I have been trying for a while to get Melodyne Editor (upgraded form the X3 version) to drop a drum track to a midi track. Others on this forum reckon they are doing it but I think they are only using single part (ie just a kick drum or just a snare for eg) audio drum tracks. I am trying to get an audio drum part (kick, hi hat, snare, occasional cymbal) into a midi track using Melodyne and so far it is not really working out.. All I get is note gobbledygook! And nothing even close to a usable midi drum track!
 
Oh well that was money wasted - back to recording the drum parts manually to midi.
 
PS: It DOES work fine on a single audio drum instrument part, but the ones I need to convert are pretty much full kits.

I don't think anybody here would recommend trying to do an audio to midi on a mixed-down drums stem. If anything, I'd tend to research the living daylights out of the issue, to see if it were possible - there's not a whole lot of pitch information to work with to differentiate - it's all percussive.
 
A video demonstration of converting drums to midi at the Celemony web site clearly shows them working with a single miked track - the snare drum. (This is one of the reasons many folks like to work with separately miked drums).
 
I understand you're upset, but I think it's a little over the top to blame 'hype' for the situation.
 
About the only way you can a replace drums instruments from a mixed stem is to mark transients and either replace with midi notes or clips. It's a slog....
 
 
 
 
 
 

What Algorithm are you using?  Have you tried the percussive option?  How about checking out the video tutorials?

Hi guys, thanks for your replies - 
@SuperG - well yeah I can, in a way, as the stuff I read made it seem like it was pretty easy and straightforward...but to be fair, I could very well have misunderstood too
 
@LRR - I did it on the Poly setting which is how I read it needed to be done. The percussive mode (I thought) was for the single instrument tracks..
 
At the time I mixed down the parts, I had NO idea Sonar X3 was coming and even less idea about Melodyne!!! Had I had an inkling I may have tried a little mroe to use the program I wrote the drums from to export to midi tracks as well...I still could do that, but there is like, 148 songs 

Melodyne has an interesting video on recording guitars that is similar, in that overtones created in a final audio mix (reverbs, chorus, etc.) will really mess with Melodyne's ability to extract notes cleanly. I think that the poly mode will exacerbate this because it will "see" overtones and make them "distinct," when they are not.
 
I have not specifically played with what you are attempting to do, so cannot speak to it directly, but Melodyne does have limitations based *how* it is used. The Editor has a lot more it "can do" but requires some learning to understand fully (similar to throwing a new DAW user a copy of X3b Pro).
 
But a similar concept... I *did* stress the Editor by opening a final mix song in Editor... talk about "note gobbledygook"... the final chorus/reverb alone created "utter chaos."
 
Michael

I don't think i saw anyone imply melodyne could easily separate a drum kit.  Even when I described doing it, i admitted it was a convoluted method I would only try out of desperation and it involved a lot of work with R-mix and gating.  Melodyne is ramarkable software  but it has its limits. If you have a busy full kit with tons of cymbals and high hats going at the same time  along with a bunch of ghost notes, it's just too much to ask.

Yeah Dub, I know and your method is still there at the back of my mind to try, and I was NOT referring to you at all m8, truly
 
As I wrote above it is kick snare hi-hat occasional ride - basically a very simple jazz swing drum track, nothing fancy - anyhoo I am getting the picture now, so I think I will just have to set aside a time block to return to the original program and get it to create midi tracks as well.
 
I must admit there WAS a little voice in my head saying it was probs too good to be true, and I guess it was!! Melodyne is still a good app, and I am sure in the fullness of time there will be moments I will praise the day I upgraded it, just not yet
 
And @ Michael - exactly, so you know what I mean. I guess it is not really ideal for this particular task, but I suppose at least it tries...all good. 

I believe Celemony could make a rudimentary multitrack drum to MIDI work if they wanted to. They wouldn't even have to make the translation pitch accurate (that would be ridiculous), I'd be happy with a line of notes that represented one drum, a line of notes that represented another etc, and I'll take it from there. Basically all you'd need is the timing of each hit, and the different hits on different lines. I mean I'm pretty sure their algorithm could differentiate a kick from a hi-hat. Perhaps we'll see this kind of functionality in a later version, even if it can't fully translate the complete articulation of a drum kit 
 
I think my main problem with Editor is that the polyphonic audio to MIDI translation doesn't work quite as well as I thought it would...at least it requires a lot more work to get it right than I expected. Even just fingerpicking some basic clean guitar chords confuses it sometimes, and I have to do so much work to clean it up that I wonder whether I should have just transcribed the damn thing into the PRV myself lol....still, on occasion it has produced some remarkable results. My first attempt was of a sample of a Spanish guitar piece, and it made a damn good job of the MIDI without me having to do a thing. 
 
 

That's pretty much my take.  It IS amazing what it can do - but there is only so much info it can extract and if there are a bunch of similar instruments notes on top of each other it's probably mathematically close to impossible.
 
From demoing the Editor, it's cool, but for what I do it would just be a neat toy - I would spend more time cleaning it up and messing than just transcribing by ear.  (which, I know, it's not really designed to be the kind of tool for 'decoding' a song or multipart').
 
 
 
 

Maybe in 2099, a VSTi will be able to do this, but there is not a program on earth that can extract a competed mixed down drum set and break it down the way you want.
 
Use individual drums to go from audio to MIDI and not the mixed down drums in a single wave file or clip.
 
CJ