This may be a silly question, but is there a way of automating the midi channel of an instrument track?
My reasoning -
I have a Kontakt instrument, let’s say it’s a guitar, I have 3 patches loaded up, 1 - Single notes, 2 - Chords, 3 - Octaves.
I want to be able to swap the midi channel at any point in the track to each of those articulations.
I don’t want three separate tracks so I can keep the amount of tracks in the template down and for ease when exporting to notation software.
Ideally I’d like to be able to change the midi channel of the track as I go along. Or maybe there is a better way to do what I’m trying?
So would that mean I’d have to play the notes in first THEN change them to trigger a different midi channel?
I don’t think that will work for what I need as I’d need the midi to be changed before I played in.
I have a MIDI keyboard that I can change MIDI channel on the fly with two buttons. Cubase does not channelize the incoming MIDI data. So if you send channel 1 in, it will be recorded on channel 1. It does channelize the outgoing messages.
My point of bringing up the channelizing is that even if you could set the output on the fly, that would not be the channel associated with the note. The note itself carries channel data based on what is being sent in. Even if you got the switching working perfect in Cubase, the channel data would be wrong when exported.
Hi there, thanks for your input, but this doesn’t help my issue. What I’m trying to do is have 3 instruments on one instance of Kontakt, then use midi channel changes to swap between them on the one track. Obviously recording those changes like key switches.
You can do that using Expression Maps, that’s one of the reasons why they were invented. What you’re trying to do is so easy to setup that you could make simple temporary maps for single projects. Of course you should save setups you find yourself using often as presets to save time.
Some virtual instruments you need to enable the multiple outputs in the VSTi settings when adding it; has an “e” next to the name of the virtual instrument in the list.
Yesterday, I managed to figure out this issue (MacOS), that had been a problem for me for at least 5 years, and from what I’ve researched here, it’s a problem for many others as well.
I’m a keyboardist and also the person in charge of the sound for a 10-person band. All the audio channels are fully automated with reverbs, delays, etc, and all I need to do is hit play on the backtrack and all the magic happens. The problem is that, as a keyboardist, I use a million different timbres and VSTs, and I didn’t want to be pressing buttons, changing the MIDI CHANNEL on my keyboard, or thinking about anything other than… playing! So, my research was about how to automate MIDI CHANNELS on a single track so that I don’t need to switch the track I’m playing on (in my case, a MIDI track with input from the Novation Impulse 61). I tried using the Generic Device with IAC driver to automate changes in the monitoring track, which worked, but it wasn’t very reliable because any change I made to the track order would mess everything up, a nightmare. MIDI Remote only has 8 mixer slots, I managed to automate buttons on a device created from the IAC driver, but only 8 slots didn’t solve my problem. I tried using MIDI sends, and it almost worked for automating the send ON/OFF, but it had a strange behavior where the automation happened BEFORE the correct point, I think it tries to compensate de delay caused by this cpu intense action of disabling sends, a mess. So, the solution was: IAC + track input transformer (to filter only the channel I wanted for that instrument) + Expression Map to change the channel on the one and only MIDI track I needed to activate:
Create an expression map for the MIDI track you will be monitoring, in other words, your keyboard.
In the mapping of the expression map, assign a channel for each “articulation” and mark the Direction option.
Now, you will create a MIDI event that will be your channel automation using the Lane called Articulations/Dynamics.
The output of this MIDI track goes to the IAC Driver.
Now you can create up to 16 instruments.
For each instrument, you add an input transformer (track) that filters out all MIDI channels except the one you’ll use for that specific instrument (there’s already a preset for this).
Set all instruments to monitor (I place them inside a folder and simply click the monitor button for one, and the others automatically monitor).
Set the MIDI input for all instruments as the IAC Driver (if you set it to ALL, it won’t work). The channel should be set to ANY.
That’s it!
Extra: You can set the expression map in the way you want (if youre no like me that have all pre-programmed and want do change the channels on the fly with key switches or any other way)