How To Extract Groove Templates From Audio Files In PreSonus Studio One

In last week’s article / Video - we took a look at how we can create custom Groove Templates when working with MIDI Files in Studio One. If you haven’t checked it out already, you can do so by clicking here.

Although having MIDI files is a great way to create Groove Templates, let’s be honest, this isn’t always the case. In fact, I’d say that it is much more likely that one would have access to an Audio Loop (in some file format such as Wav, MP3, or Aiff, etc) vs an actual MIDI file of a performance.

Luckily, Studio One is able to perform a similar task when working with Audio. That being said, there are a few things that one needs to be aware of, in terms of how Studio One performs this task, and more specifically some things that user’s can do to help the process go a little smoother.

Audio vs MIDI

When working with MIDI files - things are pretty simple. We have Musical Data that gets translated to a Musical Performance. Hence, the concept of extracting a Groove Template from a MIDI File (or an “Instrument Part” in Studio One terminology) is relatively straight forward. The Note Data within the instrument part, and more specifically it’s timing, and Velocity become MIDI “triggers”.

Given that when working with drums in particular, each of these triggers, will be triggering an audio sample of some sort, there is a 1:1 relationship between each MIDI trigger and the Audio Sample that’s set to play on each pitch. Providing each sample is cut close to the first Zero Crossing point - this results in a very tight performance - where the Audio “should” follow the MIDI timing extremely well. But when it comes to audio, things are slightly different.

Timing is in the Transient Detection

When it comes to audio, and more specifically creating MIDI Triggers that are accurate and reliable, it’s all about the transients. This becomes a little more complex when we take into account that most of these loops are stereo Mixdown’s that have all of the elements of the drums rendered into a single File. But the great part is that Studio One has some tools to help streamline this process, and the actual workflow of extracting the Groove From a file (after the transient detection has been completed) couldn’t be easier.

In this video, I demonstrate how to extract an accurate Groove Template from Audio Files in PreSonus Studio One. In addition, we will also take a look at how to Quantize other Audio Loops and MIDI Files to the Groove Template - Covering everything you need to know from Beginner level to Advanced.

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Cheers, Marcus