I want to take an MP3 and import it in to Cubase and find a way to separate out the Drum Track
As best as possible [which I realize may not sound that great - I’m primarily looking not for sound quality but ‘to get a sense of the structure of the drums ] …so that I can listen and copy the beats/hits/cymbals/ticky tacky sense / TIMING of the drums in a particular MP3 …and than add my own kicks/toms/snares/cymbals to that rhythmic structure by penciling in beats in groove agent to match the timing of the imported MP3… as well as possible.
I want to mimic certain drum fills/passages I hear in a particular song.
Any suggestions on how to go about this is appreciated …any software etc available that would help .
The best option for what you want, is to take the Spectralayers Lite version that comes with Cubase (at least pro) and upgrade it to a bigger version. The lite version can only do vocals/other, but the bigger version has a “separate drums” option that extracts only the drum-sounding bits to their own tracks. (This is actually quite magical!)
There are other tools too that can do this with some success, such as Unmix::Drums and XTrax and RX8.
If you then also want to pick apart the individual drum hits, you may be able to do so using one of the beat slicing workflows – there are some youtube videos on this. And if the source song is mainly drums anyway, you may not need to separate out that stem, just go straight to beat slicing.
I’'ll check on that sectralayers thing . If it can delve into a song and extract the drum structure semi-well …then that is what I am looking for . Thanks.
If you need it just for one song, there is no need to buy the full Spectralayers or any other tool, you could try one of the many online websites that offer track splitting based on the spleeter code and models, like spleeter.io.
You can even install spleeter locally on your computer, if you are not scared of the command line. Just google for tutorials for your operating system.
Do you use any of the Toontrack drums software?
Superior Drummer has an option to detect drums in the recording. It’s not the best at it when you have the whole song but it may do the job.
If not then internet is your best friend or iZotop’s RX9 is a good choice although very expensive.
