FFXIV Drum Split

The FFXIV Drum Split tool turns a General MIDI drum track into FFXIV percussion tracks with one click. A typical imported MIDI packs the whole drum kit - kick, snare, toms, hi-hats, cymbals - onto a single track on the drum channel (channel 10). This tool splits that track into separate, correctly named FFXIV instrument tracks, and can optionally transpose the drums onto the pitches of a community drum kit so the percussion is instantly playable in game.

How It Works

The preview dialog - pitch mapping selector, per-group note counts, and include checkboxes

The Percussion Groups

FFXIV bard performance has five percussion instruments: Bass Drum, Snare Drum, Cymbal, Bongo and Timpani. The drum split groups the General MIDI drum notes into matching tracks (Timpani is a tonal instrument with its own track and channel, so it is not part of the drum-channel split):

The new tracks keep all events on the drum channel - the split only changes the track layout. Because the track names match the FFXIV percussion instruments, playback and audio export automatically use the matching FFXIV sound for each track when the FFXIV SoundFont is active.

Pitch Mapping Kits

The Pitch mapping selector at the top of the dialog controls what happens to the note pitches:

Kit Note Tables

Click a kit to see its complete GM-drum-to-pitch mapping:

A kit selected - the groups follow the kit's note tables, unmapped drums go to Other Percussion

Demo

Options

• Include checkboxes - untick a group and its notes stay where they are (or flow into "Other Percussion" when that group is ticked)
• Other Percussion - collects every drum note the mapping does not cover, plus any other events on the drum channel, so nothing is ever silently dropped
• Overlapping notes - drum lines often stack same-pitch notes to reinforce a hit, and a pitch-mapping kit can also land two GM drums (e.g. both kicks) on the same target pitch. FFXIV can only sound one at a time, so stacked hits play sequentially and change the beat. Per output track and pitch, the split keeps the earliest note of each overlapping cluster (when several start together, the longest - then loudest - hit wins) and either removes the rest (default, recommended), moves them to a separate "Overlaps" track, or keeps everything. The "Overlaps" track is created muted - it is a holding pen for reviewing what was pulled out, not part of the arrangement.
• Remove the original drum track if it becomes empty - deletes the source track after the split, but only when no events would be lost (time signatures, lyrics and other meta events on the track always keep it alive)

A kit selected with the Overlapping notes option - redundant stacked hits are removed by default

Undo & Re-running

• The entire split is a single undo action - press Ctrl+Z to restore the original drum track exactly
• Splitting a track that is itself the product of a previous drum split (a track named Bass Drum, Snare Drum, Cymbal, Bongo or Other Percussion) asks for confirmation first - with a kit selected, a second pass could re-map notes that are already on their kit pitches

Tips

• Split first, fine-tune after - the new tracks are ordinary tracks; move, delete or edit notes freely once the split is done
• Pick the kit that matches your in-game setup - the kits differ in where kicks, toms and cymbals land; choose the one your performance group uses
• Combine with Fix X|V Channels - run the channel fixer afterwards to set up the rest of the arrangement; it recognizes the new percussion tracks by name
• Watch the voice budget - dense cymbal patterns eat FFXIV voices quickly; the Voice Limiter shows the load per lane