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Plugins on midi tracks
24 March, 2009 - 23:03 — nobody (not verified)
Hi,
I decided to split the drums in a few midi channels (kick, snare, hi-hat etc), so I could control their volume, pan and reverb amount. But when I added the plugins (a few variants of reverb and amps) I didn't hear any difference. Same plugins work fine on audio?
Volume and Pan on midi are also ok.
any help?
Forums:
Re: Plugins on midi tracks
Plugins on MIDI tracks works this way:
- First one inserted must be an instrument plugin, like a DSSI or VSTi; these are plugins which accept MIDI as input and spit audio as output. Second one and following should or may be audio effects plugins, like LADSPA or VST are; that way you can chain dedicated audio effects to the output of the (head) instrument plugin, which is responsible to render the MIDI track's audio synthesis in the first place.
- If you happen to drive any outboard hardware (or external soft-synths) from those MIDI tracks, I am sorry to tell, that no plugin inserted on that track will have any effect to that purpose; they won't affect the audio rendered; that would need you to feed their respective audio outputs back again to qtractor audio inputs, or use some other external effects rack.
Cheers.
Half-way to drum track
aaa!
This is great! With adding the Fluidsynth plugin, one can load different SoundFont Bank into each midi channel. This is really good news. I believe this is already half-way into creating a dedicated drum- track. One needs that midi-to-audio plugin, the chance to have different midi-channel per instrument (per note/pitch) and displaying the length of notes as equal (regardless of their actual length, as that's irrelevant in a drum track).
Hmm, there should be a way of controlling the vol/pan/plugin properties per pitch too.
But this is not so far away from a drum-track - what do you think, Rui?
Re: Half-way to drum track
- there should be a way of controlling the vol/pan/plugin properties per pitch too.
I'm afraid the standard MIDI specification doesn't support this sort of way.
Probably there are some MIDI instruments that make this kind of tuning per pitch/note available through SysEx and/or NRPN (I can probably say that Yamaha XG has one of that kind of thing, specially suited on drum channels).
However, I fail to recognize as this being standard. Re. instrument plugins, all that tuning must be locally implemented, that meaning the plugin exposes that particular control through its own parameters. I know of no plugin capable of this atm., at least Linux native, but there must be some out there for sure :)
Cheers.
3/4 to drum-track
Hmm, your answer reads too complicated to me. I am a simple layman (when it comes to programming), so if you excuse me, I will restate my thought with some more detail. I do that because I believe that Qtractor is much closer to a (so important) drum-editor than it seems.
What I have in mind is:
-leave the mixer as it is.
-Create (say) three midi tracks, assign three drum elements to them
and now:
+be able to edit these three midi tracks in ONE midi editor window
+in midi editor, have the ability to switch display to fixed note length (sort of drum-view)
This will provide enough flexibility for quick drum edits:
- drums are created/edited in one window (which is crucial)
-lengths are not displayed, which helps the creative process (today we make music visually as well as aurally)
- vol/pan/fx are manipulated through standard mixer
Re: 3/4 to drum-track
+be able to edit these three midi tracks in ONE midi editor window
-this is where Qtractor falls short to the intended requirement: currently, there can only be one MIDI editor instance per MIDI clip; it is the MIDI clip the object of editing, not tracks, not less nor more.
+in midi editor, have the ability to switch display to fixed note length (sort of drum-view)
- that might be possible soon, yes.
Remember that MIDI tracks are mapped to one and only one MIDI channel in Qtractor. And so are MIDI clips. You can have several tracks and clips mapped to the same MIDI channel, though.
Looking to the GM standard, drums are usually set to the MIDI channel number 10. You might choose another but it all depends on your sound module (soft/hard-synth, sampler, whatever) whether it can comply with a GM standard or one of their extensions, GS from Roland, and XG from Yamaha. I'm referring to these because it's one way I know of doing things--call me a nineties old bastard :)
If you remember, the GM/GS/XG standards allocate one MIDI channel for drums and each note/pitch is there mapped to different percussion sound instruments (ie. non-chromatic percussion). All that to say that there's probably little purpose in splitting drums over several tracks, at least in Qtractor and give its current one-track-one-channel model.
Another issue worth mentioning is that MIDI volume and panning refers to MIDI channel instead of MIDI track only. If you happen to have several tracks mapped on the same MIDI channel, you'll notice that moving the vol/pan slider on one will affect the others as well, although it might not be visually evident on the mixer.
Of course, there's more to it...
Cheers.
3.5/4 to drum-track
"...+in midi editor, have the ability to switch display to fixed note length (sort of drum-view)
- that might be possible soon, yes...."
this gets us to 3.5/4.
Now, the last bit:
"...drums are usually set to the MIDI channel number 10. You might choose another ..." this is really easy with today's technology (assign any midi/drum voice to any channel). In Qsynth, for example, you just go to channels, double click to any channel and assign anything you want from that soundfond. One can even save the settings (give a 'preset name')
"..whether it can comply with a GM standard..." really, no one is using GM Standard these days anymore. "No one" - an audio (computer) recording musician who decided to make decent drum tracks. GM standard is useful to get a song going, as a sort of demo, but as soon as that stage is finished, one gets to the deeper level of taking serious care about the drums. I am speaking from a professional musician's point of view.
---------------------------------------------
"...+be able to edit these three midi tracks in ONE midi editor window
-this is where Qtractor falls short to the intended requirement: currently, there can only be one MIDI editor instance per MIDI clip; it is the MIDI clip the object of editing, not tracks, not less nor more...."
and
"...All that to say that there's probably little purpose in splitting drums over several tracks, at least in Qtractor and give its current one-track-one-channel model...."
This is the battle of Faith and Practicality.
Faith: Why do it? Is it any purpose in it?
Practicality: Is it possible to do it?
I can answer the Faith question: why do it? to me, that is the same question/answer as for (y)our general involvement in Linux audio: why do it? Why are you doing all this? Why am I spending time testing and feebacking? Why the Linux community does what it does... Why am I insisting on this feature so much?
The answer is, we all believe that we are giving something valuable to the humanity (there is more to it, of course). But instead of putting money to charity, we use our talents.
And I strongly believe that a dedicated drum-editor-multi-channel track will make great difference in the whole perception of Qtractor, especially now that it has the amazing tempo/time signature feature built in.
And will also give 'weight' to Qtractor, as it will be a fairly rounded DAW.
And it might make it a leader in the Linux audio community as no DAW has this extremely important feature.
Wow, so much philosophy in so little space. Need holiday. 'See you' in april.
Viktor
Re: 3.5/4 to drum-track
Awe! Now you started me thinking :)
Anyway, when you come back it is me who'll be off to Parma ;)
Cheers.
Using Hydrogen with qtractor
Just another thought:
Why don't you use hydrogen for creating the drums stuff? I think, thats exactly the way like you want it to be. Create a Midi-Track in qtractor and assign it to a special midi output which is connected to the hydrogen midi input. Then, all the midi notes are inside one track, all you will need is, to set the track as a drum track for the notes without lengths. The level and pan control for the drum samples are then controlled within qtractor's mixer.
The only problem is, that you'll have 2 applications running and that makes your session more complicated. What is really needed is a kind of hydrogen-plugin ;-)
Re: Using Hydrogen with qtractor
The level and pan control for the drum samples are then controlled within qtractor's mixer.
Did you actually try that? :)
What is really needed is a kind of hydrogen-plugin ;-)
Yeeees :)
Re: Using Hydrogen with qtractor
- - The level and pan control for the drum samples are then controlled within qtractor's mixer.
- Did you actually try that? :)
Good question! I think i tried that, yes, but not yet in a productive session...
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