MIDI Recording Lesson

Okay, so now we want to get to recording some MIDI.

Playing and Setting Up

• Let's play it first.
• Those could be a bit louder again; I think we could use proper bass.
• Let's just go into the Sounds folder and then Instrument Sample C.
• In here, we actually do have some bass sounds already.
• Let's take this one. We can simply drag that directly into the device view, and a simpler is created with the bass sound loaded.
• The track is already armed as well.

I think it's a bit quiet. Let's try minus six here at the volume. Let's see how it sounds with the rest of the clips.

• I'm going to take it all the way up to zero.
• Yep, that sounds alright.
• Let's try a little bit.

Recording MIDI

If you were to record a MIDI track and you didn't have anything that can give you the tempo, you can:

• Use the tap tempo again to tap in 4 times 4.
• Change the time signature if you don't want to work in 4x4.
• Turn on the metronome for CNC (we're not going to do that).
• The same goes for the count in, but I'm going to leave that off this time.

You can also change the global quantization to a preferred setting.

• For example, if you wanted to record full bars and wanted to directly have a cut loop, you could take one bar, two bars, four bars, or eight bars depending on what you want.
• Let's keep it on one bar, and we already have the first scene chosen.

Now, let's play and then click on the session record button. Now I just hit space bar to stop.

• It's not perfectly played, but let's play it back. It's a bit quiet as well.

Adjusting Quantization and Levels

What we could do is:

• Select them all and then check the quantize settings.
  • In this case, they're actually set to the current grid.
  • Adjust the start of the node by 100%.
  • Once you click OK, that is already done.

Alternatively, you could have just chosen Command + U (or Control + U on Windows) to quantize.

You can also choose a record quantization:

• In this case, no quantization was chosen, and you could choose whatever fits best for the notes you want to play.
• This is actually an extra undo step, but the setting can't be changed mid-recording.
• When the clip view is open, it's not an extra undo step, so that only works if you have something else chosen, like a different track or the device view.

Overdubbing and Session Recording

If you want to overdub, you can:

• Click the Session Record button again.
• It goes into record mode, and then we could just record something on top again.

Now, I just recorded another extra note. I'm actually going to move that to myself.

If you wanted to record more than one, you could just click on new, and then the next scene would be chosen already.

• Then you could click the Session Record button again and start recording again.
• If you don't want to hit the space bar because you don't want to stop all playback, you could just hit the session record button again or the clip you were recording into.

MIDI Step Recording

There's actually another way of recording MIDI called MIDI Step recording, which is quite useful, especially when you don't know how to play instruments that well.

• We can just double-click on the next clip slot to create a new MIDI track, which by default is one bar long.
• We could choose, say, two bars.
• Make sure that the preview button is on because otherwise, you can't test anything, you won't hear anything when you're doing MIDI step recording.

We want to start recording at the beginning. You could use the left and right arrow keys to navigate.

• The length of the note is always determined by the grid setting.
• Since we don't want to record really short notes, we'll make the grid setting wider.

Now we want to start with the C:

1. Play the C and press the right arrow key.
2. If you keep that key pressed and press the right arrow key again, you can make it double the length.
3. Then you could just play the next note.

Let's say we want to add some shorter notes as well.

• We can make the grid smaller again and wider again.
• You could try different notes or chords before you record them.

If you press the wrong key by accident but keep it pressed, you can just use the left arrow key to instantly delete it again. Otherwise, you can just double-click it to delete it.

Grid Settings and Recording Notes

Here's a quick recap of shortcuts:

• Control (or Command) + 1 to narrow the grid.
• Control (or Command) + 2 to widen the grid.
• Control (or Command) + 3 for triplet grid.

Let's quickly play that.

By the way, I recorded everything in C major, or you could also say A minor. All the sounds, some might be a bit out of tune still because of those presets that I used.

I just made everything in C because that is just the white notes of the keyboard. That's the easiest key to play in, in case you are new to that kind of thing as well.

Later on, if you decide you want to add more MIDI notes:

1. Click in an empty part of the MIDI editor where you want to start with a note.
2. For example, you could go an octave higher.

Let's say you're somewhere completely else now, but you realize it's not that great.

• You could go to the end of that note, keep the key pressed for that note, and then click the left arrow to delete it again.

So yeah, really simple.

This way, you can add really complicated chord structures as well, but just by trying them out and then recording them step by step.