Drum question

Thread Starter

Vanush

Joined Apr 19, 2008
46
Is it possible to 'convert' the sound of a drum to a keyboard instrument, e.g. using signal processing techniques. Measure the pitch of a snare drum, and attempt to recreate it in MATLAB? I don't think it's possible, since a (snare) drum doesn't have a fundamental frequency, does it?
 

kubeek

Joined Sep 20, 2005
5,794
I am not really sure what you want to achieve. One way could be triggering, which is a circuit that recognizes the hit and tells a synthetizer to play a note.

As for converting in matlab, you would have to record the sound and work from there, or google how did the old analog synthetizers create drum sounds and recreate that process.
 

Thread Starter

Vanush

Joined Apr 19, 2008
46
I basically want to be able to play a drum pattern on keyboard, and figure out the notes to play so it will be recognizable from the original and not have it sound like rubbish. The keyboard sound doesn't have to be stock standard piano though.
 

Papabravo

Joined Feb 24, 2006
21,157
Is it possible to 'convert' the sound of a drum to a keyboard instrument, e.g. using signal processing techniques. Measure the pitch of a snare drum, and attempt to recreate it in MATLAB? I don't think it's possible, since a (snare) drum doesn't have a fundamental frequency, does it?
Like many instruments the sound of a drum is a combination of sounds. There is of course a fundamental frequency along with harmonics generated by the stretched drumhead.

http://paws.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/MembraneCircle/Circle.html

The interesting thing about drums is that the harmonics of the various vibrational modes are not integral multiples of the fundamental frequency
 

kubeek

Joined Sep 20, 2005
5,794
I basically want to be able to play a drum pattern on keyboard, and figure out the notes to play so it will be recognizable from the original and not have it sound like rubbish. The keyboard sound doesn't have to be stock standard piano though.
I think every keyboard has a drum preset, where each key plays some drum sound.

So, what do you really need? Take a song and map it to different drum hits? Like import the song into matlab and get separate key hits as output?
 

Thread Starter

Vanush

Joined Apr 19, 2008
46
I think every keyboard has a drum preset, where each key plays some drum sound.

So, what do you really need? Take a song and map it to different drum hits? Like import the song into matlab and get separate key hits as output?
Yes, I know my MIDI keyboard has a drum preset. Even if it sounds like crap, I can replace the samples with higher quality ones. So I would like to be able to play the drum fill on keyboard.
I'm wondering whether measuring the frequency in matlab of each drum hit from the original audio file will help in trying to determine what keys to press (and whne)
 
Last edited:

kubeek

Joined Sep 20, 2005
5,794
So, what do you really need? Take a song and map it to different drum hits? Like import the song into matlab and get separate key hits as output?
Try to answer this time.
 

bearblock

Joined Oct 24, 2008
18
i'd describe what you're after as "auto transcription of unpitched percussion". you might want to google that, but you'll need a fair bit of DSP background to make sense of the results.

you could probably just slow down the track in some audio editor and do it by ear.
 
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