August Burns Red: Josh Schroeder’s Reaper Speed-Edit for Drum MIDI

Getting punchy, consistent, and powerful drums is non-negotiable in modern metal. Whether you’re subtly reinforcing live hits or going for full sample replacement, you need clean MIDI triggers from your audio drum tracks, and you often need them fast. If you’re a Reaper user, you’re in luck. August Burns Red producer/engineer Josh Schroeder (the man behind many of their killer-sounding records) has a super-efficient workflow for exactly this. We got a peek into his method, and it’s a game-changer for quickly turning acoustic drum performances into MIDI gold.

This technique, showcased by Josh while working on an August Burns Red track, is all about leveraging Reaper’s built-in tools to do the heavy lifting. Let’s dive into how you can get your drum audio sliced and diced into MIDI in record time.

The Core Technique: Dynamic Splitting for MIDI Triggers

The foundation of this speed-editing trick lies in Reaper’s “Dynamic Split” feature. Imagine you’ve got a raw snare track, and you want to create MIDI notes that align perfectly with each hit. This is where you start.

Accessing Dynamic Split in Reaper

It couldn’t be simpler:

1. Select your audio drum track in Reaper (let’s use a snare track as an example, just like Josh).
2. Press the ‘D’ key on your keyboard.
   This instantly brings up the Dynamic Split items window. You’re now looking at the controls that will help Reaper identify individual drum hits.

Dialing in the Transient Detection

Inside the Dynamic Split window, you’ll see a few crucial settings. The main one to focus on initially is the threshold (Reaper might call it “allowance” or “tolerance” in some contexts).

• What it does: This slider determines how sensitive Reaper is to the transients (the sharp initial peaks) in your audio.
• How to adjust: You’ll see Reaper visually indicate where it’s placing split points on the waveform. Drag the threshold slider until Reaper is accurately catching the main body of each snare hit without grabbing too much cymbal bleed, ghost notes you don’t want, or other stray noises. If the song is “pretty simple” and well-played, as Josh noted for his example, this part is usually straightforward.
• Fine-tuning: You can also play with settings like “Minimum slice length” or “Reduce splits when gate is open” to further refine how Reaper identifies the hits, especially if you’re dealing with faster passages or more complex playing.

The goal here is to get clean slices that represent each distinct drum hit you want to turn into a MIDI note.

From Slices to MIDI: The Magic Button

Once you’re happy with how Reaper is detecting the transients and setting up the split points, it’s time for the magic.

Creating MIDI from Slices

Within the Dynamic Split window, look for an option that’s something like “Create chromatic MIDI item from slices” (the exact wording might vary slightly or it might be an action you run after setting the split points). Josh Schroeder points this out as the key step.

1. Ensure this option is selected or primed.
2. Hit the “Split” button in the Dynamic Split window.

Instantly, Reaper will do two things: it’ll slice your audio item at all the detected transient points, and, more importantly for our purpose, it will create a brand-new MIDI track directly below your audio track. This new track will be populated with MIDI notes, each one corresponding to a transient slice it just created. Boom! Instant MIDI.

The “Chromatic” Quirk and a Quick Fix

Now, there’s a slight quirk. Reaper, by default with this method, often generates these MIDI notes chromatically. This means instead of all your snare MIDI notes being on, say, D1 (a common MIDI note for snares), they’ll be scattered across different pitches on the MIDI piano roll. Annoying, right?

Thankfully, there’s an easy fix Josh points out:

1. Right-click on the newly created MIDI item in the MIDI track.
2. Navigate to MIDI Note Properties (Josh mentions “Event properties” then finding “Note position” – your Reaper version might label it slightly differently, but you’re looking for where you can edit the pitch of all selected notes).
3. In the properties window, find the parameter for Note or Note Position.
4. Change this value to your desired single MIDI note. For a snare, this might be D1 or E1. For a kick, C1 or C2 is common. Set it once, and all the selected MIDI notes will snap to that pitch.

Now all your MIDI triggers are neatly on the correct note, ready for your favorite drum sampler.

Refining Your MIDI: Velocity and Manual Tweaks

While this Reaper drum MIDI conversion method is incredibly fast, it’s a starting point, not always a final solution.

Velocity Considerations

The MIDI notes generated will have velocities based on the detected transients. Most of the time, Reaper does a “pretty decent job,” as Josh puts it, but the velocities might not perfectly capture the human dynamics of the original performance, especially if your dynamic split threshold wasn’t super dialed-in. You’ll likely want to go in and tweak velocities to ensure your samples match the intended feel of the drummer.

The Importance of Manual Review

Even with this speedy technique, a manual once-over is crucial. Josh Schroeder himself says, “I still go through and edit it, but I’m not sure why the chromatic thing is… anyhow, so I’m not too particular about it [the initial auto-generation perfection] because I’m going to have to go through it anyhow.”

• Check for accuracy: Make sure no hits were missed and no false triggers were created.
• Quantize (if needed): From here, you can easily quantize the MIDI notes if the performance needs tightening. This opens up a whole other world of drum editing possibilities in Reaper.
• Humanize: After quantizing, you might want to apply some subtle humanization to timing and velocity to keep things from sounding too robotic.

Why This Reaper Workflow Kicks Ass for Metal Drums

So, why is this method so beloved by producers like Josh Schroeder?

• Speed: For straightforward, well-played drum tracks (especially in genres like metal where consistency is key), this technique is lightning fast. Josh mentions that for a simple song, he “can edit it in 20 minutes. It’s pretty quick.”
• Efficiency: It gets you from raw audio to usable MIDI triggers in minutes, allowing you to quickly start layering samples or replacing hits.
• Reaper’s Power: It’s a testament to Reaper’s flexible and powerful built-in tools for audio and MIDI manipulation. Josh notes, “There’s a lot of really nice systems in Reaper for drum editing.”

This isn’t some obscure hack; it’s a practical, battle-tested system that pros use to get results efficiently. You can see more of Josh Schroeder’s techniques in action on the August Burns Red Nail The Mix session.

Take Your Drum Production Further with Nail The Mix

Mastering quick MIDI conversion in Reaper is a fantastic skill, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle in crafting colossal metal drums. Imagine learning how to perfectly blend these MIDI-triggered samples with your live drum shells, dial in the perfect attack and sustain, and make them punch through a dense wall of guitars.

At Nail The Mix, you get to watch producers like Josh Schroeder, Will Putney, Forrester Savell, and many more mix entire songs from scratch using real multitracks from bands like August Burns Red, Gojira, and Periphery. You’ll see firsthand how they apply advanced EQ strategies to carve out space and power for each drum, and how they use compression not just for loudness but for shape and groove on individual drums and the overall bus.

Ready to go beyond isolated tricks and learn comprehensive mixing strategies that will elevate your productions? Check out how you can Unlock Your Sound and Mix Modern Metal Beyond Presets with our extensive library of courses and monthly mixing sessions.