sharke
What I don't understand is, Melodyne can't turn a polyphonic drum loop into a MIDI track because it can't identify the different drums in the loop, but when I slice a drum loop in Geist it does a great job of categorizing the slices into kick, snare, hat etc. Or maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges.

Very different. Geist is time-based, Melodyne is frequency-based. If two events occur at the same time in Geist, Geist will create a slice at that time but not differentiate between the two events. It will treat the two events as a single event occurring at a specific time.

Yeah I understand that Melodyne uses frequency but when Geist slices a loop, it categorizes the slices as kick, snare, hat or percussion. It must be using frequency to do that, correct? You're right it will probably miscategorize if there are two hits at once, but you'd think Melodyne would be able to take some kind of stab at separating the hits in a drum loop. Granted it would be meaningless to translate those hits to "correct" MIDI pitches, but I'm sure they could  translate them to arbitrary pitches so that at least you have separated hits you could move to the correct MIDI note for your kit. It would just be a "polyphonic" version of their percussive algorithm.

Celemony has some fantastic Melodyne videos on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8aRt6FfDKo&index=22&list=UU3t_a653QeuXOhqVYWT9Quw shows pitch to midi for close mic'd tracks with bleed. You could use a similar technique for hi-hat. In polyphonic mode the blinds are useful for isolating frequencies. You could try eq'ing and/or a gate with a side chain to isolate the frequencies before you load them into Melodyne. This is a cool thread and worthy endeavor. With some experimenting I'm sure a reasonable workflow can be achieved.
You could even shoot Celemony support an email, they seem pretty helpful.
 
Rocky

auto_da_fe
I think there is a product called drumagog that does exactly this ?
 
Takes drum audio and spits out midi ?
 

Yes, and it's quite effective but the full version isn't cheap....fortunately the basic version does what most people need. Here's a review that appeared in Tape Op.

Thanks everyone... great suggestions. I got the Pro version of Melodyne and will continue playing around with it. So far it's not the most intuitive thing for me so I'm actually going to have to sit down and watch all the videos :)

Extracting tempo from audio and setting the project tempo is still a Sonar weakness.
 
The click track will be helpful to determine the tempo for sonar to use.
 
Using short audio clips/project will be easiest to adjust tempo until all feels good with the sonar metronome. Use the click track and metronome to work on this. Then add the audio drum clips to be sure.
 
Important to make sure all tracks are trimmed the same at beginning and end (zoom in to determine no part of any loop is beyond a measure boundary), save as to new project name, bounce clips, save,....
 
(I start all projects on 2nd/3rd measure to have access to the first beat adjustments and any intro stuff.)
 
After bounce check clip/measure boundaries again. Excess is not allowed. You may have to add space.
 
Since the tracks are separate, using audio snap to extract midi and paste to midi track will work fine. Be aware, all extracted notes are the same note values. (My experience using only for single percussion clips.)
 
If you want to combine the midi tracks you will need to change the midi note number (using transpose) for each track to correspond with standard note values for drums.  CAL scripts can also be used for this.
 
Then, properly trim the clips if needed, bounce, and create loops. Making them groove clips will allow sonar to adjust them for timing and pitch.
 
The files will be located in the audio folder for the project. I copy them to folders in the samples folder.
 
-------------------------------------------
Some swear by PT Beat detective.  I know nothing, nothing!
 
Some Reaper bits:
 
This is a tool I will now obtain to determine tempos:
http://www.virtualdj.com/products/virtualdj/price.html
I have imported audio from dozens of 4 track tapes, and cassettes. I find sonar AS does not provide consistent tempo detection between tracks.
 
Forum thread:
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=139020&highlight=extract+tempo+from+audio
 
A good video demonstration that is "similar" to Sonar, in some ways, for working with long clips:
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=14737&highlight=extract+tempo+from+audio