Pro Tools 11/12 - #27 - MIDI Tracks and Channels with XPand!2 Video Lecture | Pro tools Tutorial: Basics to Expert - Video & Sound Editing

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 27 of my Pro Tools
video tutorial series before I get into
the video today if I haven't said this
already pretty much all of the videos in
my Pro Tools 11 tutorial series will
work in Pro Tools 10 as well as Pro
Tools 12 hence why I haven't upgraded to
12 yet today I'm going to show you guys
how to work with MIDI tracks along with
the expand to instrument which is
essentially Pro Tools flagship sample
based synthesizer I'll also give you
guys a basic explanation of using MIDI
channels and pro tools
so to start I'm going to create four new
MIDI tracks and one stereo instrument
track just to recap the difference
between MIDI tracks and instrument
tracks MIDI tracks can input a MIDI
signal and output a MIDI signal which is
essentially just digital information but
not waveform or audio information an
instrument track can input MIDI data or
MIDI events and output an audio signal
so what we're going to do today is we're
going to use these four MIDI tracks to
send four different channels of separate
MIDI events to one instrument track with
expand loaded on it once we create our
four MIDI tracks instrument track we can
go down to the instrument track and we
can load up the expand instrument under
multi-channel plug-in instrument and
then expand to in stereo one thing
you'll immediately notice about expand
is that there are four instrument
channels labeled a B C and D that you
can assign with a MIDI Channel number
one two three or four a MIDI channel is
a pathway through which MIDI signal can
travel the only thing that's weird about
MIDI channels is it's actually a serial
pathway unlike an audio bus pathway
that's actually parallel MIDI pathways
are actually serial so each message you
send is tagged with one of sixteen
channels in our case with the expand
only four of those channels are actually
used the 16 channel limit for MIDI
generally applies more to Hardware
instruments than
software instruments so in most cases
you're not just going to be limited to
just say sixteen instrument tracks you
can actually go beyond that eventually
we will talk about using hardware
instruments and pro tools but that's a
whole other topic in itself so for this
instrument we're going to choose the
sound tracker preset under the multi
Tamriel folder the multi Tamriel
instruments tend to have multi-channel
layered sounds so they're optimized for
this sort of thing but depending on what
preset you choose you may or may not get
multiple channels of information to work
with
so while armed the instrument track and
I'll play a few notes I'm a MIDI
keyboard and we'll see what happens so
it sounds like we're just getting drums
the very top channel let's try setting
all four voices to channel one and we
should get all four voices at the same
time all right so it sounds like we're
hearing all four channels although the
drums are a little faint that time we
may need to just mix them differently
later so what we're going to do is we're
going to change these four voices to
four different channels so we can play
in four different sets of MIDI
information so we're going to set these
to one two three and four sequentially
so we want each of the four MIDI tracks
to represent one of the four MIDI
channels or many voices in the expand so
I'm just going to go ahead and name each
of our MIDI tracks to the corresponding
voice in the expand so we've got our
drum loop the Transpac we have the synth
bass which is we're going to turn into
an arpeggiated bass and then the fourth
channel is a hard lead or a monophonic
hard monophonic lead we're going to go
over to the synth bass channel and turn
on the arpeggiation button so that's our
pit arpeggiated and we're going to click
the on button to turn the arpeggiator on
the next thing we're going to do is
we're going to have each of our midi
tracks output their MIDI signal to a
specific MIDI channel in the expand so
we want each of our four MIDI channels
to output two channels 1 2 3 & 4 in the
expand
and this is a way for us to separate the
musical ideas in each of our four MIDI
tracks so that each of the four voices
in the expand play different things so
we're going to route the drum loop to
channel one in the expand we're going to
route the trans pad to channel two we're
going to route the arpeggiated bass to
channel three and then the hard lead to
channel four so everything matches up
with channels 1 2 3 & 4 in the expand so
now instead of arming the expand and
hearing all four voices at the same time
we should be able to separate those
voices with our MIDI channels so there's
the drums let's try the trance pad
let's try our our pegida base and lastly
our hard monophonic lead all right so
everything works individually now let me
just adjust the levels of each voice
just to my taste here I'm going to pull
the drums up a bit as well because
they're kind of quiet let's close out
the expand I'm going to go up to track
create click track and I'm going to use
this just to stay in time and I'm going
to compose a little idea here using each
of the four voices separately I'm also
going to change the tempo from 120 to
128 to speed it up a little bit and then
we're going to do is I'm gonna start
with the drum loop and I'm just going to
plan a musical idea starting with the
drum loop and moving moving down my 4
MIDI tracks here the drums are pretty
easy here because all I'm doing is
holding a couple keys to trigger a drum
loop to play so here we go all right so
I'm going to use the selector tool to
open this up in the MIDI editor I'm
going to hit option 0 to open this up in
the event operations window and we are
going to quantize both the note on and
the no off values to a whole note this
will make our drum loop exactly 4 bars
long so there's no gaps and we'll move
down to the next instrument the trance
pad we'll play some chords on top of our
drum loop so here we go
all right that's not cool it was kind of
quiet um let me well first let me
quantize this first to a whole note and
then what I'll do is I'll go into the
expand instrument and I will play with
the levels a bit just to get that
sounding okay yeah that sounds a lot
better I can hear that trance pad a lot
better and the drums aren't too loud so
let's move on to the bass I left those
gaps in the bass on purpose just to make
it easier for me to move my hands to the
next chord but if I quantize that to a
whole note it will correct that issue
anyway all right before we move down to
the hard lead I'm going to open the
expand again just play with a few levels
here this is a cool thing about this you
can still adjust the levels of all four
instruments individually all right so
let's play with the monophonic lead and
create a cool little melodic idea
all right so after doing some quantizing
and editing on the hard monophonic lead
this is what we end up with obviously
our lead idea is a bit longer twice the
length of the other ideas that I played
in so using the selector tool and grid
mode and I'm going to set the grid to a
whole note what we're going to do is
we're going to trim up all three well
first let's trim the lead here a bit and
we're gonna trim all three of the other
instruments click on them and hit
command D to duplicate each one and then
I'll click on the whole range of things
just holding shift to select them all
and duplicate them all so let's see what
our whole idea here sounds like
and lastly I was just dialing in the
levels and playing with the pan settings
to my own personal tastes so one of the
cool things about expand instrument
patches is that they're actually four
instruments in one so we can actually go
in here and we can customize each of the
preset sounds for each are four channels
so I'm going to choose a preset called
virtual flute to replace our monophonic
Cynthia do the same thing for the other
three channels as well
alright and lastly let's try a new drum
loop setting as well
cool let's try everything together
alright so there you go
that's using four different MIDI tracks
using MIDI channels to control four
different channels within the expand to
instrument as always I hope you enjoyed
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the video and thanks for watching