Why is MIDI file silent?

[Richard Gill]

Hi everyone, new to this software and excited by its capabilities but I think its going to be a steep learning curve.

I created a MIDI file of piano in Sibelius and imported it into Cakewalk.

I'm trying to play it but there's no sound despite the volume meter showing there is - see image.

So my question is how do I get the sound to play? I've noticed that the piano notes are in red wheras they were in blue in a different project when the sound was audible.

 

[scook]

The item circled in red is a MIDI activity meter and has nothing to do with audio.

The image shows a project with one MIDI track with its output and channel set to TTS-1 BUT there is no audio track for the TTS-1 audio output.

Add an audio track and set the input to TTS-1.

The channel assignment in track 1 is not necessary.

 

Alternately, when adding TTS-1 to a project add it using an instrument track. An instrument track is an audio+MIDI track pair that presents itself in the project as a single track.

Or the best solution as long as Preferences > MIDI > Devices has no output device selected: use File > Open to open MIDI files instead of importing the MIDI file into an existing project. This will automatically add TTS-1 to the new project set up ready to play the opened MIDI file. This is the best solution for playing MIDI files because importing MIDI files into an existing project strips out some MIDI data such as tempo. Opening a MIDI file does not strip data like the import process does.

[Richard Gill]

Perfect! Problem solved!