BeatRead listens to a short drum recording and writes down what it hears as MIDI: kicks, snares, hi-hats, toms and cymbals as General MIDI percussion notes you can drop onto any drum machine or sampler.
The idea
Transcribing a drum loop by ear is slow, and quantizing it on the way in throws away the feel. BeatRead uses a drum-transcription model to find each hit, names it with its General MIDI drum sound, and keeps the times exactly where the model heard them, without snapping them to a grid. You get the groove of the recording, swing and push included, as an editable pattern.
The result is shown against the source waveform, one lane per drum, so you can check each detected hit against the sound it came from before you use it.
Using it
- Upload a short drum recording, or record one from your audio input.
- Choose Transcribe. BeatRead sends the clip to a private transcription job on your Maru account and shows the detected hits when it is done.
- Play the result. Loop playback is on by default, with a toggle beneath Play for a single pass. Click the waveform, ruler or drum lanes to jump to a moment, or drag across them to scrub.
- Download the MIDI file. Hits land on channel 10, the General MIDI percussion channel, so most drum instruments map them to the right sounds without setup.
Good to know
- Transcription needs you to be signed in to Maru, and runs on Maru's servers rather than in your browser.
- The pattern is an estimate to review, not a perfect score: a hit can be missed or mislabelled, and the notes are not a measured record of how hard each drum was played.
- BeatRead produces MIDI only. It has no sound of its own; play the exported file through a drum instrument or sampler.
- Your clip and its result do not survive a page reload, so download the MIDI you want to keep.
