Traction - recording MIDI

[Gezzdoc]

What do I want to do? I want to play my MIDI keyboard, split so that the left hand goes to say MIDI channel 1 for bass, and the right hand; channel 2 for piano.
I can do this for realtime playing, but can't work out how to record different MIDI channels on different tracts.
There must be some way of doing this?

[Gezzdoc]

Or does anyone know how I can assign one MIDI input to multiple tracts?

[dry bones]

Tracktion assigns MIDI channels for each clip rather than per track; that caught me out for a long time. To make sure your MIDI is going back and forth properly, check that both 'enable end-to-end' radio buttons are on.

[Lunch Money]

Tracktion isn't really suited to intensive creative Live MIDI-playing action right now, IMO.

So, to answer question 1: You need a plug-in that doesn't come with Tracktion.

To answer question 2: you need to make use of racks.

Both can be done, but they're 2 things that are not an intuitive and natural part of Tracktion. I think they could and SHOULD be, but they're simply not, yet.

For what it's worth, I don't know of many 'normal' sequencers that allow you to split your keyboard natively, either. It's often a function of the plug-in, not the host.

Are you playing live sets?

Greg

[Gezzdoc]

Tracktion assigns MIDI channels for each clip rather than per track; that caught me out for a long time. To make sure your MIDI is going back and forth properly, check that both 'enable end-to-end' radio buttons are on.

Que?

My keyboard splits itself where-ever I ask it to and as long as I use a different MIDI channel for each hand, traction recognizes that. So using something like "Sampletank"; I can have my Piano/Bass split. In fact if I record a MIDI track, I hear this split whilst playing, but the playback of the recorded MIDI track isn't split at all; there's just a Piano layer & a Bass layer.

[Lunch Money]

I'm missing some vital piece of information... when you say 'layer', do you mean they are 2 separate clips? That makes perfect sense, although it'd be nice to have them on 2 separate tracks to begin with I guess. SHIFT+drag will move it sample-accurately to the next available empty track, if that's what you need/want.

Greg

[jens]

For what it's worth, I don't know of many 'normal' sequencers that allow you to split your keyboard natively, either. It's often a function of the plug-in, not the host.

[Gezzdoc]

Whilst I'm playing, I route channel 1(LH) to Bass & channel 2(RH) to piano.
Only one MIDI clip is recorded, and all the MIDI data is played back thru channel 1 "bass" and channel 2 "piano" as if I simply layered two sounds on a keyboard.

[jens]

Whilst I'm playing, I route channel 1(LH) to Bass & channel 2(RH) to piano.
Only one MIDI clip is recorded, and all the MIDI data is played back thru channel 1 "bass" and channel 2 "piano" as if I simply layered two sounds on a keyboard.

that's normal behaviour as the midi-notes itself do not contain any midi-channel information - as soon as they're recorded and playing back they all will be sent to any channel the clip is set to - so you need inevitably two different clips for what you are trying to achieve - the culprit is a the recording-stage and needs to be solved there - are you using Tracktion 1 or 2?

[Lunch Money]

Ahh... I see.

Without coming up with a technical fix, surely the easiest and quickest (less than 10 seconds!) thing to do would be to highlight the bass or 'treble'-frequency notes, cut them, and paste them into a new clip?

There ARE plug-ins that will split for you, which might be a simpler solution. I just need to look one up and I'll point you in the right direction.

Keep in mind, though, that it'll be edit-specific to the song you're working on. If you want them as two permanently separate MIDI files, you'll have to separate them yourself the way I suggested. But if it's just going to "live" inside of your Tracktion edit, the tool I find should do the job just fine.

If you truly need them to be separated at the recording stage, you will need an external tool like MIDI-Ox combined with MIDI-Yoke, as far as I know. Or any other method of tricking your host (this'd be the same for most hosts that I'm aware of, even eXT) into thinking you have 2 MIDI devices, rather than just 1 device transmitting on 2 channels.

Greg

[Lunch Money]

Now that I'm thinking about it, you COULD use a plug-in to do the splitting for you, in conjunction with 'export'. Hrmm...

What end product are you looking for? Do you NEED 2 separate MIDI files, or is playing back the 1 MIDI file on 2 channels enough?

Greg

[jens]

There might be a simple solution:

- add two new tracks (say 'track 1' and 'track2')

- route track 1 to track 2

- insert a new clip on both tracks

- set both clips to the appropriate channels

- attach your midi-insert to track 1 and start recording

This will work if Tracktion only adds notes into existing midi-clips from the channel it is set to when recording - it should behave like this but I'm not sure...


edit: scratch this - Tracktion only records to the track the input is atached to - it transmits the midi-data to another track but doesn't record it...

[Lunch Money]

I've come up with a solution if 1 MIDI clip is "OK" with being split. Otherwise, give Jens' method a try. If you try Jens' method, make sure you select your MIDI device icon, and then in its properties panel which appears, use the first pull-down menu to set its behaviour to:

"merge newly recorded MIDI into any existing clips"

Greg

[jens]

Otherwise, give Jens' method a try.

sadly it doesn't work (see above)

[jens]

isn't it the case that Tracktion 2 allows to configure the inputs individually on a per-track-basis similarly to e.g. eXT? (so that this problem wouldn't exist with T2 and was merely an outrdated restriction of T1)