Hey guys, in this video we’re going to look at how to record MIDI in Pro Tools First.
We’ll cover inputting and editing MIDI manually, and working with MIDI recorded from a MIDI
controller.
Before watching this video, make sure you’ve checked out the previous videos in this tutorial
before continuing.
To work with MIDI, the first thing we need to do is create a new track.
Go to the Track menu at the top and select New.
Then add a stereo Instrument track.
On that track, we’ll add an insert and select Xpand!2.
Then we can open this plugin.
Under preset, we can set it to whatever instrument we want to use for this MIDI track.
I’ll go under basses and select “Hard Finger Bass”.
We’ll cover more about the virtual instruments in the next video, so don’t worry too much
about how to use that yet.
Like the audio tracks we saw in the last video, there’s also a few different track views
we can use for MIDI.
The first is blocks, and this allows us to see chunks of MIDI events and move them around,
without cluttering up the view with all the individual MIDI events.
We can get a similar view from clips, and this actually shows the MIDI events.
Next, we have notes.
This is a piano roll view.
In this view, we can actually draw MIDI notes.
Then we have a velocity view that allows us to change the velocity of each note.
The next three views are for MIDI automation of volume, mute, and panning.
The next view is for mono aftertouch, which controls how the MIDI track reacts after the
initial note strike.
After that we can change the MIDI program.
This will open up a window to do this, and the change is triggered at the point we select
from this view.
There’s also MIDI controllers we can see, and similar automation to the audio tracks,
with the addition of automation tools from XPand!2.
At this point, the MIDI track is configured for our instrument, and we can start to add
MIDI events.
To do this, we’ll go to the top tool selector, and choose the draw tool.
Make sure that you have the track view in notes to be able to add new notes.
Then, we’ll drag the instrument track to expand it so we have more room to work.
To zoom in horizontally, press the plus button at the bottom right of the edit window.
As we zoom in, we can see that the gridlines are limited in size.
We don’t have a fine enough resolution to do more than quarter notes, so we’ll need
to change that first.
To do that, click the dropdown next to the grid button and change the resolution to 1/8
notes.
You can change this again if you would like, depending on what resolution you need.
Now when we click we can hear the MIDI note we’re creating and we can click and drag
to whatever length we want depending on what snapping resolution we choose.
To hear it back again, press the button in the transport to jump to the beginning of
the track, then press the play button.
If you need to delete a MIDI event, click and hold it and press the delete key on your
keyboard.
Alternatively, you can hold down the Alt key and click the MIDI notes to delete them.
Now let’s cover how to control the velocity of all the MIDI notes for note input mode.
To see the velocity controls, once again we need to switch the track view on our instrument
track to velocity.
As we can see, this creates a velocity diamond for each note on the piano roll view.
To change the velocity, just click and drag each of these diamonds up and down.
Pulling it up increases the velocity, and down decreases the velocity.
You can also adjust the velocity for different notes within a chord.
When you click and hold a velocity diamond, it will highlight the note on the piano roll
that it’s associated with.
Then you can tell what note that velocity diamond is for.
Next we can look at pitch bending.
Like velocity, we need to change the track view to pitch bend.
I like using this tool in free hand draw mode, which we can select at the top.
Then we can draw a bend in pitch and it will play it back like that after.
If we don’t like the pitch bend we have created, we can overwrite it by clicking and
dragging again.
To just completely get rid of it, click the select tool for the mouse, click and drag
to highlight the pitch bend, and press the delete key on the keyboard to get rid of it.
Another way to edit MIDI is with the MIDI editor.
You can open this by clicking the MIDI editor button at the bottom left of the edit window.
This pretty much works the same as the previous MIDI editing tools.
The advantage of this view though is that we can edit both the MIDI notes, and another
control, such as the velocity, at the same time without having to switch track view modes.
The next thing we should consider is how to record a MIDI track using a USB MIDI input
device, or a regular MIDI input device through an audio interface.
With our MIDI device connected, we need to arm the track and Pro Tools First to record,
then press the play button.
For this tutorial I’m using an Akai MPD218.
This is a USB MIDI drum pad that can be used for synth sounds or percussion with programs
like Pro Tools First.
I’ll link this product in the video description down below so you can check it out for yourself.
If you have the MIDI instrument insert added properly, like you should at this point, then
you’ll be able to hear the notes through the output when you press notes on the MIDI
instrument.
If you made a mistake and want to start over, you can always undo the recording.
Otherwise you can use the select mouse tool to select all the inputted notes, and get
rid of them with the delete key.
Recording with a MIDI controller doesn’t always have perfect results, so Pro Tools
First has a few tools to automatically edit MIDI events.
These can all be found under REAL-TIME PROPERTIES for the instrument track.
The first tool at the top is QUA, or quantization.
To enable quantization, click on it and it will light up green.
Quantization is used to snap all the start times of the MIDI events to the grid.
This is a lot quicker than doing it manually for each note, but if you’re too far off
in time sometimes it can snap in the wrong direction.
The drop down allows us to select the quantization resolution.
The larger the note value, the more the timing can potentially change.
All the notes are just snapped in either direction, depending on which is closer.
After that, we have an option for swing, which can be adjusted between 0 and 300%.
Below quantization, we have the duration control, which changes the length of each MIDI event.
We can add, subtract, or change the notes by a certain percentage.
The number changes how much were adding or subtracting, and the note value sets how many
of these note values we’re adjusting it by.
Next up is delay.
This isn’t a delay effect like you would see with a guitar where it repeats.
It should be thought of as more of a time-shift tool.
It can be used to push all the notes forwards or backwards by ticks, which in our project
are quarter notes, or by milliseconds.
The dropdown selects between shifting forwards or backwards.
After delay, we have the velocity control.
We can change them all by a percentage, or add or subtract from all the velocities, since
the velocity is saved as a value from 0 to 127.
The last option we have is the transpose tool.
I usually just keep the dropdown at transpose by.
In that mode, the first box is for octaves, which can be up or down.
You can type numbers in here or drag the box up or down.
The second box is for semitones.
With these two boxes, we can transpose the song to any position we want.
Thanks for checking out this video on inputting, recording, and editing MIDI in Pro Tools First.
If this video helped you out, don’t forget to get it a like and check out the rest of
the videos in this series to keep learning about how to use Pro Tools First.
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