Is there a way easily combine two midi parts into one? For example, in Pro Tools, you could copy midi, paste it to a new track, then copy another midi clip, then go to the track you pasted the first midi clip on, then merge that midi on top of the other one so that they become one on one track.
How would you achieve that?
Hi,
you can use the glue tool to do that. You’ll find it in the toolbox or right-click in the project window to choose it.
Since there is also a Glue command in the Edit menu you can assign a key command to it.
Oh, my bad! I should have been more clear. These two midi parts are on two completely different tracks. I want to take both of them and merge them onto one track.
For example, I’m triggering my snare from midi, and I have all of the hard hits on one, and ghost notes on another track. I want to take both of those, and make them one track.
Well, then move or copy the parts onto the new track first before glueing them.
They overlap each other though. What I’m wondering is if I can imbed one right onto the other. Otherwise, I have to go into every little ghost note hit and drag it up. Is there an easier way to just drag and drop the midi onto another one and have them combine?
Just make sure that these trigger events don’t share the same pitch. Select all events on either track and transposd the lot before you merge the parts.
Is there a video showing how to do this?
Also, both parts are on the same note. This being said, they don’t overlap. I actually need them on the same note for what I’m trying to achieve. Would this be a problem?
I think you are overcomplicating it. You can just drag MIDI part A from track 1 onto MIDI part B on track 2. Hold Ctrl/Cmd while dragging the part and it will keep its exact position. Afterwards, just pick the glue tool and glue them together.
When I suggested to use different pitches I had a different use case in mind. In this case, however, just drag one part onto the other with Ctrl/Cmd and glue. Done 
So, here is what I’m trying to achieve.
In Pro Tools, I have this:
You can see I have a Snare Sample track with midi, and then a Snare Sample track of Ghost Notes with midi. I need both of those to stay there because they trigger snare samples how they need to.
I then, am able to easily within seconds take both of those tracks and merge them onto my existing Key Spike midi track (Yellow track on top; notice it has both midi files from Sn S and Sn S gn merged):
The reason I want to do that is because that will then become a Key Spike (short burst of audio, ALL of the same velocities) that I will then render down to an audio file that gets used to trigger the gates on my live snare drums (or any drum for that matter).
Here is the same setup in Cubase:
Is there a way to do what I do in Pro Tools but in Cubase? It takes maybe 2-3 seconds max in Pro Tools. It’s what’s known as midi merge; copy, paste, copy, midi merge.
EDIT: I also took a screen video recording, but I don’t know how to attach it here?
Yes, of course. Just copy these parts onto a new track and merge them via glue tool. You can even set up a macro if you do this on a regular basis.
That’s great! So, how do I do this?? hahaha These are instrument tracks so I don’t know if that matters (I imagine it wouldn’t), but I tried copying these onto the same track and glueing. All that happens is that when I copy and past the second one onto the Key Spike track, it overwrites it.
If I select both tracks to be copied and then use the arrow up key on my keyboard to go to my Key Spike track, it pastes both on the Key Spike track, but it changes the Sn S track to be the same as the Sn S gn track which is not Ideal. If I select both tracks, then drag up with command + option, it give me what I want on the Key Spike track, but still overwrites the Sn S track with the midi from the Sn S gn track.
What am I missing?
To merge midi tracks/events:
There are several ways to merge parts and/or tracks with Cubase.
As previous posts have suggested, you can drag parts from one track to another. You can expand tracks that have multiple parts stacked into lanes.
Questions to answer…
Do both tracks speak to the same instrument and channel?
If not, do you want to force it all to use the same MIDI channel, or do you wish to keep the channels independent even though they now share a single Cubase ‘track’?
Do you have real time options set up for either or both track in the track inspector? If so, do you want to freeze these first before merging? Remember, if you merge MIDI tracks together, you’ll now be stuck with one set of ‘real time’ transforming tools.
Here’s an example…
Lets imagine a scenario where you’ve split your MIDI controller to record your left hand playing up to middle C on channel 2 of one track, and the right hand along with your pedaling CCs on channel 1 of another track.
You might first set the real time transformer stuff you desire in the track inspector of each track and freeze it first. This will force everything ‘real time’ to be hard coded into the part.
Then merge the two tracks together on a new track that is set ‘channel any’. With the output channel of the track set to any, then your right hand stuff will still go out to your instrument/plugin over channel 2, and your right hand stuff over channel 1.
Then you might change the output channel on your new merged track so it all goes to channel 1 into your MIDI instrument/plugin.
Mute your original channels and test your new track. Once satisfied it did what you want, get rid of the old source tracks.
Within the part, the left hand events would still be designated as channel 2, while your right hand and pedaling CCs would still be designated as channel 1. As it gets output for play back, it all goes out over channel 1.
Why would you want to do this? The score editor assigns score ‘voices’ according to MIDI channel.
In short, check out the links I’ve embedded above for lanes, freezing midi modifiers, and merging MIDI/Instrument tracks.
Both tracks are instrument tracks triggering a snare sample. They’re both on the same notes, which doesn’t matter because they are independent. If they get merged onto a new Instrument track, it still doesn’t matter because the soon to be generated Key Spike needs all of those notes.
I’m not sure what any of this means. I’m not getting rid of the original midi files. I’m merging them onto a new Instrument track for a specific task, in which that midi will then get deleted after that task.
I explained why in the posts above with pictures in detail. 
In Cubase, you have real time MIDI MODIFIERS, in addition to what is actually recorded or input through an editor.
If you look in the left pane of Cubase while a MIDI or Instrument track is selected you will see what is called the ‘Track Inspector’.
When you record or input data into a part, Cubase records exactly what you put in, even if you have different ‘modifiers’ configured in the Track inspector.
I.E. Maybe you used a Modifier in the inspector to transpose your playing from key of C to Eb in real time. Your key of C playing is what actually gets recorded in the track. Cubase transforms it to your desired transposition in real time. (Note some Modifiers can be set in pre or post configuration…you can force it to record the modifiers, or to do them in real time as it goes from the track out to the instrument.
With all that in mind…
Sometimes you’ll want to hard freeze things you have set in the track inspector so it is hard coded into the actual MIDI data in the part. Examples are things like real time transposistions, MIDI channels. Realtime Quantization settings. MIDI Insert or Modifier effects.
These are simply things to be aware of before moving or merging parts and tracks.
You say it doesn’t matter, but it ‘might’ depending on what all aspects of Cubase you intend to take advantage of. The Diamond Drum editor for instance. It provides all sorts of ways to map/remap instruments in a drum kit, and define how it should show up on a score.
If all you care about is getting it to play back right away, and it currently sound right when you play it as two tracks then I’d suggest doing this:
MIDI/Freeze MIDI Modifiers on both tracks. This will ensure that any modifiers from the Track Inspector you might be using in the tracks get hard coded into the parts.
Set your left and right locators to include all of both tracks.
Make a new empty track and select it. I’ve named mine ‘merged’.
SOLO the two tracks you wish to merge.
MIDI/Merge MIDI in Loop
I get something that looks like this:
You’ll get options…
I click OK and end up with this…notice my ‘Merged’ track is now full of data.
Now I can mute the original tracks, solo my new merged track and test it to make sure it sounds right, check it out in the editors to make sure it’s done what I expect…etc. Once I’m satisfied, I simply hide or delete the original two source tracks.
Note, there are LOTS of ways to do this in Cubase. One nice thing about this approach I’ve shown you is you can easily build keyboard marcos and key or MIDI commands to automate the process into a fewer keystrokes and such.
You can also do as others have suggested, and just drag the parts into the same track.
Cubase also has powerful logical editors for splitting and combining tracks. Etc…
In this thread I show a user how to merge a couple of tracks for the sake of the score editor.
While you currently don’t show interest/need in the score editor, the process is still the same.
I freeze the parts as desired, then drag them to a common track. I explain here how to use the lanes and such as well…
Once parts are in the same track, I believe you can use the glue tools to merge them as well.
This is cool and appreciated, but a little out of the scope of what I’m looking to achieve.
It doesn’t. The two midi parts need to stay exactly where they are on separate tracks because they serve a purpose, and they both just need to get combined onto another track that has Groove Agent ready with a Key Spike one shot that gets rendered into an audio file, and then the midi I merged gets discarded so I can do it again with another drum track. There’s no need for any freezing or any of that.
This is what @Buer mentioned, but I was also wondering if this is what @Reco29 meant as well, or if there is another way of doing this.
This is what I was wondering about based on what @Reco29 mentioned, as I got the impression that it was maybe different than what @Buer mentioned, so I was curious of all of the ways, or if Reco29’s ways were different. He mentions copying and pasting, so that’s where I got confused because none of that resulted in the desired result.
OK, you are using two instrument tracks, with two different instances of GA?
Just drag the part from your isolated snare to your other GA track. Hold Ctrl while doing this. It will sit on top of the existing part, you’ll see crosshatch looking lines letting you know parts are stacked.
Now if you want to merge the two parts together…
Right click the track and choose ‘select all events’.
Top Menu: MIDI/Bounce MIDI
Now it’s all combined into one part, and I can delete the empty track I drug ‘from’ (In this case Left Hand).
