In this video we're going to look at how to use a midi keyboard
and how to quantize notes in Tracktion T7
Welcome to Simple Green Tech where we do tips and tutorials
and reviews to help you unleash your creativity
I'm Radio Zane and today we're going to look at how to use
a midi keyboard to record and how to quantize notes
in the free DAW Tracktion T7
I'm using this older M-Audio Axiom 25 keyboard
I honestly love this thing I've had it for years
and it still works great If you're still debating on what
midi keyboard to get I've included some links in the description
of this video to midi keyboards in various price points
and sizes. You can check those out if you like
Alright, with your midi keyboard plugged in - Let's get started!
With Tracktion T7 open
We want to make sure that it's recognizing our midi keyboard. And
that it's enabled. So let's head up to
settings
midi devices. And you can see my
USB Axiom 25 is not
enabled. So to enable this you just click here
and now it's enabled. If you don't see your controller
in this list here you might have to hit the refresh
midi device list and it should come up there
and once you have that green check mark and its enabled
we're ready to create a project
or go into an existing project. And what we'll
wanna do now is bring in a VST intstrument
to control. And if you haven't Installed any yet
I've done another video on how to do that. I'll link to
it in the description. There should also be a link in the top
right corner of this video right now
so we'll just right click over here
add new plugin. And the plugin that I'm using in this video
is called Vacuum Pro
you can always find it for sale plus other instruments
for sale on Plugin Boutique I'll link to them in the
description of this video in case you want to check out all of the great
deals over there. I do recommend this instrument if you
like those analog sounds but you can use
free instruments and plugin boutique has
free instruments over there too so use whatever
one you want to control here
and now that we have that loaded up. We want to go to
this area of the track right here
right click and you want to choose your midi keyboard from this
list here. So mine is the USB
Axiom 25 that's what I'm going to click on
now let's see if I'm controlling the keyboard
so what we can choose to do now is quantize
while we're recording or we can quantize
after we record. And if you want to do it while you're recording
you just click into this area here to make sure it's highlighted
and that brings up this properties menu below
and you can see quantize is set to none
now I like to set mine to
a 1/4 beat but you can set it to whatever you like
and now let's try recording so we want to arm this
track for recording by clicking there
making sure it's all red and then you click on
the record button down here
You can see now that all of the notes that we recorded
are nicely aligned to the grid
but this note here. I must have been way off on my recording
it wasn't really aligned to the whole note. It was aligned
to the 1/4 note which is what I told it to do
so we can just move it over to be aligned
properly. Now if we didn't want to quantize while
we recorded. We can do it afterwards
so I'm going to turn off the quantize here
now let's start recording something
and you can see that
all of our notes in here are
way off of timing. So what we can do now is
quantize it by making sure we're clicked on the midi clip
and down here you'll see quantize and it's set to none
let's set it to the 1/4 beat again
and it moves everything to the 1/4 beat
now say we didn't like that and we want it moved to the 1/2 beat
there we go. Everything looks to be lined up the way we like it
and if it wasn't you can easily just click and
drag these notes around
let me know in the comments below what midi keyboard
you're currently using or what midi keyboard you plan on getting
and if you'd like to see more videos like this one
please subscribe to the channel
For Simple Green Tech I'm Radio Zane
and we'll talk soon