Creating midi file from a drum loop

Cubase
1

Hello-

I recently purchased Jazzistic, an older VST instrument from UVI.

Jazzistic contains a lot of neat audio drum loops that can be dragged into a project.

I can also drag in a midi “slice map” of a drum loop. The slice map is a file with the extension .aif. Once I drag it in to a project, however, the midi event does not appear as a midi pattern.

Instead, it looks like a chromatic ascending scale of midi notes.

My ultimate goal was to use the midi patterns from Jazzistic and route the individual drum sounds to independent tracks in Cubase, and trigger the sounds in other VSTI’s.

So my questions are:

  1. Can I use hitpoints to generate midi notes for each separate drum component in the audio loop? There is no way to drop in separate audio files for kick, snare, etc. It’s an audio file of the whole kit!

  2. Can I create a conventional midi pattern file from the “midi slice map”?

I’m running 10.5 pro on a fairly robust Windows 10 PC.

Thanks for your help!

2

Assuming that Cubase Pro 10.5 includes Groove Agent 5 SE,

this video by Greg Ondo may be relevant to your quest:

3

Thanks for your reply, Nico!

Dropping the loop into GA provides many options to customize the pattern.

It seems that I’ll need to remap the midi notes to the individual drum parts.

Many of the slices consist of simultaneous transients (kick and ride, for example).

I’ll need to play around with this!

Thanks again!

4

Yes, that’s the nature of audio loops.

If you’re more ambitious, you might be able to do some audio mangling with SpectraLayers to get a bit of isolation, but that gets you into even further advanced sonic design territory.

And depending on your enthusiasm for learning and detail work is either immensely rewarding or terribly frustrating. :slight_smile:

5

You can do this easily using the Sampler Track. Sorry I’m not at Cubase so I can only give a general description. But I was doing this yesterday…

  1. Drag your Loop into the Sampler on a Sampler Track.
  2. In the lower left section set it to work on Slices
  3. The Sampler will take a stab at where to put the Slices which you can then fine tune by moving, deleting or adding Slice points. You can preview the individual Slices by playing on your Keyboard. By default C3 is the 1st Slice, C#3 the 2nd etc.
  4. In the section that controls the Slices there is an icon that looks like an old MIDI Plug - drag that out onto the Sampler Track and it will create a set of MIDI Notes that correspond to each Slice & the Slice’s length.
6

I think you are looking for a “audio to midi” conversion of a audio drum file. That is not possible with cubase. The VST “Superior Drummer 3” from Toontrack can do that but a lot of fine tuning might be required depending on the complexity and quality of the audio material.