Audio to Midi with drums VIDEO:

Great Job Danny

Im with you on the Note not showing (C3, D3, ...)  It would be nice to have that.

My way around that is to bring up PRV after the paste of midi, make sure the track is selected and drag everything to the Snare, HH, ... as listed to where I want it LOL.  Knowing the note would make it easier though huh?

Very cool tutorial for a drum programming "noob"like me!!

Thanks for posting & sharing!!

Randy

Danny, you are the hardest working man I know!  You've done Sonar users a great service, and I thank you.

Danny Danzi


Hi everyone,
 
I made a 12 minute video on how you can take an audio drum kit and turn it into a midi kit. Most advanced Sonar users know how to do this, but to me, it was a tip worth mentioning for those who may not know how to do this. Simple yet VERY effective. Check it out if you get a minute. I'm not much of a "proper" tutorial guy, but you'll get a few laughs out of me as well as the human factor...mistakes and all. :)
 
http://youtu.be/kh7xWM0LVzs
 
-Danny

Great video Danny!


Yet another feature that in all the 20+ years of using Cakewalk/Sonar, didn't even know it was there.  Could've actually used that on a previous project, but at least I know now.

Thanks!!


P.S. Really enjoyed your music as well.  Lots of luck to you.

great video man,you picked a really good topic too,i dont think enough has been stressed in autosnap,this video is for the die-hards man.

as always great job.

Danny just as in your writing you come through as one of the nicest guys on the forum in that video. Great video.  

Guitardood: thanks and you're welcome. You got Chuck to thank for it actually. I had the Sonar file all done and just never got around to shooting the video part. Chuck posted a cool PRV drum video and it reminded me that I wanted to share this. I didn't know much about that feature either to be honest, so it was a rude awakening in a good way for me as well. I always use my Drumagog samples for replacement (I have a huge HUGE library including my own drum samples that I've done on every drum kit that's ever been in my studio) but it's nice to be able to use our faithful modules if we need them and figured quite a few might have missed this gem of a feature. :) Sorry I didn't post it sooner so it could have bailed you out in your project. But, at least ya know about it now. :)

Mike V: thanks man, much appreciated. Yeah I like to just be as human as possible. Hopefully it gets the point across...but you know how the forum can be, they like to jump on people that might not be so perfect and proper lol! Glad you enjoyed it. Hope the new place is treating you well....or are you still waiting to move in? Can't remember where we left off with that. At any rate, glad to see you're still around from time to time and if you ARE in the new place, I hope it's been all that you expected it to be. :)

Chuck: Thanks....it was all your fault. Hahaha! You reminded me that I had this in the works with your awesome drum video. Man, that velocity trick....I never knew that! My main engineer at my other studio was up at my place tonight and I said "dude, did you know you could do this?" and he's like....."woah, what the heck....I never knew that?!" He's the true geeky/techy one of our bunch. He knows Sonar soo well, it scares me. I just hack my way through it and treat it like a big tape recorder. LOL! But even he was surprised by that...so on behalf of both of us, thanks for teaching us that trick. :) Keep up the good work man.

Karl: Thanks bro....I think I'd be a little more intimidating with your accent though. Hahahaha! Nothing beats an English accent for teaching audio I tell ya! Instead ya got guys like me saying "you do diss, den you do dat...and wait, lemme getta glassa wooder ya baystid...I'll be right back." Hahahaha! I actually did that once in a video lesson...the student was in stitches. :)
 
Ok, I'll make the next one 4 hours and cover some deep stuff. Wait...I'm talking to you, I couldn't keep your attention in a Sonar video...you know so much more than I do. LOL! I do good with mixing and teaching about and creating sounds etc. That's really my strong point anyway. You gotta hear me when I let myself go in one of those vids. You think my accent is funny now, when I'm not trying to be careful, you'll get something more like "how yooze guys doooin." LOL! :) My 6th grade teacher actually made my mom send me to speech class and called one day.

"Mrs. Danzi, he talks like a lil gangster...but he's soo funny with it, we're choking holding back the laughter. The other day he jumped up and said "teacha, I gotta go to da baffroom" so I said "Danny, when you can spell bathroom correctly, I'll let you go" and he says "Be Ay eF eF Room, Baffroom...now teacha, I really gotta gotoda baffroom." Thus started my speech classes to rid me of gangster tawk talk. Hahaha! (I did know how to spell it actually, I just wanted to make her laugh. She loved me so she let me go. lol)
 
John: Thanks a lot! Glad I come through like that, makes me feel good brother. Glad you enjoyed it.
 
StinGA: You're welcome, thanks for the kind words.

-Danny

i agree with john on his above post,your vast knowlege of sonar shows in your posts and in your videos.
after i watched this video i opened up sonar and started using some of these ideas right away.

i also think your honesty comes forth in your vid's as being a true user/instructor and not someone who is trying to sell me a product.
that right there is the difference between a pro and a novice.

i look at karls videos right now and look at how he has jumped from typical solid you tube videos to full blown professional quality.
im not sure how he has done that yet.
its almost as if he swallowed the help files and now spits them out on call.

i think our videos share a certain quality about them,im not sure i can put my finder on it yet but i think its just the users view.
although my glass is only half full compared to your danny.
you never sease to amaze me at just how much you know about not only just sonar but digital audio engineering itself.

Nice one, Danny. That's definitely a quicker way to do it than I've learned elsewhere (bounce to MIDI or whatever it's called). For those unwanted ghost notes you could probably change the track's edit filter to Transients then lower the Threshold fader in the Audio Snap Palette before hitting Copy. That way you'd be able to see the extra transients and adjust the Threshold accordingly. If it doesn't get rid of them all or it removes transients you actually want you can enable/disable the transients manually. You can fix any timing mistakes before copying too. Not sure if all that would work using this method but I don't see why it wouldn't.

Thanks for the time saver. The way this process was explained in the Manual and Groove3 requires a ton of extra steps so this is very cool. Cheers.

Let me add that there's is often crosstalk in the recorded drum tracks.
This leads to unwanted midi notes when copying to midi with audiosnap.
So I get rid of that by setting the audiosnap treshold or by gating the track and exporting the audio to another track on which I use audiosnap.

You think my accent is funny now

What accent?


Mike

Right on, Danny! Excellent video and lesson. Thanks!

I have lots of vids from Danny.

TOS means I cannot post links here. LOL!!!

Thanks for posting that "clean" one Danny.

John: Thanks! Well, the good sounds on my end are due to really using a high video/audio export. I always try to make the actual sounds as good as they can be. I've not shared much by way of video that shows any production other than little things, but I try my best. No sense posting a video that sounds terrible, ya know? LOL! Yeah, gotta add personality into these things. Nothing kills my desire to learn faster than a voice or delivery that reminds me of a college professor or Ben Stein. Uggh! I think we're all pretty blessed to have each other. This place is nearly as good as Sonar support thanks to guys like you and everyone else that has come to my aid over the years. So thank YOU for that. :)
 
Chuck: Honest I'm just a hack, but thanks for the kind words. Seriously man, each lesson I do for my students, I learn something new in Sonar. A guy named Clifford that studies with me has shared quite a few things I never knew about when we'd talk after the lesson. He'd mail me and say "you know you can do this that and this to get it like that?" One time our Janet (piano player of the forum) sent me a project to check out. One thing I noticed was, all her virtual tracks of drums had wave forms from using waveform preview on every drum track. Ok, I'm dumb for never thinking of that and knew it could be done, but that was another cool trick I would have never used or thought of unless I saw it.
 
I think she said she learned that from Dave (ModBod) or Beagle. But I learn something in Sonar all the time. Now, when my students start teaching me how to get good sounds and techniques, then I need to worry. LOL! But right now, I'll gladly take all the Sonar tips and tricks anyone wants to share. Honest when I tell ya...if you watched me work an entire project in it, you'd laugh youself silly. But..hey, it works right? :) Thanks man.
 
dxp: LOL I always start typing dmx! Hahaha! You're welcome bro. Hey, that Head Case video is up. Speaking of me making a fool out of myself, you can actually see my sorry butt this time. Raw with the usual Danny-isms...lol...but pretty cool as far as working with Head Case. There are two more parts to the video which they haven't uploaded yet, but they are ready to go. I do some playing in real time on the others. But check this out if you get a minute...it's quite entertaining. :)
 
http://www.youtube.com/user/AcmeBarGig/ (First vid is me. I shared that link in case you wanted to see the other videos they have up...enjoy!)
 
Beeps: Yeah, I was aware of going into audio snap to take care of that with the threshold. I just wanted to do things really quick as I literally had a 15 minute time window to do the vid. LOL! :) You're welcome brother...thanks for the extra firepower with the Audio Snap thing....I probably should have mentioned that and included it in the vid. But see, other than the snare....those other ones really weren't making any noise...so I'm a firm believer of "hey, it's one less thing to do...leave it alone if it ain't bothering you Danny!" Sort of like bees. LMAO! Although I have this attraction for bees. I win bee boxer/kick boxer award every year. Yeah, we literally keep track of how many we punch, kick, head-butt, eat, we gotta kill em though and take cell phone picks. LOL! Imagine hangin' out with me....we're outside, a bee comes near us and I turn into Bruce Lee. Dude...it's hysterical! LMAO! I can't tell you how many times people have asked me "ummm you ok? What the heck were ya swingin at?" And I say "I had a bee after me....and well, I'm dead in 12 minutes without my epi-pen that I never carry, so it's him or me...I struck first." LOL! :)
 
Zonno: No problem, yeah my bad on not mentioning more about AS. I guess other than not having much time at that moment, the last thing I wanted to do was confuse people about using AS because to me, it does sort of require a learning curve where this thing I was doing is only two button presses (minus the two times I hit the wrong button LOL) and is so simple to do. But yeah, I sort of regret not putting that part in now. Thanks!
 
Chef Mike: Hahaha thanks....yeah we don't have accents, everyone else does! :) You're in North J though...so you're probably worse than me. I'm sort of Philly meets NJ...you gotta be NY meets NJ. Hahahaha! The both of us together...man, what a motley crew. :)
 
mmorgan: Thank you! I always try to be a gentleman, but the scholar thing....I need some work. I gotta learn howta tawk first. LOL! Then again, I blew it in the gentleman department the other day BAD! I saw a girl that I knew (or at least I THOUGHT it was the girl I knew) and walked up and said "dats a nice lil fart box ya got dere babes" pointin' to her butt. Well when she turned around and said " Excuse me, WHAT DID YOU SAY!?!?!?" and it WASN'T the girl I knew.....I was mortified. After I said I'm so sorry 1000 times, offered to pay for her pretzels at the pretzel factory and showed her a pic of the girl I thought she was , she knew I was sincere. She started laughing and said..."what did you call it?" I said "fart box". She lost it because she never heard it called that before. LOL! I'm really normally a gentleman though....but I thought for sure it was the girl I knew!!!! Then of course there's the times my dirty little cell phone has sent text messages where spell check threw me under the bridge...but I'll spare ya on those. LOL! :) Thanks Mike!
 
Living Room Rocker: No problem, you're very welcome! :)
 
Sixfinger: Thanks! Yeah, the pan thing definitely can help you out. If you start hearing a HAAS-like effect, you know something isn't lined up right that's for sure. And you're right...it's amazing how the different samplers react to triggered hits be it a keyboar or even a V Drums kit. I noticed Superior and Kontakt react completely different than say, BFD 2.
 
Ed: Shhh you. There goes my gentleman status....REALLY out the window now. I fear when I die and someone goes through my stuff, that whoever is left that may know me....might really think I'm a weirdo. Hahahaha! I can see them going through my DVD's now. "How man times can this dude listen to a snare drum? There are like 500,000 snare drum samples on these discs?!" :-Þ
 
Grant: Thanks man! :)
 
You guys rule, thanks so much again for the kind words. I'll see what else I got that may be useful to you.
 
-Danny

Hahaha, thanks Dave! You're welcome. I wish I woulda filmed that in my new studio, but they keep me away from there. LOL! The whole point of that vid though, was to show people you don't need loads of bells and whistles to make something sound decent or at least "acceptable". Guys go through the pains of hell to get sounds/tones due to over-tweaking and "turd polishing". The key in this field is to get it right at the print source, not after. And if you know what to listen for, it can help you achieve all that stuff. So that's why I don't feel the need to go all out and really do advanced stuff. There's no reason to for the bedroom hobby guy, ya know? We can get good enough sounds doing just about nothing with the tools we have today as well as having the ability to know what to listen for.

You know all too well the issues you've been having with guitar tones. It's a never ending labor of love really and it can make you tone chase for decades. How do you think I learned this stuff? LOL!!!!!!!!! I don't chase tones anymore, but it's nice to be able to dial in some nice ones when I need them. This is where knowing what to listen for can cut that in 3/4 of the time. So I'm glad this helped you.

The next 2 vids are pretty cool because they show more ways I work with the sounds as well as some real time playing. Not sure when they will post them though...but they are completely finished and they have them. I'll let you know if they turn up. :) Thanks again!

-Danny