Easy way to convert MIDI tracks to Instrument tracks?

Cubase
1

Judging by searches this doesn’t seem possible, but is that still the case? Say you downloaded a project from someone who did it not with instrument tracks, but with MIDI tracks and using Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 server to map all the instruments there to MIDI ports.

So you have all the MIDI notes, but you don’t want to use VEP 7 Server, you just want to do it the normal way. Is there an easy way to do it?

2

Hi,

You can set Cubase to import data to the Instrument tracks. Preferences > MIDI > MIDI File > Import Options > Destinations > Instrument Tracks. In this case HALion Sonic SE is going to be used. This is if you would get *.mid fie. Is this your case?

If you get the *.cpr file, you can use the File > Import > Tracks from Project function. Then you can import the 3rd party project to your own project “tebplate”. In the Import Options dialog set where should which MIDI track goes.

3

Hi Martin,

what you mention about the preferences for MIDI files to be imported as instrument tracks I knew about it and it’s a great feature Cubase has, but thanks for the tip anyway, I’m sure there are lots of new users that didn’t know that.

In this case I’m talking about Cubase projects that were done by Jay Bacal, someone that worked with VSL on lots of reconstructions of classical music pieces, and some film music. The VSL library has tons of those as Cubase projects and MIDI files. The Cubase projects use Vienna Ensemble Pro extensively, so the project only has one instance of the plugin loaded, and then there’s a VEP project that contains all the instruments, mapped to all the tracks in Cubase.

It’s an interesting way of doing it, but I prefer doing things in Cubase rather than in VEP, but these projects have dozens of tracks, so creating instrument tracks one by one and then moving the MIDI parts to the other track is very time consuming.

Now, I tried what you said, but in the import dialog I don’t see any options to convert the MIDI tracks into instrument ones, and they still import as MIDI tracks:

Screenshot 2023-09-04 at 2.52.01 PM
Screenshot 2023-09-04 at 2.52.01 PM2206×1752 371 KB

Screenshot 2023-09-04 at 2.52.32 PM
Screenshot 2023-09-04 at 2.52.32 PM1920×1451 296 KB

Any suggestions?

Edit: when it comes to the tempo and signature tracks, the pull down menu shows a tempo and a signature track. But for the others, it only shows “new track”, even if I setup new instrument tracks with the name "VSL - ".

4

Hi,

Set the Destination Track to an existing Instrument track, please.

5

Hi Martin,

I tried that, but they weren’t available. I had created ten instrument tracks to test this, but they’re not showing in the import dialog for some reason.

6

Hi,

What about to use MIDI Tasks routed to an Instrument Rack (with HALion Soni SE instrument for example)?

7

That’s something that is a bit above my head at my current stage of Cubase knowledge. But I’ll definitely look into it. I’m always one YouTube tutorial away from greatness :smiley:

8

Hi,

Do you already have any project (template) for the orchestration music in Cubase?

9

No, so far I only opened the projects.

10

Hi,

Unfortunately, you cannot do this with an automation track. You can control the automation nodes by using Project Logical Editor after selecting the automation nodes. Then you can use something like this:

Filter Target
( Media Type Is | Equal | Automation )

Action Target
Trim | ...

Function

The problem is you cannot set the Operation value to Random. The options are following Multiple, Divide, Increment, and Decrement only.

11

One would suppose Cubase would look at how easy this is in Studio One and make it just as easy - just drag any available instrument onto the track. Done. Simple - so that’s where I process my midi tracks into aiffs for mixing in Cubase.