Logic Pro X - Route MIDI to Multiple Instruments with MIDI Environment Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hey guys this is music tech help guy in
this video I'm going to show you how to
use a single MIDI region to route to
multiple software instruments with the
MIDI environment window in Logic Pro 10
this is something I've done when I want
to layer up multiple software
instruments but have them essentially
input the same MIDI data so the same
MIDI clip I find this helpful because I
can record one MIDI clip one MIDI
recording and have that one recording be
routed to and sound through multiple
software instruments simultaneously so
let's listen to this and you'll see what
I'm talking about
[Music]
[Music]
now the drums are not part of the the
group of instruments I'm trying to layer
together it's these four tracks are here
there's an electric piano electric buzz
cyber cut and trans lead but all four of
those software instruments are being
triggered by this one MIDI clip up here
so if you don't do it this way with the
the environment window what you'd
normally do is just have each you know
have a duplicate of that clip on each
one of these tracks which is fine if you
prefer to do it that way but what if
you're trying to record up here and just
record one track and sort of figure out
what you want to do with these four
instruments on the fly then it means you
have to record one track and then
duplicate it four times or more times if
you're using more instruments than I am
to achieve the same the same goal so
there's a couple things I want to
mention before I show you how to do this
there are actually multiple ways to
achieve this you can do with aux tracks
you can do with aliases as well or you
can just simply do it the way I said
before just copy and paste down the
clips but this is just the way I prefer
to do it so if you find this useful for
your workflow awesome if not don't use
it it's just one of several ways to do
this also this is not the same thing as
multi-term real instruments that's
something similar but not exactly the
same as this alright so let me get into
this and I'll show you how I did this
alright so off-screen I undid all the
routing that I had up there before I
also deleted that top track up there so
we basically just have our four software
instrument tracks one of them's an
electric piano that's sort of
arpeggiating and panned over to the left
the second one down is a sort of like an
electric buzz sound pan over to the
right that's also arpeggiated
the third instrument cyber cut is sort
of just like a synth pad
and then the last instrument that says
translate is sort of like a bass
monophonic instrument so it's only
playing one note from each chord as
opposed to the whole chord and I have it
the tremolo effect on it that's creating
that pulsing effect so I've got these
four different instruments and four
different tones that I want to
experiment with and almost work with
them like they're all one instrument
working together as opposed to four
different instruments so the way I'm
going to do this is we're going to first
pull up the MIDI environment window so
you go up to window and then go down to
open MIDI environment or you can just
press command 0 I highly recommend that
you make some space on your screen just
as a dedicated space for the MIDI
environment because if you don't you'll
end up with something like this where
you've got this the basically the lot
the main logic window maximized you hit
command 0 to pull up the MIDI
environment then you click on logic in
the MIDI environment disappears so I
typically just will set aside some of
the screen for it so we're going to do
that and the next thing we're going to
do is we're going to identify these four
tracks in the MIDI environment now the
main view of the MIDI environment that
usually pops up in the main layer that
pops up is the mixer so make sure that
the layer is on the mixer layer and not
anything else then we can find our four
tracks in the MIDI environments mixer so
our electric piano electric buzz and so
forth and so on and we're going to
create a MIDI object an environment
window object by clicking the new button
up here and we're going to create a
monitor now the MIDI monitor is the
basically the simplest of the MIDI
environment objects all it does is
basically any MIDI information you route
into it it'll display that MIDI
information so it'll display the type of
message velocity channel information all
that good stuff it doesn't actually
process anything it just monitors the
MIDI information but one of the cool
things we can do at the monitor is we
can also kind of use it as a line
splitter like a MIDI line splitter so if
you grab this little triangle here this
little output from it you can drag that
up to our first software instrument
track the electric piano and then you'll
see it creates another output so let's
grab the second one
and pull it over to the electric buzz
grab the third one pull it over to cyber
cut and the fourth one and pull it over
to trans lead now what we need to do is
we need to move the MIDI monitor out
into the arrange window to create a
dedicated track for it because right now
the media MIDI information is just on
the electric a the electronic piano
track so the way you do this is you drag
the MIDI object below your lowest track
in the arrange window and it'll ask you
do you want to create a new track for
the environment object and we just hit
create and so it creates a monitor
object out here and monitor track for us
so we'll move this up to the top you can
call this anything you want you don't
they call it monitor because we're not
using it as a monitor I'm just going to
call it MIDI clips and we can pull our
MIDI region or MIDI clip up there and
this clip will be routed through the
monitor to all four of our software
instruments now so let's let's see if
that worked
cool so it worked so the other advantage
to doing it this way that is that we can
now record and play anything we want on
this MIDI clips monitor track up here
you can arm it for recording and
anything i play on my midi keyboard will
be translated down to all for these
synthesizers so if i just dinking around
on my midi keyboard
[Music]
and if I want to record this in real
time I can I just have to hit R to
record and I can record whatever MIDI
data I want on the MIDI clips track and
it's automatically going to route all of
that MIDI data down to our other four
other other four instruments so that's
the reason why I like to do it this way
like I said before there's other ways to
do this with aux tracks and some you
know there's some other ways to do as
well but I find this way the most useful
so now we've got the routing all set up
we'd all you have to do is basically
just close out the environment window
the routing will stay where it's at and
then we can just you know repeat it
command R to repeat the MIDI clip track
as many times as we want so another
advantage of doing things this way is
that if you want to edit the chords or
edit the material in your MIDI regions
you only have to do it once if we copied
this down all four of these tracks and I
want to change one of them and have it
actually change all of them and I have
to alter that clip and then copy down
the edited clip here I can just change
one note if I want to and it'll actually
affect the MIDI data that's going to all
for these instruments so I hope you guys
enjoyed this video hopefully it was
helpful it's again it's a little trick
that I use it's like I said there's
other ways to do it if you find other
ways to do it more useful for you and
your workflow great if you found it
useful awesome so I hope you guys
enjoyed the video and thanks for
watching