Multiple Midi Recordings

[LingLing]

This one was a bit hard to look up so I feel the need to express it in a longer format. Basically whenever I wanted to record something into cakewalk via my midi piano, All the midi notes from the other tracks would play as well as what I wanted to record. Lets say I have a violin and a piano, If I wanted to record something on the violin and the piano already had notes, the notes from the piano would go into the violin recording. Make any sense? Probably not, but please do help me cause this is very inconvenient as I have to go to the end of the track just to input notes.

[bitflipper]

Yeh, it actually does make sense. In fact, it's all working exactly as designed. Really.

In order to support multiple MIDI-controlled instruments, a mechanism exists to route each MIDI track to its assigned instrument. To do that, each track and instrument is assigned a MIDI Channel, a number between 1 and 16. In your example, you'd probably switch the violin over to channel two and leave the piano on channel one. 

Moving your violin track to channel 2 is simple: there is a MIDI channel dropdown list in the track header. Choose "2" from the list. Now, the violin will only listen to MIDI channel 2. Playing the keyboard will still activate the piano because it's still on channel one, but the violin on channel 2 will ignore those notes.

Your MIDI controller (piano) likely provides a way to designate which MIDI channel it's talking to. It probably defaults to channel one. You could change this at the keyboard, but I like to keep it simple: record the first MIDI track on channel one, then switch it (in the DAW) to a different channel. Don't forget to also inform the soft synth which MIDI channel it's supposed to respond to. Then I'll record the next track (still on channel one), and after recording switch it over to a third channel. Repeat for each subsequent MIDI track, making sure that every track and instrument has its own unique channel number.

When you've reached the limit and have used up all 16 MIDI channels, come back and we'll talk about MIDI ports.

 

 

[LingLing]

Thanks for the help. For some reason certain projects would do it some wouldn't. Maybe its automated in some weird way?

Also I like writing orchestra/film music so the 16 track limit is pretty easily filled up.

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by LingLing

[John Vere]

There's no 16 track limit. The limit is ony set buy your systems capabilities. 

The TTS-1 can use all 16 tracks but you can keep adding TTS_1 's as many times as your system can handle. 

And there are plenty of dedicated  VST instruments. Each instance of a VST instrument can use the same channels other VST instruments are using. It is only when you use a multi channel instrument like the TTS-1 that channels matter. 

You should really spend some time watching the tutorial videos and learn how this all works. You won't get far by just fiddling around without knowledge of Cakewalks MIDI structure. 

[LingLing]

To be honest I don't use the TTS-1 (or any default cakewalk instruments) I mostly use VST instruments externally downloaded. I am a bit confused on what you're saying but I will try to learn about the midi structure as you said. I just plugged my piano into my computer via USB type b. So I am not the most knowledgeable about these things. My main point of confusion comes from the inconsistencies though. Some times the midi overlaps and sometimes it doesn't all while I'm essentially using the same 6 or 7 VST instruments.

Edited June 24, 2021 by LingLing

[LingLing]

I've had projects with 33 tracks work without overlapping and ones with 8 do. I haven't messed with midi channel inputs or outputs either.

[scook]

Synths playing data from other tracks is often the result of the synth's instrument/MIDI track input set to "All Tracks - Omni" and one or more other synths in the project having "Enable MIDI Output" turned on in the VST2/3 drop down in their standard header.

This can be avoided by not using "All Tracks" input settings and turning off "Enable MIDI Output" in plug-ins that have the feature when the feature is not needed.