Beginner's Trouble

Weird probs - but prob simple

Howdy,

I just need a few basic questions answering please as they are preventing me from knockin out tracks. They are simple in nature, I bet. I can concentrate on harder subjects like conmpression later, right now I just need to be able to get going.

Let me tell you about me to fill you in.
I am a guitarist and I like to write and compose songs. When it comes to recording, I make all the other instruments in MIDI via a program called Guitar Pro 4.
I do bass, drums etc and export as MIDI. I then open up N Track, import the MIDI file and record my guitar over the top.


1) MIDI mixdown.
When I mix down MIDI tracks to a wav file, they disappear totally from N Track and cannot be located. Not even in the N Track folder.

When I want to mix down, I follow N Track’s on screen prompts to convert the MIDI to wav but as mentioned, the MIDI files disappear and there is no wav file.

So at the mo, what I am reduced to doing to create a wav or mp3 file, is opening up a second N Track session, connecting Headphone to Line In, playing the .sng in one session and recording it in the other!

As you can see, this is not the best way to go about it and I often have problems with the recording levels (which aren’t tracked in the Recording VU Meter).

2) MIDI editing.
a) So I have exported my MIDI. Often I have wanted to fade out, increase the volume at certain times or just simply cut off a slice.
I can do none of these by drawing the volume/pan lines on the MIDI tracks so how do I edit MIDI? I looked at piano roll and MIDI properties but to no avail. “Help” provided no clues either.

b) As a side issue, I tried the CAPS LOCk key to select all tracks to fade out but it didn’t work.

3) Synching Tracks.
a) Is there any way to “synch up” any of the tracks (MIDI or real guitar) with beats per minute or something? I was thinking of a grid or timeline that indicated each beat or 16th note.

Eg: Let’s say I recorded a track and wanted to move the guitar so it starts after 2 bars instead of 4, is there an easy way to do this?
At the moment, I have to drag the track in question bit by bit and just hope that I can get it to synch up.
Again, very time consuming.

A great benefit of this would be recording a tricky riff just the once, copying it and then placing it at all further relevant sections. So instead of having tor try and play it perfectly 5 times throughout the song, I can record once and then insert where and when ever.
Again, this would save a lot of time - especially as I get red light fever a lot.

b) As a side issue, what if I wanted to cut a short version of a song and remove an entire verse - like a radio edit version? Can you do this via N Track?

Many thanks guys.

Lots of quesutions… I’ll do my best :)

1) MIDI mixdown.
I don’t use the midi wizard thing. I just solo the midi track and then do a normal mixdown.
This keeps your midi track and seems to work better

2) MIDI editing.
There are 2 ways you can do this…
a) in the piano roll the velocity of each note is displayed in the graph at the bottom of the screen. You can draw fade in/outs there.
b) in the timeline switch the view to draw the velocity envelopes for the midi tracks. Make sure you are drawing the right envelope (I’m not in front of n-track ATM)


3) Synching Tracks.
Make sure you set the tempo of the song in n_track to the same tempo as your midi files you are importing.
You can then turn on the grid (cross hatched looking button) and you can turn on snap to grid to make sure if you move a section it will move a whole bar or beat etc.
This will also let you edit out sections (provided everything is played in time to the tempo)

HTH,

Rich

Quote (RichLum @ May 03 2005,21:30)
1) MIDI mixdown.
I don't use the midi wizard thing. I just solo the midi track and then do a normal mixdown.
This keeps your midi track and seems to work better

Better yet, use freeze if you have ver 4.x.

Hi,

I have v4x.

I don’t understand “solo” the midi tracks. What do you mean, RichLum?

Bubba, I ams till not sure of whatyou mean by freeze. I looked at it in the help section but it’s not too clear as to how it will be useful in this instance.

Thx

<!–QuoteBegin>

Quote
b) As a side issue, I tried the CAPS LOCk key to select all tracks to fade out but it didn’t work.


You have to use it in conjuction with the volume envelope drawing. If caps lock is on, it will mirror all changes in volume evolution on all tracks.

Quote (Ice 9 @ May 05 2005,05:28)

I don’t understand “solo” the midi tracks. What do you mean, RichLum?

Bubba, I ams till not sure of whatyou mean by freeze. I looked at it in the help section but it’s not too clear as to how it will be useful in this instance.

There are “solo” and “mute” buttons for each track.
If you solo a track it will only play the tracks with the solo button selected.
Mute just mutes that track.
So if you solo a track and then do a mixdown it will render that track to a wav file.

As Bubba said you now have the option of freezing a track which besiaclly does the same thing - renders that single track to a wav file and when you play back it will play the wav file instead of processing the track in real time.
The Freeze button is either in the timeline left panel or if you click on a channel in the mixer window and bring up the properties

Looks like a blueish snow flake or star

Rich

Hi Guys,

To follow up, I sent MIDI tracks to N Track, recorded my guitar and went to “freeze” the MIDI so I could mixdown…and nothing happens. The grey MIDI sould be replaced by a wav file that has what appears to be an “X” running the length of the track. But no.

What is going on?

And why do I have the disappearing MIDI track problem when I try to mixdown and follow the on screen prompts?

Some advice was to “just solo the midi track and then do a normal mixdown as this keeps your midi track and seems to work better”.

Lemme get this straight, out of all my tracks (real and MIDI), solo the MIDI track and then mixdown? Won’t I just get the track that is solo’ed?

As for MIDI editing, “in the piano roll the velocity of each note is displayed in the graph at the bottom of the screen. You can draw fade in/outs there”.
I can’t manually adjust the volume for each note on every MIDI track for a 5 minute song so this isn’t practical is it?

or

"in the timeline switch the view to draw the velocity envelopes for the midi tracks. Make sure you are drawing the right envelope".

I can’t see the option to draw the “velocity” envelopes in the timeline. I can adjust the volume as per a normal track and fade etc but these settings are lost when mixdown is implemented and so it seems my only option is to manually adjust each note of every MIDI track - which, as mentioned, is too time consuming.

Finally, I tried the grid to help me with moving tracks around. What popped up was bar by bar. How do I get up individual beats?

Don’t know if audio tracks work the same as midi, but instead of mixing down ur midi tracks and losing ur wav…just open up ur sound card mixer and click the “wave” section on ur recorder so that when u hit record in N, it will record all ur midi tracks from the playback to one new track. Or maybe in the case of midi u would click the synth part of the soundcard recorder, not sure about midi. Does this make sense? I do this alot when I have backing tracks I want to mixdown. Once the new compiled track is recorded with all my other tracks in it, I get rid of the other tracks and keep the new one that I recorded. I find it very easy and its pretty fast too. It just takes the time it needs to playback and record the tracks.

Quote (Ice 9 @ May 17 2005,18:22)
1. Lemme get this straight, out of all my tracks (real and MIDI), solo the MIDI track and then mixdown? Won't I just get the track that is solo'ed?

2. As for MIDI editing, "in the piano roll the velocity of each note is displayed in the graph at the bottom of the screen. You can draw fade in/outs there".
I can't manually adjust the volume for each note on every MIDI track for a 5 minute song so this isn't practical is it?

1. I think what the guy meant was for any midi track, click on the solo button, then hit record (ensuring that the record to audio is selected on the toolbar - a little microphone icon rather than the piano keys icon which is for midi).

Anyway, what happens is that your midi track will play back and your sound card will record the output to audio. When you hit stop, you should have a audio track appear in your project which is a recording of the midi. Your midi file will still be there.

This is the best way to render midi to audio in N track pre version 4. Don't bother with the wizard thing, its always been clunky.

Its best to render midi to audio as soon as you can so that you are just working with audio when you mixdown.

2. No, he didn't mean that. Although you CAN individually edit the volume of each note in piano roll, take a look at the window at the bottom of the screen, below the paino roll view.

In here you can literrally draw volume evolutions by clicking the mouse and dragging a line across the midi events. So you can draw your fade ins, fade outs etc. I use it to randomise the velocities of a midi track to help get a more natural feel, by drawing a scribbly line across the peaks.

This will make sense if you try it out - open any midi track (with data in in) and scroll across so that you have midi events in the paino roll view. Look in the bootom window and you will see vertical lines representing the velocities of the events (volume). Click you mouse down there and drag across the lines to see what happens.

Mutley,

I tried the solo of the MIDI track and it worked! Great!
Still confused as to why “freeze” didn’t work - though it did on otehr tracks when I accidentally selected it!

As for the piano roll, I need a bit of help here please.
I selected a MIDI track and opened up piano roll.
The bottom window had 2 drop down menus. One was preset to controller. On the other, I selected “7: volume” as I presumed this was what I needed to select (no idea what the other 130 odd options are for).

I then went to free draw my volume pan in this bottom window. I drew some severe diagonal lines - up, down, up, down etc so I could get some severe results and know I instigated them.

On playback, even though these markings were visible in the MIDI timeline, no alteration in volume occured. Though when I slected modulation and drew the same diagonal lines, a warbly effect occured.

Help?

Quote (Ice 9 @ May 18 2005,10:39)
the piano roll, I need a bit of help here please.
I selected a MIDI track and opened up piano roll.
The bottom window had 2 drop down menus. One was preset to controller. On the other, I selected "7: volume" as I presumed this was what I needed to select (no idea what the other 130 odd options are for).

I then went to free draw my volume pan

Right, you are nearly there :)

Do as before - open a midi track with data in it in piano roll view.

On the right of the screen you shoudl see two drop down combo boxes (Version 4 N track). Click on the top one, and chose 'velocity'.

Underneath the two drop downs you will see two buttons with a red pencil icon. Click on the left (freehand draw).

NOW play with drawing red lines in the window, you should see the peaks instantly jump to the line you drew.
and playback.

Sorted?

Velocity=volume in midi speak.

THANK YOU!!!

God knows what the other controls in Piano Roll do and whether I willl use them but for now, I am happy!

Thanks!