Substituting drum audio track for midi track

[mick.n]

I have been working on a backing track for someone who sent me the track in a basic untweaked form. The instruments (guitar , bass etc) are all not to bad, but the drum track is a bit meh. Using Cubase (v6.5)is it possible to align a midi drum track with the rest of the tracks? (with regards to tempo). The drum audio track is all on one stereo track,unfortunately.

Admit to not being to familiar with the audio side of cubase, even though i have used the midi side of it since my atari days.

[gingertimmins]

Download reaper. They have a pitch to midi plugin and a few others that use audio to create midi.
Is it a stereo mix of the drums or individual mics on each? If the former, I'm not sure how much the above will help.
Chris

[Exalted Wombat]

Yes, Cubase has a facility to align the MIDI tempo map to recorded audio. You can either do it with hitpoints, or just align start points and stretch a MIDI track out until it's the same length as the original. To be honest, unless the tempo is stable enough for the second way to work, at least for the main body of the track, there's not much point. You can't have a quantised drum groove constantly fluctuating in tempo, it sounds terrible!

Sometimes it's better to just start over.

[The Elf]

I would start by manually creating a tempo map (I rarely find that any automatic process does much for me). I typically work to aligned quarter notes - sometimes aligning each bar is enough. Drag each bar start to your reference (the drum track in this instance) and note how it drifts over the bar.

Once you have the map then you can begin programming in your new drums with careful reference to the originals. It can take some time to get everything as you like it - if anything sounds awry then check, double-check and fine-tune your tempo map, and compromise it if the other instrumentation requires it.

It's exacting work, and you can kiss goodbye to a couple of days, depending on the nature of the music. I've recently been adding arrangments to free-played solo acoustic guitar and I know how painful this process can be, but there's really no shortcut.

[Matt Houghton]

'Download Reaper' is a pretty lazy bit of advice. Sure it's got some useful tools for this sort of thing, but Cubase isn't lacking in this department either so, as you already have it I'd do pretty much what Elf said. Though I tend to do the map in a couple of passes, warping the grid to align the bars with the first note of each bar in the recorded part; then going through at a finer level of detail to see what needs to change. That way you don't over quantise everything and lose all of the feel. Although if you want it to be more rigid you can do that in one go, I find it easier this way to maintain perspective. When you've done that, you can either program a new part, or try using filtered versions of the stereo drum mix with triggering software — or Cubase hitpoints or even Variaudio — to generate hits for the kick and snare, possibly the hi-hat too if its closed only and there are no cymbals. (You don't need a tempo map for that of course, but you will want it when it comes to refining those triggered parts). For anything else, you're better off playing/programming that in from scratch yourself (or lifting it from a MIDI loop). If you fancy upgrading Cubase, the Acoustic Agent in Groove Agent SE4 is pretty good for creating believable parts. But you may already have dedicated drum software of course...

[Zukan]

This might help you too as the concepts are the same but the applications might vary depending on what you need to extract.

[mick.n]

Thank you all for the info, much appreciated.

I seem to remember fiddling\experimenting with hitpoints a while ago. Will revisit this when time permits.

Why can't software designers come up with a mouse clickable button option simply called "Make everything perfect"?

[Mixedup]

I seem to remember fiddling\experimenting with hitpoints a while ago. Will revisit this when time permits.

Don't just look up hitpoints, look up 'warp'. Warping the grid to fit the audio is the easiest way to align things. As shown in this video .

Why can't software designers come up with a mouse clickable button option simply called "Make everything perfect"?

It's called hiring a producer

[Exalted Wombat]

Think like a musician, not like an engineer. If THAT'S where a drum hit should go, put one there. Either by re-recording with everyone listening a bit harder to each other, or by "playing in" a drum track.

[The Elf]

Don't just look up hitpoints, look up 'warp'. Warping the grid to fit the audio is the easiest way to align things.

+1

Hitpoints may assist by providing you with a target when warping, but they won't achieve the alignment for you - it's manual all the way, I'm afraid! (Unless there's a helpful 'Quantise/Snap Grid to Hitpoints' feature that's not made it onto my radar... Anyone?)

Why can't software designers come up with a mouse clickable button option simply called "Make everything perfect"?

It's called hiring a producer

+1!

Painful processes like this are why I'm still worth my money!

[Mixedup]

...and here's a step by step guide by John Walden from SOS mag. Looking at the date, it's probably for Cubase 7 and I can't recall what C6.5 can do in this respect.

[Exalted Wombat]

Hitpoints may assist by providing you with a target when warping, but they won't achieve the alignment for you - it's manual all the way, I'm afraid! (Unless there's a helpful 'Quantise/Snap Grid to Hitpoints' feature that's not made it onto my radar... Anyone?)

Well, it USED to be done with Hitpoints, either manually-entered or tapped in. Then you performed "Align Tempo Map to Hitpoints".

And the same function is still there, called "Merge Tempo From Tapping". You place notes on a time-based MIDI track. Probably initially by tapping a key, though subsequent fine positioning is of course possible. You tell "Merge Tempo..." whether you tapped 1/2, 1/4 etc. notes. Then run the function. It's "Align to Hitpoints" in all but name.

But, I repeat: unless the tempo map comes out pretty flat, forget about applying a drum groove. Constantly fluctuating tempo is death to a groove. You can certainly play in something freer, using your MIDI keyboard to control drum sounds.

[The Elf]

Hitpoints may assist by providing you with a target when warping, but they won't achieve the alignment for you - it's manual all the way, I'm afraid! (Unless there's a helpful 'Quantise/Snap Grid to Hitpoints' feature that's not made it onto my radar... Anyone?)

Well, it USED to be done with Hitpoints, either manually-entered or tapped in. Then you performed "Align Tempo Map to Hitpoints".

And the same function is still there, called "Merge Tempo From Tapping". You place notes on a time-based MIDI track. Probably initially by tapping a key, though subsequent fine positioning is of course possible. You tell "Merge Tempo..." whether you tapped 1/2, 1/4 etc. notes. Then run the function. It's "Align to Hitpoints" in all but name.

But, I repeat: unless the tempo map comes out pretty flat, forget about applying a drum groove. Constantly fluctuating tempo is death to a groove. You can certainly play in something freer, using your MIDI keyboard to control drum sounds.

Tapping has to be cleaned up afterwards, so only gets you so far. I often skip that step nowadays and just get busy with the warp tool from scratch.

I agree about the constantly fluctuating tempo sounding naff - if you can simply align the start of each bar (or even every two or three bars, for example) then the results are typically more benign.

[Exalted Wombat]

Hitpoints may assist by providing you with a target when warping, but they won't achieve the alignment for you - it's manual all the way, I'm afraid! (Unless there's a helpful 'Quantise/Snap Grid to Hitpoints' feature that's not made it onto my radar... Anyone?)

Well, it USED to be done with Hitpoints, either manually-entered or tapped in. Then you performed "Align Tempo Map to Hitpoints".

And the same function is still there, called "Merge Tempo From Tapping". You place notes on a time-based MIDI track. Probably initially by tapping a key, though subsequent fine positioning is of course possible. You tell "Merge Tempo..." whether you tapped 1/2, 1/4 etc. notes. Then run the function. It's "Align to Hitpoints" in all but name.

But, I repeat: unless the tempo map comes out pretty flat, forget about applying a drum groove. Constantly fluctuating tempo is death to a groove. You can certainly play in something freer, using your MIDI keyboard to control drum sounds.

Tapping has to be cleaned up afterwards, so only gets you so far. I often skip that step nowadays and just get busy with the warp tool from scratch.

I agree about the constantly fluctuating tempo sounding naff - if you can simply align the start of each bar (or even every two or three bars, for example) then the results are typically more benign.

Warp is good. Tapping can be useful, particularly when you go beyond bare tapping and play along with the audio into a MIDI track. Edit out all but (perhaps) the LH bass line and you end up with something more likely to be useful than bare mechanical tapping would produce.

The big problem, unless you're applying a mechanical "dance" beat to quantised audio, is that the applied drum groove ISN'T going to groove. The bass player wasn't listening to the bass drum and fitting in. The guitarist wasn't listening to the snare and laying back to just the same degree. And vice versa. It won't be music.

[4TrackMadman]

Did anybody ask you whether they had a tempo grid?

If it was recorded to grid they might be able to send you the timing to aligning in your project, I think it could be done by just them striping a midi track on their end (filling in midi track with some garbage) and then exporting that as midi track, then you start new project with this midi track and it adds your tempo map. That's at least how I've had success in Studio One.

Then you might need to timestretch a few things to fit or use the hitpoints in Cubase to fine tune your tempo changes.

[mick.n]

Thanks again all, and thanks for the links to the sites....very useful. I remember fiddling with the time warp thing some years ago with some success. Will try doing the time warp (again) when time permits.

[Forum Admin]

Will try doing the time warp (again) when time permits.

It works best when wearing the full fishnets/suspenders rig.

[mick.n]

Now "that's" what i call an incentive.