Advice Wanted: Copying a midi track from one midi and adding to another midi

TommyJay

New member
Can this be done ? I have two midi's of the same song.

I would like to take a the great drum track from one midi file & add it to
the other midi file which has great instrumentation but an average drum track.

Is there a midi program available that will let you do the above ??

Any help would be appreciated
TommyJay
 
It is relatively simple, and there are a number of ways of doing it.

The way I would tackle it is to load midi A into Reaper, expand the midi into separate tracks, then delete its drum track.

I would then load midi B into Reaper, expand its midi likewise into separate tracks, and delete all tracks except its drum track.

Then you are left with Midi A less drums plus Midi B's drums

You can then export this as a new midi file.
 
Oh come on guys!

The chances of a MIDI track from one song fitting another version of even the same song are fraught with fix-it errors. I can't even do it predictably with my own music - and we use MIDI a lot! Sure - you could lift a quantised, 4 on the floor drum track and assuming the other song was also rock steady quantised to the hilt MIDI it would at least be on the beat, but in practical terms, if your track consists of anything played live, then the drums will sound ultra mechanical. A drum track recorded any 90BPM with any kind of feel is horrible played back at 70 or 110. Even when it's the same song - transplanting is a very hot and miss method. MIDI is a very accurate recording medium, timing wise. If you can search the Internet and find multiple versions of a song, you often find that some have been done by quite poor musical folk, and everything is quantised to beat divisions, often 16ths, and the drums sound like machine guns.

It needs some skill to blend tracks from different songs.
 
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The method I outlined (which is one of many possible ways of doing it) is silent on the issue of compatability and quality.

However, I have done a lot of midi transplanting, sometimes from different versions of the same song, sometimes from totally different songs. It doesn't need to sound mechanical.
 
Oh - I'm not saying it can't sound good, but in my own experience it's ultra rare for it to not need severe editing.

If it doesn't sound mechanical, then somebody good has worked on the track. I'd even go so far to say that any music other than the popular stuff 85 to maybe 95 or so sounds mechanical if there's no temp track. When we moved to synth pop, then tempos tended to be static, and quantisation very beat oriented. however, if you try to create a track of 70s stuff, using the original as a guide, you'll spend ages mapping tempos, and grabbing the beat one kick and moving it ahead a little, or dropping the snake back a bit to make the groove work. That means swapping a duff drum track for a human one quite hard. You can do it with the synth stuff. Much harder with real instruments. I spent months on Carpenters show tracks, and I couldn't lift the drums from any version I had of the famous ones into the ones we created for the show.

MIDi doesn't need to be mechanical, but that also means quantisation is out, triplets and flams need tweaking and the bass and kick aligning properly.
 
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