Free new drum to MIDI converter plugin

[DongleHater]

After searching for a free drum to MIDI converter plugin for my needs with no real luck (yes, I know Stillwell's drumtrigger JSFX, see below), I finally decided to write my own. In the good tradition of all the other JSFXs, it's a freebie. In the even better tradition of other open source initiatives, it's also GPLed, so you have full freedom of also changing it for your own needs.

So what's wrong with the other drum to MIDI solutions available? There are three classic solutions for doing this:

1. Dynamic split -> only usable for recorded drums, but not for live trigger, no velocity
2. ReaGate -> live triggering possible, but still no velocity support
3. Stillwell's drumtrigger JSFX -> allows both live triggering and velocity extraction, but the generated velocities need additional treatment because they are typically much too low and the velocity curve is strictly 1:1 which rarely fits

To have an easy solution for both drum replacement/triggering on the basis of recorded drum tracks as well as for live drum triggering, and all that with very good velocity support and tweakability (without losing velocity resolution as with the Stillwell's drumtrigger + post-processing approach), I created drum2midi which you find in the attachment. Installation is as usual: unzip it and copy it to the Effects folder in Reaper's installation directory -> re-scan for new plugins and you're ready to go.

Due to drum2midi's tweakability based on well-documented parameters (all in the drum2midi JSFX file itself, together with the extensively documented source code), it is very well suited as an input FX together with a real drum pad. This couple is an incredible input device for recording drum sounds! Once tried, you never want to go back to keyboard-based drum recording and also not to the usual drum pads, not even MPC's. Used together with not too rubbish hardware, e.g. cheap from ebay, or as the luxury edition with a mesh-head pad like e.g. Roland PDX-100 plugged directly into one of Reaper's audio inputs, you can also record playing techniques not possible to capture with keyboard or trigger pads such as flams or rolls. Even just recording hand tapping on the table, recorded with a microphone, works great as a fun way of recording drum parts! With drum2midi's velocity gain and shape controls (the latter works as a velocity expander/compressor), it is easy to use the full velocity range of the triggered drum sound source with almost any percussive audio source.

Just try it out and have fun! And it would be great to hear from your experience with it in this thread.