Beat Detective allows the fine timing nuances of a rhythmic performance to be extracted and saved as a groove template, called a DigiGroove template. DigiGrooves can be saved locally to the Groove Clipboard, or saved to disk as DigiGrooves.
Groove templates are “quantization maps” derived from real musical performances. The rhythmic character of each performance is analyzed and stored as a groove template. Beat Detective analyzes an audio selection for transient peaks according to a defined threshold and maps the rhythmic relationships to a 960 parts per quarter note (ppq) template.
When creating DigiGroove templates, Beat Detective also analyzes the dynamics of a performance. MIDI velocity data is saved from MIDI tracks, and accents and peak levels in audio data are incorporated into the groove template as velocity data, which can be applied to change the dynamics of MIDI tracks.
Beat Detective translates the amplitude of signals in audio tracks to MIDI velocity according to a linear scale. For example:
Capturing this information is very important to preserving the feel of a performance, and can add life to MIDI tracks that lack dynamics.