How to Import Songs into EarDrum

EarDrum turns any song into an interactive drum play-along: import the drum part, and the app shows you every note, listens to your playing, and tells you which hits you nailed and which you rushed, dragged, or missed. You can loop any section, slow it down, and play along to a drumless backing track — on an electronic kit, a practice pad, or just your fingers. This guide covers both ways to get songs in: standard MIDI files and Clone Hero charts.

Two ways to import a song

  • A MIDI file (.mid) — the universal format. Export one from Songsterr, Guitar Pro, or any DAW, and optionally add your own backing track and album art.
  • A Clone Hero song package (.zip) — the rhythm-game format. One zip contains the drum chart, the audio stems, the album art, and the section markers, so everything is set up in a single import.

Both end up in the same place: an interactive song in your library with per-hit feedback, looping, and adjustable speed. MIDI is the flexible do-it-yourself route; Clone Hero is the convenient everything-included route.

Option 1: Import a MIDI file

What a MIDI file actually is

A Standard MIDI File (SMF — the .mid format) doesn't contain audio. It contains the performance data: which note plays, when, and how hard — for every instrument in the arrangement, not just the drums — plus the tempo map and time signature. That's exactly what a practice app needs — because EarDrum knows every intended hit and its exact timing, it can compare your playing against the original note by note. An MP3 can't do that; a MIDI file can.

One convention matters for drummers: in the General MIDI standard, drums live on channel 10. Each drum (kick, snare, hi-hat, toms, cymbals) is a specific note number on that channel. EarDrum reads the drum part from channel 10, so your file needs its drums there — exports from tab software put them there automatically, and in a DAW it's usually one setting on the drum track.

Where to get MIDI drum files

  • Songsterr — a huge library of drum tabs. Open a song on songsterr.com, and export the tab as a MIDI file. Songsterr tabs are quantized and tempo-mapped, which makes them ideal for play-along practice.
  • Guitar Pro files — tab archives are full of .gp files with full drum parts. Open one in Guitar Pro (or the free TuxGuitar) and export to MIDI.
  • Your DAW — GarageBand, Logic, Ableton, Reaper, Cubase, FL Studio: program the part, record it from your e-kit, or clean up a transcription, then export the drum track as MIDI. Before exporting, check that the drum track is assigned to channel 10 or uses a General MIDI drum kit — that's the one step that trips people up.
  • Transcribe it yourself — the slowest option and the best practice. If you're figuring songs out by ear anyway, see our guide on how to learn drum songs by ear; entering your transcription as MIDI gives you a play-along to verify it against.

Importing the file

  1. Add the song. In the Play tab, add a new song and pick your .mid file. EarDrum reads the tempo, time signature, and bar count from the file.
  2. Pick the drum track if asked. Some MIDI files contain more than one track with drum notes (a main kit plus percussion, for example). EarDrum lists them with their note counts and preselects the busiest one — switch it if the app guessed wrong.
  3. Fill in title and artist, and add album art. Artwork (JPG, PNG, or WebP) is optional, but it makes a big library much easier to navigate — and more fun to come back to.

Add a backing track (or a drumless track)

A MIDI import already sounds like a band: most MIDI files carry the full arrangement — bass, guitar, keys, vocal melody — and EarDrum renders those instruments alongside the drums, so you can play along to the whole song straight from the .mid file. If you'd rather hear the real recording than the synthesized arrangement, attach the song's audio as a backing track — EarDrum accepts MP3, WAV, M4A/AAC, and Ogg/Opus, and you can attach several files at once if you have the song as separate stems.

The best option is a drumless track: a mix of the song with the drums removed, so the only drums you hear are your own. Drumless versions of popular songs are widely available (search the song title plus "drumless"), some artists publish official ones, and stem-separation tools can remove the drums from a track you own. If you'd rather skip the hunt entirely, Clone Hero packages (below) usually include the instruments as separate stems, and EarDrum builds the drumless mix automatically.

After attaching audio, line it up with the MIDI using the audio offset: a positive value in milliseconds skips the start of the audio, a negative value adds silence before it. Play the first few bars, nudge the offset until the kick lands with the grid, and you're set.

One honest caveat: songs recorded before click tracks were standard — much of classic rock, funk, and jazz — breathe in tempo. The band speeds up into the chorus and settles back down. A MIDI file does carry a tempo map that can change over the song, but unless someone mapped it to that specific recording bar by bar, it won't follow those fluctuations — so even a perfectly offset backing track will drift out of sync over the course of the song. For those songs, either practice against EarDrum's MIDI playback and metronome instead of the original audio, or look for a Clone Hero chart — charters sync the chart's tempo map to the actual recording, fluctuations and all, which is precisely what makes the format so good for older songs.

Option 2: Import a Clone Hero chart

What the Clone Hero format is

Clone Hero is a free Guitar Hero / Rock Band–style rhythm game with a large charting community that has transcribed tens of thousands of songs — including full drum parts. A song is distributed as a folder or zip containing:

  • notes.chart or notes.mid — the chart itself, with the note data for each instrument and difficulty. Charts with "Pro Drums" markings distinguish cymbals from toms, which EarDrum uses for accurate notation.
  • song.ini — metadata: title, artist, and the audio sync offset.
  • Audio stems — the song split into separate files (song, guitar, bass, vocals, drums, …) in Opus, Ogg, MP3, or WAV.
  • album.png / album.jpg — the cover art.

The format is openly documented — see the Clone Hero wiki for the charting reference, or the free Moonscraper Chart Editor if you want to chart songs yourself.

Why it's a great fit for drum practice

Import the zip into EarDrum and everything is wired up in one step:

  • The drum chart becomes the song — converted to standard drum notation you can read, loop, and slow down, instead of the game's scrolling note highway.
  • The stems become a drumless backing mix — the original drum stems are left out of the mix. The drum part itself is always rendered from the chart as MIDI, on its own volume slider, so you can hear it while learning and fade it out when you take over.
  • Audio sync is already done — the charter aligned the chart to the recording, including tempo fluctuations in songs that weren't recorded to a click, and EarDrum applies the chart's offset automatically.
  • Sections come with the chart — intro, verse, chorus, solo markers are imported and ready to loop.
  • Difficulty levels — many charts include easy, medium, hard, and expert drum parts. Start on a reduced version of the part and step up as it settles in; you can switch difficulty any time and EarDrum regenerates the song.
  • Album art included — the cover is picked up from the package.

Community charts are shared on sites like Enchor, a searchable index of Clone Hero charts — filter for songs with a drum part, download the zip, and import it straight into EarDrum (one song per zip). As with any community-shared media, stick to content you have the right to use.

Sections: name the song, loop the hard part

Every imported song can be split into named sections — intro, verse, chorus, that one fill at bar 57. Clone Hero charts bring their sections along; for MIDI imports you define them yourself in the song editor by marking where each section starts.

Sections are where practice actually happens. Instead of replaying a four-minute song to work on eight hard bars, you loop just the section, slow it down until every note is clean, and let the per-hit feedback tell you when to bring the tempo back up. It's the same loop-slow-verify method from our learning songs by ear guide, with the app checking your work.

Balance the mix: drums, backing track, metronome

In the volume settings you get three independent sliders — Drums (the synthesized playback of the imported part), Backing Track, and Metronome. That balance is a practice tool in itself:

  • Learning the part: drums up, backing track moderate — hear exactly what you're supposed to play while you read along.
  • Testing yourself: drums down or off, backing track up — it's a drumless mix and you're carrying the groove. The feedback still records every hit.
  • Fixing timing: metronome up against the backing track when a section keeps rushing — then fade it out once the section holds. (More on this in how to improve your drum timing.)

After the import: how the practice works

Once a song is in your library, EarDrum works the same regardless of where it came from. Play it on an electronic drum kit over USB or Bluetooth MIDI, on a practice pad with your device's microphone (mic hits are checked by timing only — the app doesn't yet recognize which drum you hit acoustically), or with your fingers in tap mode. The app marks every hit as early, late, or on time, so "I think I've got it" becomes "the chorus is clean at 90% speed, the bridge still needs work." Loop, slow down, speed up, and switch between a DAW-style grid and sheet music view — whichever way you prefer to read drums.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find MIDI drum tracks for songs?

The three biggest sources are Songsterr (drum tabs for hundreds of thousands of songs, exportable as MIDI), Guitar Pro files (open the tab in Guitar Pro or TuxGuitar and export to MIDI), and your own DAW — program or record the part in GarageBand, Logic, Reaper, or Ableton and export it as a .mid file. Community rhythm-game charts in the Clone Hero format are a fourth source, and EarDrum imports those directly as a zip.

Can I practice real drums with Clone Hero charts?

Yes. EarDrum imports Clone Hero song packages (.zip) directly: it converts the drum chart to standard drum notation, uses the non-drum audio stems as a drumless backing mix, and picks up the album art, song sections, and audio sync automatically. You play the part on an electronic kit, a practice pad, or in tap mode — with feedback on every hit instead of a game score.

What is a drumless track and do I need one?

A drumless track (also called a drumless backing track) is a mix of a song with the drums removed, so you can supply the drum part yourself. You don't strictly need one — EarDrum renders the whole MIDI arrangement, bass and guitar included, so a plain MIDI import is already something you can play along to — but a drumless mix of the real recording is the closest thing to playing with the band. Clone Hero song packages usually ship the instruments as separate stems, so EarDrum builds the drumless mix for you automatically.

Why does EarDrum say "No drum notes on channel 10"?

In the General MIDI standard, drums live on MIDI channel 10, and that's where EarDrum looks for the drum part. Exports from Songsterr, Guitar Pro, and most notation software put drums there automatically. If your file came from a DAW, make sure the drum track is set to channel 10 (or uses a General MIDI drum kit) before exporting, then re-import.

Why won't my backing track line up with the imported MIDI?

Usually one of two things. If the pattern is right but everything is shifted, fix it with the Audio offset field — a positive value skips the start of the audio, a negative value adds silence. If the two start together but drift apart over the song, the recording wasn't made to a click, so its tempo fluctuates in ways the MIDI file's tempo map doesn't follow; that needs a chart tempo-mapped to that recording (Clone Hero charts are synced this way by the charter) rather than an offset.