Changing MIDI track output mid-project

[Seth Gamba]

Can I change the output of a MIDI track in the middle of a song?

In case my question isn't clear, here's what I want to do - I would like to switch which soft synth is being triggered by a MIDI track for a part of a song. For example, the chorus uses a different synth than the verses.

I know that I can just make a separate track to use the other instrument during the chorus, but I would prefer to keep some things on one track because of the way it shows up in the Staff view. Too many tracks and the notation gets hard to keep track of.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Seth

[msmcleod]

6 minutes ago, Seth Gamba said:

Can I change the output of a MIDI track in the middle of a song?

In case my question isn't clear, here's what I want to do - I would like to switch which soft synth is being triggered by a MIDI track for a part of a song. For example, the chorus uses a different synth than the verses.

I know that I can just make a separate track to use the other instrument during the chorus, but I would prefer to keep some things on one track because of the way it shows up in the Staff view. Too many tracks and the notation gets hard to keep track of.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Seth

The short answer is no, you can't do this at the moment.

You could get around this by using some 3rd party "Synth Rack" type plugin that will host the plugins for you and make them appear as one.... so it is possible to say, use Cantable to host the synths along with a virtual MIDI / Audio cable (e.g. loopMidi or loopBe / VB Audio Cable).  You'd lose a bunch of features like native  parameter automation etc (unless you mapped CC MIDI values I guess).

You could also get around this by sampling your VST synths and playing them in a single VST sampler. 

In both the above workarounds, you'd simply use a program change to change sounds... however you need to ask yourself whether it's worth the effort compared to just having another track.

There's a third option I guess...  create a third MIDI track which has LINKED copies of both the verse & chorus clips in it, and use that one for the staff view.  You'd mute this for playback, but any edits you make in it would automatically apply to the original tracks due to the clips being linked.



 

[NealClark]

As far as I am aware you can send midi data from a single track to multiple midi channels of the same Midi driven plugin. ie., one midi track can drive many channels of the TTS Plugin. I don't think however that it possible to change the output to a different MIDI driven plugin. If it is however the same plugin that accepts midi data on many channels, such as Onmisphere or Kontakt, it shouldn't be a problem to edit the corresponding midi data to be sent to channel 2 of that same synth.

Hope that makes sense.

[Seth Gamba]

5 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

There's a third option I guess...  create a third MIDI track which has LINKED copies of both the verse & chorus clips in it, and use that one for the staff view.  You'd mute this for playback, but any edits you make in it would automatically apply to the original tracks due to the clips being linked.

Msmcleod - this third option might give me what I'm looking for. Thanks for the suggestion! Ultimately, this project will be exported into Finale for notation and there are several parts that will require instrument changes. This seems like it will let me keep those parts consolidated in a way that makes sense to me.