Hi,
I’m trying to get Cubase to behave in a specific way, but I can’t find a way to do it. I’ve read tons of posts and articles, but have so far come up empty. I will try my best to explain it as shortly as possible and would welcome any advice on how to do this:
I have a few hardware synths, both of which have fairly short keybeds. Since I have a NI S88 keyboard, sometimes I want to play and be able to record notes from it (and the synth’s keybeds as well), but I want just the notes, no other cc messages. The reason is, if you want a hardware device or software synth to react to midi from multiple keys to my understanding at least, you need to select ‘all midi inputs’ since there’s no other option I know of. This is mostly fine, but this can behave chaotically when I, for example, touch a filter knob on synth that is playing, like the sub37, and I want to adjust something on its sound while having a different synth’s track armed, it changes parameters on the sub37 as well as the same cc on that synth with the armed track, usually negatively and destructively since I have no idea which cc is doing what on the respective synths.
As such I want to, hopefully, arrive at a point where I can selectively filter or enable only specific midi messages so that my master keybed can play notes on whatever is armed. Still, I can decide whether or not any other cc messages make any changes whatsoever to other synth parts. I think I need some kind of midi cc filtering template where I can set up which device/s receives midi from which source, set and forget and it records and reacts in a more flexible way.
I hope this makes sense, please help!
Thanks,
D
Hi and welcome to the forum,
You can filter all incoming MIDI CCs in the Preferences > MIDI > MIDI Filter.
Hi,
Thanks for your message, but I’m not sure this is what I’m after. This seems to be for the entire system and cannot be configured individually for each instrument or channel, which is what I’m trying to do. Unless I’m missing something?
D
Hi,
You are right, this is global.
Then you can use the Input Transformer to filter out MIDI Messages if they are MIDI Controller and the Channel Is Equal the Channel in question.
Hi Martin,
Thanks for your help, this works to a degree, but so far only to filter all cc’s and only let notes through. This is great, it’s a long way toward what I want, but there are still a few scenarios where it doesn’t quite get me all the way there.
My S88, for example, has 8 buttons and 8 encoders, and via the NI Controller Editor, you can assign these to any CC you want, which is super useful to control any synth from a common controller. So there will be some duplication across the two devices where say CC15 from the S88’s encoder will affect that CC on any armed track that accepts incoming midi from ‘all midi inputs’. This is actually fine pertaining to the S88, understandably since it controls multiple synths, it’s still a problem when you use the input transformer to let certain midi CC’s through (for the S88 to work at all) to control synth A which will negatively affect synth B as I originally described in my first post.
So my question is, is there a way to filter an entire midi source/input from ‘all midi inputs’? This way I can, for example, on the Sub37’s midi channel set it to all midi inputs, but exclude any input coming from the Virus or other midi sources. Essentially I want my hardware synths to just be able to control themselves and nothing else, but the S88 and its encoders to control everything.
Is there a way to do this?
Thanks,
D
Hi,
Yes. In the Studio > Studio Setup > MIDI Ports Setup.
However, this setup will have to be changed everytime you want a different set of MIDI Inputs for any of the tracks.
I think it makes a nice feature-request: The ability to choose multiple inputs for a MIDI-/Instrument-track in the Inspector, thereby excluding all none-selected inputs.
Exactly. This is precisely what I want to do. I cannot exclude certain ports globally, it needs to be specific to each scenario.
So am I right in understanding there’s no way to do this?
Ok, that’s a pity as it seems like an extremely logical thing to want to do.
Is there perhaps any third-party plugin or other way of accomplishing this that anyone knows of?
Hi,
From my point of view, the easiest way is to set the devices to send the MIDI data out at specific/unique MIDI Channel. Then you can easily filter up to 16 devices/MIDI Channels per track.
That sounds like an interesting idea, but the Virus, being multitimbral can use 16 parts simultaneously. Unless I’m misunderstanding you?
Have a look if you can set up the Virus to set MIDI only on channel 02.
If the next hardware synth can be set to transmit only on MIDI channel 03 you could then use the Input Transformer on Filter mode and write a preset for each usecase.
E.g. if NI S88 sends only on channel 01 and you want to work with the Virus, filter out anything but channel 01 and 02.
Thanks, I’ll keep trying to find a workable solution. It’s really frustrating that you cannot simply select or specify multiple input sources. Perhaps there’s some kind of workaround method. Judging by another thread on this forum, which I am unable to post it seems, there are a lot of people that want to do something similar:
Also, having experimented with the Input Transformer a bit more, I’m almost back to square one. I cannot filter out any cc data for say the Virus C’s midi channels whatsoever, since if I set it to filter ‘unequal to notes’, i.e. so I can just use the keybeds from the S88 and other keybeds and no other knobs influence the Virus, it also filters out and prohibits me from recording any cc data from the Virus itself as well, making it a pointless exercise entirely.
Hi,
This is on the receiving side. But the MIDI keyboard sends (most probably) the data over one MIDI Channel only. And this is (most probably) MIDI Channel 1. I recommend to change this to MIDI Channel 2, so you can distinguish the devices.
I get that, but to be able to work with different synths was one of the reasons why there are 16 midi channels per port. Midi channels were really created to take care of the very thing that you try to accomplish.