MIDI

(Sysex)

MIDI is to digital music production what breathing in & out is to Humans! It may be outdated & as old as the hills but it's pretty much fundamental to everything we do, although it's becomming less & less apparent because a lot of it goes on under the hood. Unless your hooking up MIDI hardware I think some people that not even aware of it! It could do with an update thats for sure. It had it's last full update in 1982 FFS!! Higher resolutions with full backwards compatability would be nice

I'm currently campaigning hard for MIDI-out in Propellerhead's Record software. I think Reason/Record would be just about the best MIDI control software there is & it would be superb controlling external synths with Reason's tools. The thread is the biggest ever on the Propellerhead's board & it's been at the top of the feature suggestion forum since Record was released. Anyone want a MIDI-out for Record T-shirt? (see page 39)

https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/showthread.php?t=115762

  On 2/2/2010 at 8:13 PM, uptowndevil said:

  On 2/2/2010 at 7:59 PM, hahathhat said:

the remote sl is fantastic.

 

agreed, nice action on the keys too. do you use the xy pad much? if so - for what?

i use the touchpad all the time, usually for cutoff/res. it's great.

I like midi about as much as I like tits

i like my midi like i like my tits

  On 2/2/2010 at 2:05 PM, uptowndevil said:

i bought a novation remote sl a few years ago and some soft synths but it just didn't do it for me. given, i was using protools so the software was really expensive (and limited imo). after a few months i drifted back to hardware. i still use reason adapted once in a while though. i'm planning on eventually getting a copy of logic so i can give all the sweet looking free VST's i've seen on this board a chance.

 

also, has anyone tried adapting VST's to RTAS? seems a bit makeshift for a finicky program like protools.

actually you can't use vst's in Logic. AU only. most pay-plugs are vst and au, but a lot of the free ones are vst only. might be something to think about. i'd suggest ableton live if you want your electronic music making experience to be more...fun...to me Live is an instrument.

  On 2/2/2010 at 8:31 PM, Kcinsu said:

I wish automap worked for ableton live :(

the ableton template is good enough when combined with ableton's midi remote capabilities. you can still use all the automap plugins, all the important mixer controls are mapped to your controller through the ableton template, and you just click on an ableton device and the controls get assigned to all the knobs by default.

  On 2/3/2010 at 3:47 AM, ryanmcallister said:

  On 2/2/2010 at 2:05 PM, uptowndevil said:

i bought a novation remote sl a few years ago and some soft synths but it just didn't do it for me. given, i was using protools so the software was really expensive (and limited imo). after a few months i drifted back to hardware. i still use reason adapted once in a while though. i'm planning on eventually getting a copy of logic so i can give all the sweet looking free VST's i've seen on this board a chance.

 

also, has anyone tried adapting VST's to RTAS? seems a bit makeshift for a finicky program like protools.

actually you can't use vst's in Logic. AU only. most pay-plugs are vst and au, but a lot of the free ones are vst only. might be something to think about. i'd suggest ableton live if you want your electronic music making experience to be more...fun...to me Live is an instrument.

i've only used live a few times, but i didn't really care for it too much for composing/editing. i figured it was geared more towards live performance, which isn't my thing really. anything specific that you think places it above the others? i didn't give it much of a chance.

also, is there any software you'd recommend specifically for midi composition?

  On 2/3/2010 at 3:59 AM, uptowndevil said:

  On 2/3/2010 at 3:47 AM, ryanmcallister said:

  On 2/2/2010 at 2:05 PM, uptowndevil said:

i bought a novation remote sl a few years ago and some soft synths but it just didn't do it for me. given, i was using protools so the software was really expensive (and limited imo). after a few months i drifted back to hardware. i still use reason adapted once in a while though. i'm planning on eventually getting a copy of logic so i can give all the sweet looking free VST's i've seen on this board a chance.

 

also, has anyone tried adapting VST's to RTAS? seems a bit makeshift for a finicky program like protools.

actually you can't use vst's in Logic. AU only. most pay-plugs are vst and au, but a lot of the free ones are vst only. might be something to think about. i'd suggest ableton live if you want your electronic music making experience to be more...fun...to me Live is an instrument.

 

i've only used live a few times, but i didn't really care for it too much for composing/editing. i figured it was geared more towards live performance, which isn't my thing really. anything specific that you think places it above the others? i didn't give it much of a chance.

 

also, is there any software you'd recommend specifically for midi composition?

I would recommend giving it another chance. 99% of the stuff you can do in Logic you can do in Live. Perhaps you just explored Live's "session view" which is geared more towards live performance, but you can also flip over to a linear timeline style interface for working the traditional daw way. it's hard to summarize why I would place live above the others, the simplest way I can put it is that while things like pro tools and logic and cubase may be great for tracking out live instruments, they're methods of midi sequencing and overall electronic music production are just...standard. Live offers all that plus several very handy workflows that allow a much more intimate experience with the software, encouraging greater experimentation. for example, if you want to make straight ahead techno, go ahead and use other tools, but if you want to experiment and make fresh sounds and interesting patterns, Live is where it's at. make sense?

again, hard to summarize, check out the plethora of tutorials on youtube, it will give you an idea of some of the cool stuff you can do with Live.

but really, i don't mean to tell you "use this, use that" or even "this is better, this is worse", because honestly that's not what it's about. i use ableton and i think it's the shit. there's plenty of people on here that swear by renoise and trackers for chopping up breaks, I personally find them to be backwards thinking, but if that's what one person is more comfortable with (and will allow them to make cooler music than if they were fumbling around in something else), then I'm all for it. there's a few people I know of around here that love Reason, whereas I personally see it as a bit of a toy. I think I make cool music, but so do they...so whatever works. i find the most important thing when making your selection is to ask yourself "which interface seems to be the most transparent, so that I can just get what I hear in my head down and make music?" spending half an hour wasting time looking for the button that reverses your kick drum is going to be far more of a deciding factor than a long list of people telling you "this is better for that". and how do you find out what works best for you? download demos, or even pirate stuff for now. try making music with all sorts of different softwares, and you'll just naturally find the one that you realize "for some reason I always make the coolest tracks when I spend a night working in...". Right there is your choice, none of us can make that for you.

so for now head over to the ableton website and download their demo and see if you like it. then maybe check out Renoise (pretty much a fully functioning demo, and very cheap to purchase). then Reason. i would recommend these guys first as they are more "midi focused" than the "big brothers" (Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic) that will just end up confusing you right now.

p.s. check out my tunes at this site, they were all made 100% in Ableton. I would hope that maybe this could kinda give you an idea of the flexibility that you can get (it doesn't have to all be about triggering repetitive cheesy loops in ableton). www.soundcloud.com/ryanmcallister

  On 2/3/2010 at 3:59 AM, uptowndevil said:

  On 2/3/2010 at 3:47 AM, ryanmcallister said:

  On 2/2/2010 at 2:05 PM, uptowndevil said:

i bought a novation remote sl a few years ago and some soft synths but it just didn't do it for me. given, i was using protools so the software was really expensive (and limited imo). after a few months i drifted back to hardware. i still use reason adapted once in a while though. i'm planning on eventually getting a copy of logic so i can give all the sweet looking free VST's i've seen on this board a chance.

 

also, has anyone tried adapting VST's to RTAS? seems a bit makeshift for a finicky program like protools.

actually you can't use vst's in Logic. AU only. most pay-plugs are vst and au, but a lot of the free ones are vst only. might be something to think about. i'd suggest ableton live if you want your electronic music making experience to be more...fun...to me Live is an instrument.

 

i've only used live a few times, but i didn't really care for it too much for composing/editing. i figured it was geared more towards live performance, which isn't my thing really. anything specific that you think places it above the others? i didn't give it much of a chance.

 

also, is there any software you'd recommend specifically for midi composition?

Cubase SX has a lot of lovely, strange MIDI tools. Things that let you draw an arc of midi notes, macros that let you do things like delete all black keys or randomize velocity.....

If you're the sort that likes sheet music, though, Cubase SX is not what you want.

Nerd warning: Latest versions of cubase sx do not run DX plugins. I am still running one that does

  On 1/31/2010 at 1:05 AM, uptowndevil said:

i've been recording for years but have always pretty much ignored MIDI. learning it has always seemed like a daunting task and i tend to get lazy about that kind of stuff sometimes. does anyone know the easiest way to get into it, maybe some good tutorials or videos?

 

i spend a lot of time on hardware synths and would like to learn how to incorporate MIDI for note sequencing and automation instead of just recording straight to .wav all the time. i'd also like to learn how to sync up different pieces of hardware and have them trigger each other/run on the same clock. i'm still not that clear on what it is and does exactly, i just know i'm missing out by not using it.

 

thanks for the help

O.o I rarely play ANYTHING live. I program just about everything, and when I do record it, I go back and edit it immediately afterward. Seriously, hardware? Waaaay overrated. The only actual recording I do is for acoustic instruments. Of course I'm a tracker head and program about 5 times more meticulously than the average person (slide into this grace note a bit, put a little vibrato on this eighth note, etc).

But yeah, MIDI is the lifeblood of electronic music.