Complete Newbie here. Coming from Reaper & FL Studio. Please, can you tell me how to be able to hear the auditioning of notes that I’m inputting on a MIDI Track? The MIDI Track is receiving MIDI from a keyboard, and its output (for no particular reason) is routed to the instrument track below it. My goal is just to be able to hear what I’m doing - it helps prompt the creativity - I could have done this midi input/editing on an instrument track. But the reason I’m asking is to understand the MIDI routing in Cubase - there are many occasions where I need MIDI tracks to be able to feed individual instrument channels on a multi-timbral instrument. I heard about instrument racks, but I’ve heard there’s a way to do this without using them.
Also, how to audition all the notes of a chord at once?
Hi there,
I don’t think this is possible.
The only way is to route the MIDI Track to an Instrument.
If the MIDI data doesn’t go anywhere it just cannot output any audio, and there is no automatic auditioning of note inputs, at least not that I know.
Wait, I have read your post again, if the MIDI Track is already routed to the Instrument Track, then simply enable Monitor on the Instrument Track… sorry for the confusion.
The way I read it the Track is routed to the VSTi on the adjacent Instrument Track.
I’d be suspicious of a mismatch in the MIDI Channel Numbers. This is initially confusing in Cubase because there is a Channel Number setting on Instrument & MIDI Tracks. You might think this is the Channel the Track is listening to - but that’s wrong. The MIDI Tracks are always listening to all the Channel Numbers - although the Input Filter can restrict that.
What the Channel Number setting on the Track does is control which Channel the data coming from the Track will play on. So even if the Notes in your MIDI Part were all on Ch 1, if the Track were set to Ch 2 during playback all the Ch 1 Notes would play on Ch 2. To preserve the original Channel Numbers, set it to “Any”
So what I think is happening is that your MIDI Track is playing back on Channel X and sending that to the VSTi on the adjacent Instrument Track. But if you open that VSTi you’ll find that it is not set to respond to Channel X. Easiest fix is to set the MIDI Track’s Channel number to whatever the VSTi is using.
Well I don’t the OP is talking about something that complicated.
To me it sounds like only the MIDI Track is selected, and that is why the Instrument Track is no longer in monitoring mode.
VST Instruments generally receive MIDI from all channels (Omni) by default.
And even if they are multi-timbral like HALion, each slot is set to the same MIDI channel by default, so they all play at the same time from the same input.
Actually Raino was kinda psychic there. I certainly didn’t intentionally change the midi track value of the receiving instrument (Halion SE). But sure enough when I looked it said MIDI CH 3.
But monitoring vs recording is not something I entirely understand because in Reaper and some other DAWs there are degrees of flexibility that make it work a little different.
But in Cubase either of you help me learn how to set a MIDI Map on a drum instrument in order to successfully convert (by recording into the receiving track) my decades of personal MIDI drum pattern data so that I end up with formats compatible with a bunch of my VST’s? I may need to learn about instrument racks after all? Cthulhu can play its arps into the receiving vst Instrument (non-Rack) but I haven’t figured out how to get that incoming MIDI to record - if I ask the track to receive that data it does receive it and I can hear it. Maybe the monitoring feature is preventing recording?
I was just using Cthulhu as a MIDI routing test case (non-Rack test).
My main goal is to set up Halion SE on a MIDI Map. On that map C1 (input) is supposed to trigger E0, and I want to prove I’m able to record the data to some other MIDI (or MIDI Instrument) track.
My ultimate goal is to see if the drum data is converted to the new MIDI values (e.g. C1 becomes E0). Is this possible? Is an Instrument Rack needed for recording the MIDI data?
[I did a tutorial where I can record the MIDI Out from the same track that is producing it (at least if that track happens to be Groove Agent - I haven’t tried 3rd Party VSTs but it must work - surely Steve at Xfer Records has people successfully RECORDING the output from CTHULHU. I’ll try and dig up his comments on his forum, but I did a quick search and so far nothing.)
So far the only routing that I’ve managed that works is to put the MIDI Track On Cthulhu and route this to the affected synths. I haven’t managed to get a separate MIDI Track to drive Cthulhu, which then drives the 2 target vst Instruments with its MIDI Out data.
For converting note numbers with drums then using the drum editor with a drum map is the best option. Within a drum map you have an in note and an out note. So you can easily change the out note to whatever you want. There are other ways in Cubase but this one is easy. Quite a few other features in the drum editor as well so worth a look.
