A Quick Hack to Convert Drum Audio to MIDI in Pro Tools

Hey all!

In the video, I’m going to talk about the dark art of drum sampling. More specifically, I will show you a quick hack to get your drum audio to MIDI in Pro Tools in an accurate way.

Now having said that, I still believe that getting the best sounding drums possible at the recording stage will yield the best result. Hands down. So whenever possible, always aim to get it right at the tracking stage.

So what happens when you mess up the tracking stage? What happens when you weren’t a part of the tracking stage and you were given bad sounds?

Furthermore, what if you want a synthetic sound and plan to layer 808’s over a real kit?

And finally, what do you do when you are producing music in a genre that calls for heavy drum sampling, such as certain types of metal or hard rock?

Using drum samples can provide a variety of solutions for you. Whether it’s the sound you’re going for, or it’s to correct an earlier error, great drum samples that are properly programmed can really make a difference in the quality of your recording as a whole.

There are a number of benefits to using MIDI to place your samples rather than audio:

Although there are a number of ways to convert your drum audio to MIDI in Pro Tools (or any DAW for that matter), this little hack seems to be the most accurate and the most efficient. So let’s say we want to add a kick sample. Here’s how you go about it:

Typically I will do one more pass of the tab to transient to check. This time though, I tab to MIDI, which is effectively the same thing. First, consolidate the Kick MIDI track into one clip. Then change the track view to “Notes”. Then go to the beginning and tab to the first note. Zoom in almost as far as you can.

You will see the Kick audio right below the MIDI note on the next track, and you will be able to see how well the MIDI lined up. Then you can just hit tab over and over and simply correct any errors you see. This step shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds.

Once you have laid out all the MIDI, then you have so many options at your finger tips. Try out different sounds, play with the velocities, layer different libraries, there are so many possibilities.

Thanks for reading! We hope that this hack gives you some ideas for your future productions and helps you sample drums faster and more efficiently.