what was left of my brain. That's what I want. Beat detection software that will assign a MIDI value to every hit on an existing drum track. Primarily for snare and kick, I guess.

Anders Erisian said:
I know there is software that will do that, drumagog for example, and i think ableton and some other DAWs including Reaper have that function natively.
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I've got Reaper, so I'll check it out. I had no idea Reaper had it - I thought it would be a plugin I'd have to buy.

Anders Erisian said:
Sorry to be vague, but i've never used it, and from what i've heard it can be a bit imprecise sometimes. You could always just transcribe the track to midi manually which is what i would do, but that could take some time for complex rhythms.
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Exactly. What a ton of boring work. I mean, that's why God gave us software - to do stuff like that.

Anders Erisian said:
Otherwise what Chili said makes sense to me too, particularly if you have external devices.
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I read what Chili said, but didn't understand it very well. I'm not very up on MIDI.

Anders Erisian said:
But if you are drunk, you probably don't care anyway and i can't criticise you for that :drunk:
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No, I care very much. I think it would awesome to be able to sneak either drum samples or synth sounds or even other stuff in under existing beats to nudge their sound this way or that. Not only that, I'm not drunk now. :) Just stupid. :D

Thanks, Anders.
 
Guitargodgt said:
lol you guys need to speak better noob.

Yes there is drum programs that will play using a keyboard with midi outputs.

No there is nothing that will play from recorded synthesizer audio because synth audio has no hits to detect.

Yes there is software that will trigger drum sounds from recorded audio, but it has to have enough of a transient to detect. Sausage audio will not work.

:)
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's what I'm looking for. BTW, what's sausage audio? BTW#2, I speak great NOOB. I have the chief qualification - lack of understanding.

---------- Update ----------

DM60 said:
Hold on, you could technically take a MIDI drum track and route it to a Keyboard and then the analog back in. Probably would sound like poo, but it would work. Better idea if this were the case it take the hits, look at where they are being triggered and determine what note you want to play.

But drum hits are just MIDI notes mapped to trigger a sound. Plus in Ableton Impulse is exactly what this does. One song I did I took a drum track and mapped it to trigger sound effects. Bomb explosion for Kick, Machine Gun for Snare, and Swords for Hi Hat.
Click to expand...

I don't have Ableton. Do you like it?
 
Yeah, that would work. I've got a grudge against Slate, though. But if the meters on the upcoming VCC update actually work this time, I'll reconsider.
 
dobro said:
I don't have Ableton. Do you like it?
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I like it, but it is very different. For example, I use Reaper for tracking cause it works better and it requires less system resources. Ableton I like cause I think of creating music differently. It is expensive, but it is also pretty cool.

Bitwig is something that is new, from the same creators and appears to be a good alternative for a cheaper price.
 
I think most every DAW program has some form of Beat Detection. I never use it so don't know details, but even my old tired Cubase Artist 6.5 has something called hitpoints. It does exactly what you're asking. (Now that I know what you're asking)
 
I believe that Reaper comes with two JS plugins called drum trigger, but they're actually both exactly the same inside and out, so pick one. Or, you can use ReaGate and check the "send MIDI note..." button, but that won't be velocity sensitive so all the notes will be all the way loud.

Either way, each instance of the plugin will only spit out one specific MIDI note for any beat it detects. That is, it can't by itself tell the difference between a kick and a snare or anything else to send different notes for each drum. In order to get different notes for different drums out of a full kit mix, you would need to get into some complex routing with filters and multiple instances of the drum trigger. Doable, maybe, but kinda fiddly.

Keep in mind, too, that MIDI drums don't really need a long sustaining note, and therefore a lot of these trigger type things send the note off pretty quick after the note on. Play that back through a synth and you'll get some super staccato stuff...unless your synth has a long release...and a short attack...It's relatively easy to manipulate event length, though.

ReaTune might recognize the fundamentals of different drums as different notes and send them (if you check the appropriate option), but it might just not have a clue what to do. It is also not velocity sensitive. I have a way of using parameter modulation and the midi velocity JS to get the velocity to follow the volume of the audio input. Gets fiddly again.

Unless you've got like hours of drums to convert, it would almost be quicker and easier to just put in the MIDI pattern into the piano roll. Or, like, download some MIDI drum patterns/files.

I have actually done quite a bit of these sorts of things for experimental/noise pieces through the years.
 
Hey, thanks very much for that. I think your descriptions are enough for me to find out if I can/want to do this. I've trawled exactly zero interest in this question over at the Reaper site.
 
dobro said:
I'm asking if there's software which will register drums hits in a way so that you have a track of drum hit mappings which will then allow you to drop samples into the track so that the samples are triggered by the drum hit mappings.

Look, indulge me. I'm drunk. But it's a great idea. If such a software existed, I could map synth sounds or *anything* onto the drum hits in a track. It'd be awesome.
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It's called Drumagog.

If you are playing the synth, you can just midi it, but if you are trying to trigger drums sounds from audio, Drumagog is what you need.
 
Yeah, it looks like Drumagog is exactly what I'm looking for. Somebody's recommended a JS plugin in Reaper as well, so I'll investigate that first, but my guess is that Drumagog will do what Reaper can do and much more.
 
If I'm not mistaken, both Drumagog and SS Trigger include some pretty sophisticated sampler functionality as well. That is not really necessary for this particular application. Take that out of these paid plugs and you end up with about the same thing as the free plugins that come with Reaper. I outlined three different plugs, all of which come in the standard install, that could be used.
 
Someone already mentioned both of these (I think) but just to reinforce the point, Ableton Live and the newest version of Cubase (I use neither on the regular but have used both recently) have the "Audio-to-MIDI" function for both percussion audio tracks as well as for tonal/pitched audio tracks. I used this function in Cubase to speed up the process of programming a beat I had beat-boxed into my phone's sound recorder: I flew the phone recording of my beat-box into Cubase, and it not only created MIDI info for it, but did it accurately PER INSTRUMENT, meaning it created separate MIDI hits for the kick, snare, and hi-hats I had beat-boxed. It's incredible. Then I just dropped in samples triggered by the MIDI data and BAM! I had a perfectly accurate, note-for-note MIDI translation of my beat-box beat.
 
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