Pick Pocket listens to a drum groove — a loop you drop in, a Vault loop, or whatever's playing on a track in your DAW — and hands you its feel as MIDI: every hit's timing and velocity, unquantized. The pocket stays; the sounds become yours.
Every hit is detected and classified as kick, snare, or hi-hat, with the groove's swing, push/drag, and tightness measured to the millisecond. You can audition the extracted MIDI through a real Yurt Rock kit — solo, or layered in lockstep with the original — then drag it onto your timeline as a standard MIDI file (pre-mapped for the major drum samplers), an Ableton .agr groove file, or rendered WAV.
Pick Pocket runs three ways, and they all share the same interface: as an AU or VST3 plugin inside your DAW, as a standalone app, and in the browser inside The Vault.
Pro Tools (AAX) support is coming.
PickPocket.pkg and follow the installer. It's signed and notarized by Apple, so there's nothing to bypass.PickPocket-Setup installer. It installs the VST3 plugin and the standalone app, and fetches the WebView2 runtime if your PC doesn't already have it.Pick Pocket activates with your Yurt Rock account login — no iLok, no dongle, no challenge files.
Open the activation panel from the license button in the plugin, sign in or paste your serial, and you're done. After activation Pick Pocket never needs the internet to run.
Drag any audio file anywhere onto the plugin — WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A, FLAC. Analysis starts immediately.
In the plugin, press ● Capture Track and play your DAW. Pick Pocket records whatever passes through the channel it's inserted on, and its automatic loop detection finds the clean 2, 4, or 8 bars and cuts them click-free. Insert it on a drum bus, a sampler channel, or right after a vinyl loop — anything that plays drums.
The Starter loops menu holds curated grooves — real loops from players like Nate Smith, Clyde Stubblefield, Marcus Finnie, and Darren King — that convert cleanly, with hand-checked MIDI. The Vault Library tab lets you browse and audition the full Yurt Rock catalog inside the plugin; Vault members can extract any loop's groove instantly.
The Source … BPM field under the loop name is the loop's own tempo. It sets the analysis grid — where the bar lines fall, the swing math — and the tempo written into exported MIDI. If detection guessed wrong (it shows "estimated"), type the right number and everything recalculates.
The Transients panel shows the waveform with every detected hit marked and colored by voice — kick, snare, hat.
The stat cards above the waveform show the groove's vitals: hit count, swing %, push/drag against the grid, tightness, and bar count.
The MIDI Out panel is the extracted groove as notes, one lane per voice, exactly as it will export.
Every edit feeds straight into the audition and the export — what you see is what you drag out.
0% is quantized dead onto the grid, 100% is exactly as played, and beyond exaggerates the push and drag. Double-click resets to 100%.0% flattens every hit, 100% is as played, beyond makes the accents more dramatic.Two play buttons: Loop plays the original audio, MIDI plays the extracted groove through the current kit. With Layered on, the MIDI plays in lockstep on top of the original — if it sounds doubled, the pocket transferred. Space starts and stops the audition.
The VU console gives you three lamp-lit meters — Loop, MIDI, Master — each with a fader. Balance the original against the kit before you commit; WAV exports honor the fader levels you hear.
The Tempo control changes audition playback speed (pitch preserved, exports untouched): type a BPM, use the hover arrows, drag the label, or double-click for native. In the plugin, the Host button syncs the audition to your DAW's tempo, and audio plays through the channel the plugin sits on — so your channel strip and monitoring path apply.
The kit menu holds Yurt Rock artist kits for auditioning (the extracted MIDI never depends on them — they're just what you hear). Choose Custom MIDI Kit to build your own from the one-shot library:
Pick the target in Export Map, then drag the file out of the plugin straight onto your timeline (or use the download button in the browser).
| Export | What you get |
|---|---|
| Standard MIDI (.mid) | The unquantized groove with your edits, keymapped for the chosen sampler, at the source tempo. |
| Ableton groove (.agr) | The feel alone, as a groove file — apply it to any clip in Live's groove pool: drums, bass, keys, anything. |
| WAV | Rendered audio: the loop, the MIDI groove through the current kit, or both together — at the fader balance you set. |
MIDI keymaps included: Superior Drummer / EZdrummer, BFD3, Slate SSD5, Addictive Drums 2, Groove Agent (Cubase), and General MIDI. The mapping is baked into the exported notes, so the file lands on the right pads with no re-mapping.
.mid onto a track running that sampler.Your work saves with the DAW project: every knob, edit, and override comes back when the session reopens.
| Formats | VST3, AU, standalone app (AAX coming) |
|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon & Intel), Windows 10+ (64-bit) |
| Audio in | WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A, FLAC — or live capture from any DAW track |
| Exports | Standard MIDI (.mid) with sampler keymaps, Ableton groove (.agr), WAV |
| MIDI maps | Superior Drummer / EZdrummer, BFD3, Slate SSD5, Addictive Drums 2, Groove Agent (Cubase), General MIDI |
| Authorization | Yurt Rock account login or serial — no iLok, no dongle. 3 machines, self-serve deactivation. |
| Internet | Install and activation only; fully offline after |
| Tested in | Ableton Live, Logic Pro, FL Studio, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper |
Stuck on something this manual doesn't cover? Email support@yurtrock.com and the team will follow up ASAP.
Try Pick Pocket in the browser any time at vault.yurtrock.com/labs/pick-pocket — same engine, no install.