2007 – Sem2 – CC1 - Week 5 – MIDI Sequencing (2)

To get a MIDI file to even come remotely close to sounding like a guitar you need to program the file to play the same notes as the guitar to begin with. As with most MIDI files, this file has the guitar parts obviously played in on a keyboard without even acknowledging the chord inversions that occur from playing a guitar. Guitars rarely play root position triads and playing a guitar part on a keyboard won’t have the same inversions without carefull thought and planning. This is why I believe it is always better to manually write the notes in on a scorewriter of some sort and exporting the MIDI file. So after looking around for a note accurate version of any song at all with open guitar chords, I’ll use this pretty good version of Tonight Tonight by the Smashing Pumpkins, although it sounds different now I’ve taken out the strings.

As far as drums go when you hear MIDI versions, it is usually a case of “there’s a kick’ and “ there’s a snare” or whatever, but never a case of “there’s the drums” as a whole. Without recording them in a live environment and mixing the room sound back in (or bussing them all to a reverb unit), the drums never become a cohesive unit.

I had a bit of trouble getting around Cubase, but after chatting with Darren I found out how to take Snap off and where the velocity window was. It was covered by the Transport bar. Arghhh. I could have saved myself about four hours of frustration, but got there in the end.

Before (I forgot to change the tempo before I bounced it so it's a little fast, but that's how the file was originally)

This is the guitar track before.


After

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This is the finished drum track. It was all just straight across before.

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Haines, Christian. 2007. “CC1-MIDI Sequencing.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 23rd August.

Cubase. 2003. Steinberg Media Technologies