MIDI inserts (or sends)

All,
Can anyone tell me, is there a way to first filter notes before using one of the midi inserts or even a midi send would probably work? say you wanted to use the quantiser or the density tool but only on everything outside range of C1 - B2 as an example? I still can’t find a neat way to do stuff like that.

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Off the top of my head the only way to filter MIDI real-time is using the Input Transformer (the Logical Editor would do it for recorded MIDI). But that only works on incoming MIDI. However you could use a Virtual MIDI Cable to route the MIDI Data out & then back into Cubase w/ the Transformer.

EDIT

After writing the above I took a look & the Transformer exists as an Insert. So just use that on the first slot to filter what gets through.

yeah but thats not really going to work cause it’ll filter the notes, where as i only want to filter what notes another fx is going to affect. For example, say you’ve got drums programmed in a part (not live, it’s already in programmed in a track etc) and you’d like to make use of the quantiser but you only want it to apply to the hi hats or the kick drum etc. How can you do this? i don’t think we can, i can’t find a way at any rate, have to do it with reason rack or snap heap etc.

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I guess you could do it if you do it on separate tracks.

  1. Make one midi track and two instrument tracks, both loading the same plugins.
  2. Set up the direct routing of your midi track into the first, and a midi send into the 2nd instrument track.
  3. Use Track Input transformer on both. On one track only let through your special range, and on the other only let through everything else
  4. Use midi insert quantizer on one of the instrument tracks.
    (Though I think if you own Kontakt by any chance you can route midi from one instrument track to another so you could get both midi paths back to be played in one instrument track)

Still wouldn’t recommend this is only theoretically and a ton of work to setup with an ugly additional track in your project.

For quantizing I would just select all the notes a want to quantize and press q in the midi editor and leave the others be. I don’t know what midi density does though.

I always dissolve parts when it comes to drums and this way, midi effects (which I barely use if ever) but most important for me, my fxs are handled separately.

Yup. I would recommend not trying to do it on-the-fly and just use normal Quantizing. For the task you describe, if are going to regularly do it, I’d make a Macro that first runs a Logical Editor Preset which Selects all the Notes on whichever MIDI Notes are mapped to your hats & kick. Then Quantize the Selected Notes. And done.

Yes this is how I do it currently (macro) but I just feel like its a shame that those midi fix some of which are much more useful than they first appear have to be applied to the whole track/all events of nothing.

For background, what I’ve done in other DAWs is something like (for example sakes) control the timing in (in a note position sense) of the cymbals with a knob or usually a switch and have 4 kinds which is x/2, x/1.5, 2x and 1.5x. This is a super quick way to transform the feel of an existing rhythm and also used as a performance effect. If you have a drum part that’s got 32nds and 16ths in it but then you set the quantiser to 1/8T it very nicely does exactly what I’m talking about non-destructively, which is the key here. I’d prefer not to actually move or change the ‘base’ beat. Like I said I’ve got the ple to do this with maros and I’ve utilised some cool plugins like playbeat and the HY plugins which work great id just prefer to do it with the native tools or at least, its a goal of mine out of interest I suppose. Beat designer also comes terribly close but falls short because for some reason they haven’t allowed the rate of the steps to be assigned to QC’s or TC’s. groove agent also has the rate, swing, half time etc which can be set to automated and mapped to a dial but I find it buggy and I don’t always want to use groove agent. Having said that, you can actually just pass midi though groove agent for processing which is sort of good but if that was the method I’d just use a reason rack instance, perfect for what I’m talking about - again, I’m just trying to find a native Cubase solution out of interest.
The most obvious answer is to use an instance of loopmashFX and I have and its great apart from the ones that slow it down, the /2 and /4, it does it like a record player, sounds all bitty and kind of sh$t, not what I’m after in this circumstance.

Yep separate tracks doesn’t fine, I just perfer to have them in one for when im editing etc. I know you can select them all and edit at once but I guess it’s a clean brain thing/old habit of keeping it all together .

I be happy to dissolve, and I’ve tried this but how are you applying midi inserts to specific lanes? If this were the way I’d settle for that

I’m not dissolving to lanes, but to completely separate tracks.

If the only solution was destructive perhaps Track Versions could mitigate the impact.

Since @m.c is a MIDI Remote guru, is it possible to assign a control to change a numeric value in an Info Line Field?

As far as I know, nope.

However, speaking about midi fx and the midi remote, I can think of many fields where midi remote can do things similar to midi inserts. For example, I’ve implemented arps and beat patterns using it.

This is a cool idea too, a while ago I thought what if I apply half time, dotted 1/4 time etc to the whole track and keep as 4 different track versions then just switch between them. And it works alright, but once you start putting some plugins on etc the switch between them isn’t good enough to get away with (slight pause)

Actually, yeah or what about a quick generic remote? I find it has more functions in it than the list you get in the midi remote

There are functions missing from the new midi remote, true. But I was talking about custom functions that can be implemented only by scripting, which generic remote obviously can’t provide.

Ok, I’d need an example I suppose, I don’t want to make a mountain out of this but I am interested. I’ve also tried creating a good old midi device hoping I could gain access to some of those midi functions as parameters but alas, doesn’t seem so. Why would they do something like not include the note rate as a controllable feature. Stupid. I just tried the context gate and got all excited but that didn’t do it either.
What I’ve made is actually pretty alright, I did it in keyboard Maestro, created a palette that turns on and off at certain times, clicking one button opens another depending on what you do ->select kick->select /1.5->go etc. it does what I want so I don’t know what I’m complaining about.

I think this would be a nice feature request.

:grinning:

I see the remote scripts are written ES5 which I don’t know of but is obviously some sort of Java: LUA seems to come up a lot to the point where I recently thought bugger it ill just sit down and learn I suppose.

MIDI Remote scripts are written in JavaScript.

The recently added fix modulator also comes close to a solution as I think it can sort of filter but not really quite what I’m after, similar to the loopfx a, its got more of a DJ vibe/sound to it.
I think a general MIDI ‘time mangler’ plugin or midi fx would be very useful. Either that or, have the field ‘change/probability’ as an automatable parameter for midi each note as seen in Ableton, reason, logic etc. couldn’t I somehow get this result with MIDI->automation setup? Assign something like ‘density’ to a CC and then draw in values between 1 and 127? I don’t really get how that function works to be honest, I don’t do heaps of automation in Cubase.