Bass Drum Audio to Midi Trigger for Slate
Hi there
Our drummer currently triggers samples in Slate on an old iPhone 6S with a Launchpad Pro connected to a Yamaha MD-BT01 Bluetooth wireless MIDI adaptor. Unfortunately, he isn't a fan of finger-drumming the bass drum so we are looking for some kind of audio to midi drum trigger for bass drum sounds in Slate.
There are lots of hardware drum triggers on the market and we will probably end up going down this route but I just wondered if anyone knew of a way of doing it on the iPhone. We have got a couple of ways of getting the audio into the iPhone, either via my iRig or by our drummers Focusrite Scarlett with an Apple USB camera adapter.
An app called Voxkit - video here - keeps popping up in searches and seems ideal but I am under the impression this is no longer available.
Any thoughts/ideas would be most appreciated.
Andrew
Comments
FAC Envolver comes to mind. It sends out midi based on incoming audio. Unfortunately, it only sends out MIDI CC's, not notes. So you'd have to employ a second plugin such as mfxConvert or a Streambyter or Mozaic script to change that to notes. Too many moving parts to go wrong for live use IMO, but a cheap option.
Voxkit is a pretty good app, but way to old, and it is standalone only, so it probably wouldn't be a wise choice.
The Sensel Morph has a drum pads control surface that you could whack with a drum stick. It's completely customizable. I've not tried it with stix myself, so YMMV. Might be worth looking at though. It can be used with Bluetooth if you trust that, or USB to the phone if you don't.
https://sensel.com/pages/the-sensel-morph
https://sensel.com/collections/all/products/drum-pad-overlay
FAC Envolver looks really good, many thanks. I think the envelope is able to transmit midi notes too.
No, I don't think the envelope can transmit midi notes. It can be triggered by midi notes, but only outputs MIDI CC as far as I can see.
@WrongSat - oops sorry, I think maybe you’re right. Envolver can send out midi notes. I misunderstood how it works from the confusing labeling of the settings.
In case you already own it, Thumbjam comes with a pitch to MIDI converter. Don't think you can lock it down to a single MIDI note (it tries to interpret pitches -> midi notes) but maybe you can create a custom, single note scale in TJ?
Or, presuming your kick drum is reasonably pitch stable, just see how many notes TJ tends to interpret from it and duplicate your slate kick pad as needed to cover the range.
Oh! Or... just put the kick sample into Obsidian (instead of Slate) and turn off pitch tracking in the sample oscillator's main screen ("KEY TRK"). Then, it wont matter which notes Thumbjam sends out.
https://thumbjam.com/docs.php#inputcontrolmode is the basic bits about audio to midi conversion in TJ.