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

in this video I'm going to introduce the
basic tools you have for MIDI editing
now there's two approaches to MIDI
editing one ISM the actual clip and the
clip is a container for the MIDI notes
we can also edit the MIDI notes
themselves so I'm gonna show you both
but the clip kind of like audio clips
works very much the same we have a lot
of the same tools in the header area so
if you want to trim up a MIDI clip like
this one here extends past bar six if I
want to trim it down to bar six then I
can just bring that in it respects the
snapping and I use the same exact
trimming tools that I would use for that
now you'll notice that it doesn't have a
fade tool on there because fading would
be done differently with MIDI but you
can take the entire clip and you can
drag it around you can use this to edit
it and you can use this to slip all the
MIDI notes within the overall clip
likewise you can split this up so if we
put a selection here at bar three and I
use the forward slash you can see that I
can chop the clip itself into multiple
pieces if I select one clip then I can
move it independently of the other parts
almost all of the audio editing related
to Clips other than the fades works just
the same for the overall clip now you
can open this up and once you expand
this to a point you'll see that it flips
into the MIDI editor so another way to
do this is to double click on the header
and then that will flip it to the large
view and you can see it you might need
to zoom in a little bit because it's
somewhat sensitive to the zoom setting
like you can see here if you want to
really see those notes you might need to
zoom in a little bit more now double
clicking on the clip header will open it
and it will close it like this depending
on the setting you have back in general
so I'm going to the settings tab general
behavior right here on track sizing it
says double-clicking a track toggles
between small and large height you can
also have a toggle between three Heights
or a small and medium height I just like
to leave it set at the small and the
large height another setting related to
the clips as once you get into them is
how many octaves you see on the piano
roll it's
and that's set here in options you'll
see the default editor vertical scale is
set to two octaves I think that's a
reasonable starting point but if you
want you can set this to more octaves it
depends on the kind of music you're
working with if you're working with
something more elaborate you might want
to see more octaves also if you're on a
bigger screen that would be another
choice as well so I'm gonna leave that
set now one more option that's helpful
to see if I move my mouse wheel you
could see that I can scroll within the
MIDI editor now sometimes I turn this
off because let me just show you why if
I'm working at mixing or something like
that I'm trying to scroll all the tracks
but now if I move the mouse over here
where it's over the MIDI editor you
could see it's scrolling right here so
you might find this kind of annoying
depending on if you're doing MIDI
editing or not now if you're in MIDI
editing mode then you might want to go
into the mouse wheel action and turn it
where a mouse wheel Scrolls the MIDI
grid I have that on at this point so
that's really helpful I think to have
that on so you can actually find your
MIDI notes within here so with all that
said we can start looking at the actual
tools we have to work with MIDI and
they're pretty straightforward and I
think you're gonna find that they're
pretty simple to use it all works by
selecting notes and then doing some sort
of action so if I click a note it
selects it and then within here let me
just make it a little bit bigger
within here I can drag notes up and down
like that to change their pitch if I
drag it like this and hit command Z that
undoes what I did you can also grab the
end this is what this arrow tool here
selected if I grab the end I can shorten
it up you can see that it's snapping to
grid increments because I have snap
turned on if I turn snap off over here
or with the keyboard shortcut Q then I
can freely move this I can freely move
the note around as well just like that
so that's kind of how I can adjust a
note so over here where I've got this
note playing early here's another one I
can just grab and drag and get it to
where it's playing
either on the beat or just slightly
behind that's gonna usually sound a
little bit better so there's the basic
timing correction right there actually
turns snap off a lot of the time to do
these basic timing Corrections if you
want to get like one of these piano
parts to get more of a role where you
feel like it's kind of rolling into the
note then you can leave the bass note
here and just push these back just a
little bit you could zoom in somewhat
here grab the cursor here and then just
sort of just kind of draw in that roll
maybe not enough to hear it exactly also
turn the click off here for the next
time through but if you really want to
get maybe more of an exaggerated role
into this but that's kind of an idea now
to duplicate a note to select the note
hold down command as you drag like this
that would be control on a PC and then
you can copy basically that's copying a
note you can also position the cursor
where you want that note to go like out
here say I wanted to duplicate it out
here the note here is selected and then
just use D and it'll insert it at the
cursor so that's kind of really useful
and then once you've got that selection
made if you want to put a bunch of notes
like this in just put the cursor where
you want it hit D and then you could put
in a bunch of those commands e will take
those out you can also do all of these
things in the properties section so if I
select a note one or more notes I can
adjust the pitch here with this slider
and I can adjust the velocity which is
the intensity with which you played it
you can also do very precise adjustments
to the length and the start and the end
times by adjusting these parameters
directly so all those are available
alright so that is this tool which is
the selection tool now the next thing
over is the actual pencil tool you can
use this to draw in a note so if you
click it will just put a note in and
this tool is the erase tool so you can
just use this to swipe over any notes
that you want to take out just like that
and there's also a line tool I usually
use this for drawing in controllers but
it is possible to use it for notes as
well so if we kind of zoom in just gonna
put in a series of notes kind of show
you how that works so we just draw a
line to create a step series of notes
like this and that just draws them in
you could create different colors of
notes so if we drew a selection so I'm
gonna go back to the arrow tool here and
pick some of these notes like this I
could make all these blue you can also
select multiple notes at the same time
so I'm gonna select all these see four
notes so you go over on c4 on the piano
roll itself hold down command if you're
on a Mac or ctrl on a PC and click and
then that selects the whole row of notes
then you could make changes down here
like changing the velocity of all of
them together or you could move them as
a group up or down on the grid you also
have the ability to edit the velocity
directly for any selected notes so if we
select this note you can see you can go
up here and select from available
velocity values you can do that down
here as well this is sort of a shortcut
you can also adjust the length like this
you can see two divisions of beats or
full beats half beats things like that
so if we wanted to make this one beat
long then we can just quickly do that
right here we'll make it back to four
beats long grab the end of it and adjust
a little bit like that there's a step
sequencer mode which I'm not going to
get into but basically it allows you to
play chord by chord and step in
individual notes and I'm not going to
show you how that works but it's kind of
cool to know that's there you can also
turn sound on and off so that as you hit
these you'll actually hear the pitch so
that's kind of a cool thing now you can
do velocity editing by opening the
velocity area just click velocity here
and then for the selected note you can
grab this stock which represents the
velocity and edit it and this is not
unlike mini programs you can also edit
multiple velocities together by
selecting several velocity say we wanted
edit the velocity of all the c4s hold on
command
select all the C fours and you can see
that they'll all adjust together just
grab this stock for the selected note
you can see the other notes are also
shown in here you could do this with any
kind of controller by clicking
controller and then you go into the type
of controller you can choose from all
available MIDI controller values as well
as aftertouch channel pressure and the
pitch wheel are available right there as
well so those are the fundamentals of
MIDI editing we're going to talk a
little bit about quantizing in the next
video