Audio to Midi

Virtual instruments Groove Agent
1

I have a drum track in Cubase with several parts. I want to convert that to an midi track that I could then disolve and edit individually
Is this possible?

2

Hi Ian
The way i would approach this is :
Create a GA track,
Load your drum track into GAse , go to Main window , click slice adjust the slices to suit , now all of the pads contain individual hits .
On each drum pad , if you right click you can assign the output of each drum to their own outputs in the Cubase mixer ,
Then click on 'Pattern ’ above the pads on the right which will change the pads to your sequence ,
Choose the pad that contains your sequence and drag and drop it on to your Groove agent track and from there you can edit the drums just like standard midi , if you want to move each midi instrument to a different track then just copy the midi over and delete from the Ga midi track

Hope this makes sense

3

Thanks very much for this info. I’ll try it in the morning.
thanks again

4

I work like this nearly every day , it’s a fantastic way to revive old loops or mono drum tracks and add reverb just to snare or add width . it’s really powerful once you start diving into the process

5

I’ve tried following your instructions this morning but I must be missing something.
This is what I’m doing.

  1. Create an instrument track in Cubase Pro 12 - Output is Groove Agent (I have Groove Agent 5)
  2. In GA I load the audio drum track by using the GA5 Browser and double clicking on the audio drum track which is in a Cubase project. I can then see and hear the audio data in GA. The audio drum track is now on the C1 drum pad in GA.
  3. IN GA I select Slice and then Create Slices. I can now see the slices and play them but in moving the slices to line up with each hit I come to a stage where the slices are red and cannot be moved.
  4. I highlight the first slice and it plays highlighting the drum pad C#1. Subsequent selection of the next slice which is the same instrument highlights the D1 drum pad etc etc.
  5. I right click the C#1 drum pad and select "Assign Output and select “Out 2”. I use the Classify option in GA to identify the drum parts
  6. A later slice is the Kick which highlights the drum pad F2. I right click the F2 drum pad and select "Assign Output and select “Out 3”
  7. I select the Pattern option in GA the drum pad G#1 shows my Drum Kit.
  8. I drag and drop from the G#1 drum pad into my Cubase instrument track but it only creates a continuous line of midi notes i.e. not the midi representation of my audio drum track.

I hope this makes sense and I really do appreciate the support.

6

No , you can’t move the slices in the GA , they stay in the formation they are in , it’s the midi note you move .

Yes, this is how they normally looks (diagonal line) , even better once you have edited those midi notes , if you have all the sperate drums to the outputs (kick output 2 snares output 3 hihats output 4 clap output 5 …) and the Pattern on the midi track you can then select GA to 'render in place ', you then have all your induvial drum tracks in audio , to do as you wish with , like any other audio files and now if you wish you can extract the midi from the audio files and have all separate midi tracks as well as the audio , it’s a long winded way but this way you have the sperate Audio files and separate midi file’s as you would expect to see them . (Macro’s commands make the job quicker )

Workflow 2
You could load a drum tack into cubase , goto audio editor ,Variaudio , extract midi notes , but most of the time this will just give you the hits in one line , you can move the midi notes to different notes in the drum editor , open GA , load your drum track , slice , assign the midi notes to each pad giving you the original arrangement and then you can render in place to achieve the individual audio files if you wish
Sorry it’s early here , still haven’t woken yup .
I hope this makes sense

7

Thanks again. I’ll try this in the morning

8

Thanks for the help Carlos.
After I create the slices I use the Classification too in GA and then I select all pads of same class and for instance I assign output to 2 for the Hi Hats.
Then I select Pattern to see the following screen.

image
image1358Ă—678 139 KB
.
Then I drag and drop the Drum Kit 01 into the instrument track I created in Cubase.
What I get is the following - all the instruments show up on different keys in the piano editor although they play the correct sound.
image
In this example I have only selected all the hihats to audio 2 - They are the first lot of noted you can see but they’re all n different keys in the key editor but play the correct note.
Hope you can help me finalise this.
Much appreciated

9

The quickest and easiest way would be to highlight the note and use the up and down arrows on the key board to move the notes to the same note , there maybe something that could be done in the logical editor .
OR
As i mentioned in the previous post , now you have this midi track , in cubase highlight the track and event and render in place then you can open the left panel , choose Variaudio , click the arrow in variaudio , move down to Extract midi and you will then have your midi how you expect it to be

10

Thanks Carlos. I’ve got it working now.
Thanks for your patience.

1 Like
11

No worries , hope it worked ok for you in the end