Should I be normalizing drum tracks before converting to MIDI for sample replacement?

[AdamWathan]

This just occurred to me while drifting off here at work, I've been using Drumtracker to convert my drum tracks to MIDI but so far have only used it to augment real tracks by feeding the MIDI to apTrigga and loading in whatever samples, the the MIDI note velocity is irrelevant... However, I want to try doing some full replacement with SSD 3.0 and am wondering how it will behave with my MIDI drum tracks... If the hardest hits are only peaking at like -15db on my snare track and I convert that to MIDI, would the MIDI note levels be proportionately innaccurate as compared to the actual drum track? I'm worried that the VSTi will be triggering medium or soft hits for hits that were actually hard hits on the drum track but the software doesn't know that because it's going based off of whatever note velocity was assigned by Drumtracker based on the incoming audio signal...

Short version, does it make sense to normalize the tracks before converting to MIDI to ensure that the loudest hits are converted to the loudest MIDI note velocities possible so I don't have to dick around afterwards manually?

Just to be clear, these original normalized tracks won't end up anywhere in the project at the end of the day, they are being used solely for the purpose of generating MIDI files and then complete replacement, the actual normalized tracks are going straight in the trash...

 

[colonel kurtz]

fuck it, give it a shot...it'll only take like 2 mins. to try out

not to be a dick, but i don't know why questions like this even get asked...it'll take longer to make a post and wait for an answer than it would to just fucking do it

OTOH, i don't know why i'm sitting here typing this response, either...

 

[alan1990]

use drumagog and skip the midi step all together. if you know you are going to replace your drums just get a cheap set of trigers makes life alot easier not to mention save a bunch of time

 

[AdamWathan]

Hahaha yeah I agree, I'm at work though and can't bugger around with it since all my shit is at home (I also work 4000km away from home and won't be home until May 25th) so I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion in case it has occurred to anyone else before...

 

[John_C]

use drumagog and skip the midi step all together. if you know you are going to replace your drums just get a cheap set of trigers makes life alot easier not to mention save a bunch of time

drumagog is innacurate. I found it was often audibly out of time.

Some people seem to get it working well, but it's always been dodgy for me.

It'll be easier to use drumtracker if you normalise first i think. Haven't used the program in ages though

 

[Fox Mulder]

drumagog is innacurate. I found it was often audibly out of time.

Some people seem to get it working well, but it's always been dodgy for me.

It'll be easier to use drumtracker if you normalise first i think. Haven't used the program in ages though

That's kinda strange. It's probably your disk-usage, have you checked it out?
Could be badly sliced samples as well.

I seem to have no problems whatsoever with drumagog.

 

[aramism]

i usually use audio to midi function in logic for this but i could see normalizing helping out here. even for me. never thought of it though i never have problems. this enables me to create a midi version of the kick snare and toms and thus creating an accurate trigger for the gate as well as samples as well as using the beat mapping to do a backwards version of beat detective and chop up the whole song and quantize.

 

[Splat88]

drumagog is innacurate. I found it was often audibly out of time.

Some people seem to get it working well, but it's always been dodgy for me.

It'll be easier to use drumtracker if you normalise first i think. Haven't used the program in ages though

Interesting, I've never had this problem and I use Drumagog to convert drums to midi on almost everything I mix with real drums. The midi ends up getting mixed with the real drums and I've never noticed any issues. Is the auto-align button at the bottom is unchecked? If its on, I've gotten some really sketchy triggers happen.

But back to the question at hand, I don't normalize the drums, I just let them play and record the midi. Then I go in and manually alter the velocity levels for the recorded drums. Works perfectly!

 

[Via Noctis]

i usually use audio to midi function in logic for this but i could see normalizing helping out here. even for me. never thought of it though i never have problems. this enables me to create a midi version of the kick snare and toms and thus creating an accurate trigger for the gate as well as samples as well as using the beat mapping to do a backwards version of beat detective and chop up the whole song and quantize.

DUDE!! That is brilliant! I never thought of that. I am struggling to think of an accurate way to gate the toms (he has 5) But I only have 16 inputs, so I can't trigger and mic for the sake of sidechaining a gate. It's been on my mind for weeks now... I probably could have posted it as a question tho.... *face-palm*