Beats to MIDI, is it possible?

[Robert Randolph]

I'm curious if it's possible to convert beats (the DP beats, as documented in the manual) to MIDI notes.

[Shooshie]

I vaguely remember something about that from years ago. I don't use the beats feature enough to elaborate, but I'd bet that Magic Dave could shed light on it. It may not be a direct process, but it seems likely that it's doable.

Shooshie

[stubbsonic]

I don't use those beat features, but I'm wondering if it would be a matter of transferring the beats to the sequence tempo, then just recording the MIDI click.

[David Polich]

I don't understand the question. By "beats" do you mean a drum groove? Audio slices?

[Kurt Cowling]

I think he means the transient beats that DP finds when analyzing soundbites.

[Robert Randolph]

I think he means the transient beats that DP finds when analyzing soundbites.

This is correct, thank you for clarifying!

I'm looking to see if there's a way to translate that specific information to MIDI notes.

[bayswater]

I don't recall a direct method, but depending on why you want to do it there are a couple of things to consider. If the beats are at transients, the Trigger plugin might do it. Or if there are beats at places a like bar boundaries, you can apply the tempo map of the audio to the existing MIDI tracks in the sequence.

[Saintmatthew]

I think he means the transient beats that DP finds when analyzing soundbites.

This is correct, thank you for clarifying!

I'm looking to see if there's a way to translate that specific information to MIDI notes.

I'm not aware of anyway to convert the beats to MIDI notes, but if you want to convert transients to MIDI notes, you could always use the pitch detection and just discard the pitch info.

[David Polich]

No there is no way to convert the transients to MIDI data, at least not directly. That's because the transients are just markers, not actual audio.

But...you can convert audio to MIDI data, using Melodyne. Process the track with Melodyne. Afterwards, you can export the processed track as MIDI. It works great.

[Robert Randolph]

I don't recall a direct method, but depending on why you want to do it there are a couple of things to consider. If the beats are at transients, the Trigger plugin might do it. Or if there are beats at places a like bar boundaries, you can apply the tempo map of the audio to the existing MIDI tracks in the sequence.

Currently I do use a trigger plugin for this stuff (sample re-inforcement of live drums). However It is a bit of a pain at times, and I decided that I need to further explore what DP may be capable of to come up with a better workflow.

Since you can quickly set and edit beat-markers, and they also mark velocity info, I thought a potential way to improve this workflow would be to use that information to generate MIDI for triggering the samples.

No there is no way to convert the transients to MIDI data, at least not directly. That's because the transients are just markers, not actual audio.

But...you can convert audio to MIDI data, using Melodyne. Process the track with Melodyne. Afterwards, you can export the processed track as MIDI. It works great.

I haven't tried doing any percussive type stuff with melodyne. I will look in to that, thank you.

I think he means the transient beats that DP finds when analyzing soundbites.

This is correct, thank you for clarifying!

I'm looking to see if there's a way to translate that specific information to MIDI notes.

I'm not aware of anyway to convert the beats to MIDI notes, but if you want to convert transients to MIDI notes, you could always use the pitch detection and just discard the pitch info.

Interesting idea...

Is there a quick way in DP to change all selected notes to the same pitch? Or how would you 'discard the pitch info'?

[magicd]

Interesting question.

Try this:

Make sure there are found beats in the soundbites and as always check the beats to make sure they represent the transients you want to use for reference.

Select the soundbite and choose Create Groove from the Region menu. Create a groove template based on the beats in the soundbite.

No MIDI in the MIDI track to quantize? What I did was draw in one long MIDI note. I set the grid resolution to 8th notes and option-dragged the scissor tool to cut the MIDI note into 8th note segments.

Apple the groove quantize template to the MIDI track. The MIDI notes you created are now quantized to the audio transients.

Dave

[Robert Randolph]

Thanks Dave!

I'll be giving that and these other ideas a try later today.

If/when I come up with a better workflow I'll make a tutorial video explaining the process.

[Tritonemusic]

Thanks Dave!

I'll be giving that and these other ideas a try later today.

If/when I come up with a better workflow I'll make a tutorial video explaining the process.

I look forward to it.

[Shooshie]

Interesting question.

Try this:

Make sure there are found beats in the soundbites and as always check the beats to make sure they represent the transients you want to use for reference.

Select the soundbite and choose Create Groove from the Region menu. Create a groove template based on the beats in the soundbite.

No MIDI in the MIDI track to quantize? What I did was draw in one long MIDI note. I set the grid resolution to 8th notes and option-dragged the scissor tool to cut the MIDI note into 8th note segments.

Apple the groove quantize template to the MIDI track. The MIDI notes you created are now quantized to the audio transients.

Dave

LOL! Dave, that's brilliant. I've used all those methods separately, but didn't think to put them together to do this. You really ARE Magic Dave!

Shoosh

[Robert Randolph]

So, I don't think the groove quantize thing works. The track is too irregular. I want to map percussive hit directly to a MIDI note. (see bottom of post)

---

Copying pitch data kinda worked. I came up with a workflow for that.

• Apply Gate so only a short piece of the percussive element remains
• Copy pitch data to a MIDI track
• Transpose all notes to the same note using this transpose map:

---

I did figure out that I can output a trigger plug-in MIDI output directly to a MIDI track and record it. That seems to give identical results to what I'd be looking for, but it requires a lot of fiddling then recording in realtime.


Here's an example of the results that I'm looking for:

Since the beats are already detected and accurate, I somewhat assumed that I could just copy those directly to a MIDI track easily. Especially since you can do this with pitch information. It doesn't seem that you can.

I'm still investigating!