General topic title I know but I thought I’d see what anyone knows.
I have several songs created in Cubase that have in the end conformed to a consistent layout in terms of tracks, instruments, busses and outputs.
The problem is that even though I’ve got everything running at zero or unity gain, volumes need to be designated somewhere and this is happening either at the note itself, or as a controller, which is good in terms of control but since I am using the mouse to compose everything bar an initial keyboard track (which is scrubbed upon entering bass and guitar) it means I must enter specific volumes for each note.
Where this becomes apparent is with drums. Most beats start out very basic and only evolve as the time signatures and tempo maps are programmed however what I’d like to be able to do is set some kind of relative volume per drum “lane” so is this possible in the drum map, e.g. without using a MIDI plugin?
I looked at the Input Transformer however it seems that while I can specify “Note” as a parameter, I cannot specify any particular note value.
Maybe I am missing something but I don’t appreciate the idea of having to modify VST presets or values in the Cubase mixer just so certain sounds will come out at the correct volume, when the order of the day is to assign relative values throughout the DAW system for optimum playback.
Maybe more tools already present need to be used. I can do without the clutter of another control that does the same in a different manner. Or the development resources and price markup that come with it.
Working with MIDI is far easier than working with audio and it is true that Cubase does the best job in the latter domain, notwithstanding being the ultimate MIDI sequencer; it can still be improved.
Keep in mind that the MIDI protocol was developed before
(the rampant use of) samples. Mainly synths in those days.
So you could +/- MIDI velocity and the resulting sound of almost all patches
would just get louder or softer;
but the basic sound would/may not change at all.
Enter samples, multi-samples.
Different story here.
Increases/decreases in MIDI velocity may not only change the output level
but can also change the actual sound (sample)
I like what Steiny has done with MIDI in recent years, but I also have read
essays that lean toward a whole new MIDI language and protocol
that needs to be written going forward.
Any takers??
BTW
Don’t forget the ‘new kid on the block’.
‘Instrument Modeling’.
Will we now need a ‘modeling’ protocol/standard as well?
The apparent thing with midi in Windows is there are some limitations that there weren’t on the old Atari and original Mac which both used Motorola chips which were better suited to midi by all reports of other local users and computer buffs and this seemed to hold up totally reliable PC midi for Cubase for many years and probably still has wrinkles to iron out.
I don’t know what, if any, problems or improvements exist in the new Apple computers or whether they have a better implementation from another direction. Maybe it’s time, and they may even be working on it, that the newer music properties of Windows are utilised so midi can be as accurate as it was on the Atari and Mac platforms.
Mind you a little bell ringing in my memory could mean that someone else will give a reason why that is impractical.
