Recording MIDI

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Before you start recording MIDI, it's a good thing to make sure your MIDI Thru Active option is selected in the Files (PC)/Cubase (Mac) > Preferences > MIDI dialog box. This will send the MIDI information Cubase receives through the MIDI output port you assign on the desired MIDI tracks.

How To

To record MIDI events on one or multiple tracks:

Activate the Record Enable button on the MIDI track you want to use to record incoming MIDI events.
Select the MIDI input port from which the MIDI events arrive .
Select the MIDI output port to the device or VSTi of your choice. This is where you determine what you will hear during the recording process.
Configure the Bank and/or Program fields in the MIDI Settings section of the Inspector area or in the Track List area.
Select the appropriate MIDI channel for the track's MIDI output.
In the Transport panel, set the appropriate Record mode (Normal, Merge, or Replace).
In the Transport panel, set the appropriate Cycle mode if you want to record in cycles (Mix, Overwrite, Stacked or Keep Last).
Set the location of your left and right locators appropriately. For example, if you want to record from Bar 5 Beat 1 to Bar 9 Beat 1, set the left and right locators to Bar 5 and 9, respectively.
If you want Cubase to start recording at a specific bar and stop recording at a specific bar without recording in Cycle mode, you can enable the Punch-in and Punch-out buttons on the Transport panel.
Activate the metronome click on the Transport panel if you want to hear a click while recording. You can Ctrl (PC)/ (Mac)-click to access the Metronome settings (see the appropriate section discussing this dialog box earlier in this chapter).
Press Record and start playing. If you've enabled the metronome click, the precount value you've entered in the Metronome Setting dialog box determines how many bars Cubase counts before it starts recording.
Press the Stop button on the Transport panel (or spacebar on the keyboard) when done. If the Punch-out button was enabled, Cubase should stop automatically when it reaches that location.

NOTE

graphic/ptip.gif RECORDING MULTIPLE MIDI CHANNELS AT ONCE

When transferring a MIDI sequence from one sequencer to Cubase, or when several musicians playing on MIDI instruments need to be recorded simultaneously , you will need to take additional measures in order to record MIDI events.

If you want for all the MIDI events to be recorded onto the same track and split up (dissolve) all the events depending on the MIDI input channel later, you'll need to set up your MIDI output channel to ANY rather than to a specific channel. This will allow the incoming events to be redistributed to external devices according to their MIDI channel settings. This works well when you transfer a sequence. You'll find out more about dissolving MIDI parts later on in this chapter.

If you want to record onto separate tracks from the beginning, you will need at least one MIDI input port per part you need to record. Each MIDI input will then be recorded onto its own track.

Finally, if you only have one MIDI port and want to record and monitor MIDI events coming on multiple MIDI channels simultaneously, refer yourself to the previous tip under the MIDI Filter section above.

Now that you've just recorded events on a track or multiple enabled tracks, you might want to record over a portion of this recording to correct errors that would be too long to edit in the editor or simply because you feel like it. In the previous steps, you were using the left and right locators as a point of reference to both begin playback and recording, as well as to stop recording. You may also use the preroll value in the Transport panel to begin playback before you start recording and the postroll value to have Cubase continue playing after you've stopped recording. The instructions on using the preroll and postroll functions were described earlier in Chapter 4's "Locators" section.

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