Newbie Q: Export MIDI file?

[uselessdetails]

How do I export a MIDI file?

I found the menu option. And the click boxes. And it appears to be working but no actual output file results in the project directory.

I must be missing something obvious. Can anyone point me to it?

[Peter Widdicombe]

Does your project you're mixing have MIDI tracks?
Does the "final" output of each track produce MIDI output or audio output?

If you have .VST's in your tracks that are enabled, they will effectively convert all your MIDI to audio, so there's no MIDI at the output to show up in the MIDI export. DISABLE the .VST's when you export to MIDI, and the MIDI note events will pass through to output.

[pough]

The Render dialog has a "pass through plugins" that you can turn off to allow the MIDI through on all tracks.

If you render multiple tracks to one MIDI file, you'll probably have some issues unless you've carefully chosen the MIDI channel for each track's MIDI clips.

[uselessdetails]

Huh. Ok, thanks.

I would never have figured out any of that on my own.

That "pass through plugins" should probably default to "off".

[Peter Widdicombe]

On "export to MIDI", probably "OFF" would be better.
For most that export to .MP3, that'd be downright confusing B-)

[uselessdetails]

For the same reason, it's confusing for MIDI.

I have MIDI-in/MIDI-out VST in that chain.

I think it should be the same for both but the option needs to be better worded. Like, why would I want to include extra "pass through plugins"? in my export? What would be the point of those?

"Pass through" looks like an adjective to me. It would never have occurred to me that it was intended to be a verb.

In any case, I'm good for today. But I'll probably be back the next time I need to export midi since this isn't really discoverable.

[pough]

I get the feeling Waveform is meant to be more a destination than a source for MIDI. Can you let us know what you're trying to do? You can render/output MIDI of a single MIDI clip, a full track with multiples MIDI clips, and an entire edit but they're kind of different processes. The last one is debatably the least full-formed in Waveform but like I said I think it's meant to be a destination rather than a source.

Do other DAWS have MIDI clips that have per-note MIDI channels? Do they have the MIDI channel attached to the track rather than the clip?

[uselessdetails]

> Do other DAWS have MIDI clips that have per-note MIDI channels? Do they have the MIDI channel attached to the track rather than the clip?

They used to all do that back in the days before "DAW". When they were all "sequencers", they tracked pretty much everything that went on a midi cable so program change, sysex, all the continuous controllers, etc. Yes, every note had a channel.

This "channel per track" stuff is relatively recent, (last 20 years). It still confuses me periodically when something I want to do, (program change), simply isn't possible in that environment or requires multiple tracks and clumsy routing & merging to accomplish.

I'm doing a bunch of different stuff. I can figure it out once I know what the software is doing. It's the need for reverse engineering here that isn't trivial. The UI/UX here is... less than ideal.

[Watchful]

There are a number of hardware synths that will still happily dump multiple MIDI channels into a single MIDI track. This can make editing difficult, especially with a lot of note events and many channels in play. I've asked in the past for Waveform to either highlight notes per channel, or "select all notes on this channel," or "show only channel 1... 16" to help with this.

[pough]

It still confuses me periodically when something I want to do, (program change), simply isn't possible in that environment or requires multiple tracks and clumsy routing & merging to accomplish.

Program Change can definitely be done within a MIDI clip in Waveform. It's awkward, but maybe the promised event editor will make that easier. Open a clip in the MIDI editor and click on the "Controllers" button. Then you can use the tiny menu to choose which controller you want to display and edit. You can see/edit one controller (eg Program Change) at a time.

Using the pen tool to create a single event with a specific value at a specific time in the MIDI editor is like trying to hit a fly with a 20 foot pool noodle, but with enough swearing you can make it work.