22 MIDI Recording Video Lecture | Tracktion 5 Tutorial: Master Music Editing - Video & Sound Editing

in this video we're going to go little
deeper into MIDI recording in this video
I'm actually going to do some recording
I'm going to show you some various
recording modes and a lot of the options
we have when recording with MIDI the
MIDI implementation for recording it's
pretty comprehensive interaction I think
you're going to enjoy it but it's also
very easy to use so to get started I'm
going to set up a track for MIDI
recording we just covered this in the
last video so you just need to select
the input you want to use i'm going to
use X key which I've got set up if I
play a little bit on that keyboard you
can see that I have MIDI data coming in
there's no audio yet we need to select a
synthesizer it's what a basic piano
sounds I'm going to go into my plugins
already filtered by synth I'll use easy
keys easygeeze has a lot of features for
creating keyboard parts but i'm just
going to use it as an instrument in this
particular example so i'll grab the easy
keys plugin from the browser plugins tab
I'm going to drop it on the mixer into
the first position right here like this
the UI comes up and now I should have a
piano sound if at this point when you
play you don't hear anything make sure
that you've got it enabled and then on
the actual input itself right here check
to see that you've got enable into n so
you can actually hear through the
plug-in now in order to do recording
this works very much like recording
audio you enable the track for recording
using our and then the next thing we
need to do is just either on the
transport area click the red record
button or use our on the keyboard to
start recording I'm just going to do
that play a few notes to see if we're
actually recording any MIDI data
[Music]
alright so that actually worked we
recorded data if we wind back you can
hear that it's playing back so that all
work but we didn't hear the click once I
started playing so let's just check the
click track settings this works exactly
like for audio it says precal length set
it to bars which is fine and then we
just need to turn on the click track so
it wasn't actually on we were only
getting the countin so with that set
that way all I need to do is select that
clip and delete it and I'll try it again
and see if I can get slightly more
coherent chords in there just a couple
bars so that we have something to work
with with that set up that way i'll just
hit record I've got the cursor re wound
I've got the loop turned off but the
click is now turned on so we can use
that as a reference
[Music]
alright so that's a recording of just
some basic piano chords using traction
using a MIDI clip and that worked just
fine we can actually zoom in a little
bit on this and you'll see all the
actual notes are in here you can see
that it's lined up with the bar this
particular chord is lined up with the
bar because I was using the click track
for reference so there's the entire part
the series of coors this is called a
piano roll view and you can see that the
notes of the piano are organized along
the left and then the individual
performance is organized on the timeline
just like you'd expect the length of
these represents the length of the MIDI
notes so that's what the MIDI data looks
like we also have some tools to work
with velocity and we have some tools
here to work with moving the notes
painting notes deleting notes and then a
draw tool to put them in which will work
with in the editing video now if I click
back on the MIDI input we have some
options for recording and you'll see the
important one here is the action merge
newly recorded MIDI data into the
existing clip so if I enable recording
again just play a note here i'm going to
overlay an additional note on to this
part so you can actually layer up parts
it's really useful for drum parts but
I'm going to demonstrate how this works
if you leave the action set to the
default which is merged newly recorded
MIDI into any existing clip so i'll go
into recording again
[Music]
alright so what I did is I played some
see notes and I just played them and
what happened is they wind up being
added to that performance so now I've
stacked this low C along with the
original cords that I played if I were
to happen to hit ctrl Z or undo you can
see it takes out that last take and then
ctrl or command Y will put them back in
so that's a way you can use it to layer
now if you wanted to replace what you
played in previously then you can change
this to either replace existing clips
there's also overlay new clips so
replace existing clips will work like
this so I'll just rewind kind of play in
this same part again and I'll just leave
it in this mode here and you'll
understand how this works
you
you
alright so you see what happened here is
now this clip with this is what's left
of the original clip if I just pull this
to the side you'll see that it's
actually overwritten this original clip
and it's more it's moved it out of the
way if we reveal what's behind here
you'll see that the data is still in
here that's from the original one it
actually moves the original basically
erasing it from underneath so you don't
ever get anything overlapping all right
so that could be useful in certain
situations I'm going to undo that a
couple of times to get back to this and
now if I click here you click on the
input to find the setting now you can
change this to overlay new clips
containing newly recorded data that
means you'll get another clip stacked on
top of the original so I'll rewind and
show you how that works alright so you
can see here if we move this out of the
way you'll see that the original clip is
still under there so these clips are now
overlapping like this let's rewind and
see what happens when you play it this
way
really you're getting both are merged
together but at least for me I rarely
would work that way there's also
end-to-end from this device but don't
actually record that is more of a
special case which I'm not going to get
into in this video series so I'm going
to put this back on merge newly recorded
MIDI into existing clips and I think
that when you're getting going with
traction this is probably the way to go
all right so another interesting feature
is input quantize and that's located
right here once we click on the input
for the MIDI input and then click on
quantize over here you can see that
there is divisions of beats and this is
how you want to break out the beat it is
not like if you want to record to an
eighth note division you would set this
to eighths that's actually breaking a
beat into eight parts much finer
division that you probably expect so
what I'm going to do is set this to one
beat that means quantize to a quarter
note if you want to quantize the eighth
notes you'd set this to one-half which
would cut your quarter note division in
half and that would be an eighth note
quantize quantized to sixteenth notes
that's one quarter so it's not difficult
but it's just a little confusing when
you first see this i'm going to set this
to one beat i'm going to record this
part playing with quarter note not going
to try to keep the timing rate because i
want to show you how it will kind of
quantized that input to adjust it
appropriately alright i tried to drag it
a little bit play a little off the beat
it's not that hard to do and then rewind
and let's see if it quantized it
now in playback you'll notice that it's
not a really natural sound because the
quantizing quantizes both the notes
start and the note ending so the note
will sound a little stretched out
sometimes let me just show you this but
this is useful for certain kinds of drum
programming and we just play this back
now there's other ways to quantize
interaction that give you a little more
control than that so input quantize can
be really useful i use it more for drum
programming because i like to see the
nice full beat like this where they both
the beginning and the ending of it are
quantized and it kind of fills out each
division like that so it's important to
know that that's available so that's an
introduction to MIDI recording some of
the options you have on setting up the
input and the input modes for MIDI
recording as well as a quick look at
input quantizing thanks for watching
I'll see you in the next video