Converting files to MIDI for drum tutor game thing

Good evening, all.

For those of you who do custom Rock Band mods and/or know about computers, file conversions, and drum machines, I request your assistance. The skinny is as follows:

I am attempting to teach myself the drums. To this end, i picked up a Roland HD-1 electronic drum kit (the better to learn while keeping from disturbing the neighbors at all hours). There’s a MIDI output that connects into my computer and allows me to access this drum tutor software called “HD-1 Drum Tutor”, appropriately enough. One of the features of the software is that it allows one to upload songs into it and helps you learn to play it in real-time. It’s kind of like Rock Band, except that it displays actual sheet music and allows you to adjust the tempo to your liking. I have a bunch of songs on my computer, however they’re all in .m4a format. I’m trying to figure out how to convert them into a workable .mid MIDI format so that I can load them into the tutor and learn to play them from there. That said, i lack the requisite computer know-how to make this a reality, and my attempts at finding shareware that facilitates the conversion in anything approaching a reasonable manner have failed.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to rectify the situation? I’d greatly appreciate any help that could be provided.

Thanks,
–CiaTH
PS: Also, thanks for the opportunity to use the word “rectify” in a sentence :slight_smile: That just about brightened my day.

Audio formats like .m4a and midi files are apples and oranges. As far as I know there is no way to convert them at all.

The audio file is a digital file of the sound to be played. A midi file is a set of digital instructions designed to tell a synthesizer how to perform a part. It also allows a program to display that information in standard notation, among other things.

You can find MIDI files for an awful lot of tunes on the net, but to the best of my knowledge there is no way to create a midi file from an audio track.

Well, I’ll be damned. Further research shows that it is possible, and a utility for it can be found here.

The quality leaves something to be desired, but this would probably work better with more rhythmic parts, such as drums. Give it a shot and let us know!

Will do, my good man.