Ok, So I've got my midi keyboard, my sound card, and a connecting cable, and cubase (Version 5 I think). I've plugged them all in. It all seems to be working.
However, my only experience of midi is at college, and I don't often use it the (and it's already set up there!). My big problem here is selecting the instrument. I can't seemt to access the standard set of midi sounds on my computer. I can only change it on the actual keyboard.
I can't work out how to change the instrument without using the actual keyboard.
I'm sure this is quite simple, but I can't work out how to do it.
any help would be useful!
Thankyou
Peter
hey,
Do you have a sound moduale, or a synth, that's what gives you all your sounds, you can have outboard ones and digital ones on the computer (i've never used cubase so i don't know if it has one or not) To get the sounds from the keyboard you have to play with some of the input settings and you need a USB interface so the signal can get into the computer. Hope that helps.
Hey man! I will assume that everything is working fine - you press keys, sound comes out, etc. :)
To change sounds without using the keyboard, you need to use some basic MIDI controller messages.
Quickest way to do this, is as follows.
Set your locators to 1 bar in length. Create a new midi track, and double click in between the locators to create an empty part. Click once on the newly created part, and press CTRL + G. This will open up list edit. Now, bring up your pencil tool.
Near the top of this window you should see a drop down menu which lets you select the type of event to be inserted. This should be set to insert Note, by default. Click on this drop down box and select the "Program Change" event. Click in the gridded area to the right of the screen. You'll notice on the left, you'll see it has created Prgchange. In the column labelled Val 1, it should be set to 1 (Piano). Just hold down right mouse button to scroll up through the numbers, left to scroll down through them.
As a rough guide, 1-20 are keys, including pianos and organs. Bass starts around 33. Strings are in the mid 40's. Synths are around 80+. You'll soon get used to where things are.
You should hear the sound change. If not, there is an "ear" icon near the top of the screen. Click that so it is on, to have any changes you make in list edit occur immediately. Now that you've done this, you can simply create 15 additional tracks, and copy and paste this part containing the program change, on to all of the MIDI tracks, insuring they all have their own unique channel number running from 1 - 16 (10 will automatically be drums). Lastly, move all the parts so they are before bar 1, in the blank little space before the song starts. Now, every time you tap stop (Numeric key 0) 3 times, and press play, it will pass these program change events and set the track to whatever sound you have chosen!
But it doesn't stop there - Program Change is just one type of message. From the list edit window, where you selected Program Change from the dropdown list, choose Controller. Insert one after the Program Change event. By default this will create controller 0, with a value of 0. The number in Val 1 determines the type of controller. The number in Val 2 determines its value. To get you started...
7 = Channel Volume
11 = Expression
10 = Channel Pan
91 = Reverb
93 = Chorus
94 = Delay
You can find a list of all MIDI controllers with a quick google search :)
I hope this is all right. I haven't used VST for coming up a year now, and I'm at home right now so I can't try it out lol but I'm sure my memory is pretty good ;) any problems, any questions, ask away!!
Who sucked out all my mids?!
Thankyou very much. I shall try that out and get back to you on how it goes.
Thankyou
Peter
