Turning Drum Stems Into MIDI in Logic Pro X

There is a point in every audio engineers career where they will absolutely hate a drum recording that was given to them and would want to either compliment or replace it with a sample. In order to do that they would need to first transform the transient data of the track into a MIDI track.

It is important to note that this method can only be done if the drums stems are recorded separately (i.e. you have one track for the snare mic, one for the kick drum, etc).

1. The first thing you want to do is select the track that you want to double/replace. In this example I will use a stem recorded from a kick drum

2. Click on the Track Tab and then click Replace or Double Drum Track or press (^)+(D) on your keyboard

3. You should now see the Drum Replacement/Doubling window pop out as well as see a MIDI track appear under your selected drum stem.

 4. Under Instrument, select the appropriate drum stem that you are replacing/doubling. This helps with locating the proper transients as well.

5. Then select if you are either replacing or doubling the track. Replacing will delete the audio stem whereas doubling will create a brand new MIDI track in your project.

6. Set the threshold so that you can catch the transients that will be sampled. The preview tab button works similar to a gate and helps you get an idea of what hits will be captured and converted to MIDI.

7. Trigger Note designates what the MIDI notes will be when converted. If your Trigger VST has the kick set to C0, you would match it to that. The auto option would match it to the selected sample in area B.

8. Timing offset would adjust the placement of the MIDI note so that it would match the start of the hit instead of the peak. The “Set average attack time” button will analyze the set, and set the offset automatically.

9. When you are all done, hit OK and it will generate your sample track.