MIDI Routing in Music Production

Okay, now we're going to start talking about my MIDI routing. There's a whole bunch of tracks here, and this definitely depends on your particular equipment and what you're trying to accomplish. However, here are a few things I'd like to show you that I think would be handy, no matter what equipment you have.

Setting Up the Metronome Track

The first thing that I think is kind of cool is this metronome track I've created.

• Visual Feedback: When I hit play on this, you'll notice my launch pad lights up to the beat. This gives me some visual information about where the beat is.
  • I can tell:
    • Okay, look, this is 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2.

How to Set It Up

The way you set this up is pretty simple:

• You're just sending MIDI to your launch pad or whatever piece of gear you have that will light up.
• All I've done is create notes that correspond to the notes on the launch pad.
  • If I were to hit some of these other notes, you'd see different lights turn on.

Creating MIDI Notes

• By placing MIDI notes on each quarter note, these lights will illuminate.
• To take it a step further, I've added other MIDI notes on every other eighth note:
  • Quarter Note: High velocity (bright color).
  • Eighth Note: Low velocity (dimmer color).

If you notice closely, each light is flashing:

• Yellow to red,
• Yellow to red,
• or green to red.

This setup provides even more information, allowing me to see:

• 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2.

Summary

This is a pretty cool thing you can do!

• All you need to do is create a clip that has four notes (or more, if you prefer) corresponding to the lights you want to illuminate.
• Simply send that MIDI to the device you want to control.

The launch pad works great for this!