PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic What program will convert standard drum notation to Midi?

There appears to be high-quality standard drum notation, both free and paid of popular songs. I would like to convert those to Midi.

Anyone know how to do that?

Billy

Open them in RB or PT and Save As MIDI (?)
Not sure what "high-quality standard drum notation" means.

Sheet music for drums. I will try to post a copy.

Billy

I kind of doubt it unless there is some optical scanning software that converts what it scans into MIDI note values. Can't you program it? It's one short pattern that never changes. Or have one of the styles play it in for you and save it to MIDI.

Hi Eddie,

Yes, this is simple enough to program into midi. The issue is there are many good drum lines that sites like Drum Ninja have done good quality standard notation sheet music to popular songs.

I have not explored software like Sibelius or Finale to see if I can scan drum music into that software. Just looking to see if someone knew.

Matt may know the answer to this also.

Billy

I use several programs to convert printed sheet music to MIDI (although converting to Music XML is always preferable). I say several because I've found I get different results depending on a lot of variables. PDF to Music Pro does well from a PDF, unless the music is not from a commercial publisher. In that case, for most cases I use ScaanScore 3 Pro.

Send me your PDF and I'll give it a whirl.

One little annoyance is that drum notation is often not standardized between notation programs. In other words, my software might make a MIDI file and I can load that into my notation software, but what they intended as a low tom sound might come out as a triangle. That's an extreme example, but I think you get my point. Your page gives no guidance.

Also, when scanning, you sometimes don't get things like the first and second endings, or the Segno, in your page, but these can always be added manually in any notation program.

Send me the file, but I'm travelling tomorrow so give me some time.

Thanks, Matt,

Here is a link to the PDF in Dropbox. No rush; I mainly want to know if this is actually possible and if the software can read these files.

Thank you very much for giving this a shot.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/95u9rahxcz6bfy8/sultans-of-swing-dire-straits-drum-transcription.pdf?dl=0

Billy

EDIT: Actually, Matt, we only need a few bars of this, as this is just a test.

I am unsure how to post a PDF, so if there is an issue, just email me, and I will attach the file. planobillyfl@gmail.com

Billy, I can see that just fine. Let's see what happens.

Assuming I can scan it, do you really want MIDI rather than Music XML? In other words, how do you plan to use this? If you're going to add it as a track in a DAW, for example, then MIDI makes sense. You will just lose any text info and probably the first and second endings and the Segno.

I had in mind to put these files into my DAW. That also gives me the ability to change/correct.

So, that was the reason for midi.

The intent was to use good drum tracks for a cover and as a learning process for better understanding drum lines.

If you can make this work and tell me what software I need, I will use both midi and audio to listen to the drum tracks. I assume all of them will require some modification.

Thanks,

Billy

Here you go.

Files labelled 1 are done on PDF to Music Pro.

Files labelled 2 are done on ScanScore 3 Pro

It's not pretty. The PDF to Music read it very well, but ScanScore Pro 3 had tons of errors in the form of missing notes and incorrect length measures.

The MP3 files are just for fun so you can hear how my notation software, Notion 6 by Presonus, sounds after importing the MIDI. Of course, I could assign it to different sounds, but this is the raw result. I made no attempt to check for the endings or Segno etc.

https://www.mattfinley.com/promos/sultan1.mid
https://www.mattfinley.com/promos/sultan1.mp3

https://www.mattfinley.com/promos/sultan2.mid
https://www.mattfinley.com/promos/sultan2.mp3

Thanks Matt. I will put the midi files in my DAW and assign drum sounds to see what it sounds like.

Billy

I'll be interested in how it works for you.

It will take a bit of messing around to figure this out.

SmartScore 64 Pro works fine, both xml and midi 0.

Keith

I was able to get the midi into Superior Drummer in my DAW. As I don't know what the track is supposed to sound like, I will have to go figure it out...lol I had to move the drum lines around to what I assumed would be the kick and the snare and so on.

But...the test worked. The software was capable of decoding what was written in that format. How well, that is another issue. Perhaps I can find a drum line that I know exactly what it should sound like to do a better test.

I will see if there is a trial for SmartScore and give it a try.

Keith, did it sound like something that would fit Sultans Of Swing? Keith, perhaps you could go to this site and get a drum score that you know what it is supposed to sound like and try it with SmartScore.

Here is the site that has a ton of free drum-sheet music.

https://thedrumninja.com/drum-transcriptions/

Billy

There is a demo for SmartScore. SmartScore Pro costs $400, so I need to investigate it before I jump off the deep end. The demo is supposed to be a full version.

It is getting to be the middle of the night here, so I will pick this back up tomorrow.

It appears at this point that what I want to do is possible.

I have listened to Gregg Bissonette say he has a lot of transcriptions of famous drum music. I will call him to see if he can also point me in the right direction. Well...if he still has the same number and will take my call...lol

Thanks, guys, for all the help.

Billy

Matt, the OCR is THAT good in that program? I have tried OCR scanning many times over the years and it was usually a disaster. Though it has now been years since I tried and with the way tech improves it may be better now. In the context of music it's a different animal because conversion to MIDI is involved, but in older days before "print to PDF" was a thing OCR was needed to convert a document into something that could be edited. We used it a lot when I worked in the IT department at a law firm. When old people refused to use email!

I haven't tried it, but if you get it to convert, I can visualize the work you will have to do after.

1) Dynamics. The velocity of the sticks is very variable. Certain beats and sub-beats can have great differences in their volume. Add accents and you will have your work cut out for you, unless you know a short-cut for that, which I am not aware of.

2) Groove. In most modern pop forms of music, the drums are not quantized, sheet music is. Unless you have a way of injecting the groove into it (some sequencers/DAWs have this feature), it'll sound mechanical.

You may already know this, if so, please feel free to ignore this post.

Notes ♫

Personally, in my opinion, you are taking a really long and complicated route to get to and end result you won't be very happy with. Although, I will admit, I'm still not sure what your end goal is.

If your goal is to figure out what drummers do in relation to a song, you would be WAY further ahead just programming the drums in from the sheet music you are finding. Yes, initially, it will take and awful lot of time PER SONG. However, you would gain a massive understand of how drums really work in relation to a song. That SKILL can be used to both eventually be able to program drums to a song you hear that doesn't have sheet music for but even more importantly, understand how to create drums for you own songs MUCH better. (damn that was a long sentence)

The other option is to simply purchase entire midi songs with the drums included. Picking one here and there would be both cost effective from a money AND time perspective. You can almost instantly see what is happening, and with the ability to hear them! Slow them down in if you want to. As you know, it's not an issue with midi. Depending on your DAW you can overlap more than one midi track to literally see how the drums and bass (as an example) are working together.

To further the point of just buying the midi track, the drums will sound infinitely better than trying to do the whole "read sheet music from a PDF." Those companies typically have velocities programmed into the drums as well. Some even the groove. With drumming, those to things have so much to do with each other. If you can manage to pull the drum transcription, they would likely be all the same velocity. Going in to fix those could be a nightmare...and now your back to programming anyway.

I could go on and on, but just wanted to give you a few things to consider. Knock yourself out with whatever you want to. It sounds like you're going to learn something either way.

"I was only saying to the queen the other day how I hate name dropping."
-Douglas Fairbanks
I have always found that quote funny.

BTW, this post was done with speech to text. I'm am sure there are many errors than I'm not willing to proof. Let me know if anything makes zero sense. Good luck with your project(s)

Eddie, the program I used here with more success, PDF to Music Pro, isn’t OCR. It’s just PDF to music. No optical scanning.

ScanScore 3 Pro can read PDFs but can also control your scanner, and yes, that often has tons of problems. They are better than they used to be a few years ago, but still have serious problems. I could go on …