So hopefully by now you know how to set up a MIDI track. What can we do with it? Well the beauty of MIDI data is that there are lots of ways to work with it and manipulate it in Ardour. If you don't have any MIDI data recorded yet, we'll refresh ourselves on how that's done. If you don't have a MIDI track created yet, take a look at the article titled Creating Audio and MIDI Tracks.
Let's assume we have an empty MIDI track, like this one shown below.
Note that the MIDI track appears highlighted in green. Next we want to record something on the MIDI track so we can get some MIDI data to work with. To do that, we need to make sure our MIDI is properly configured. We discussed configuring MIDI in the article titled, Creating Audio and MIDI Tracks, so have a look at that article for assistance. To refresh, here's an image of what your track, plugin toolbar, and play toolbar should look like before recording.
Make sure your MIDI Input toggle is on, your MIDI controller is selected in your input source, and the record buttons are toggled on both the track and the play toolbar. Once you're all set, press play on the play toolbar, and you'll be recording MIDI notes!
When you're finished, you'll see something like this...
Those green bars are MIDI notes! But it's hard to record MIDI perfectly live, so chances are your MIDI notes aren't all in the right place. Luckily, that's alright, because it's easy to move and manipulate MIDI notes in Ardour after the fact.
Let's explore this by looking at a blank MIDI track, shown below.
With the draw tool still selected, you can draw individual MIDI notes into the audio region yourself by clicking inside the audio region and dragging.
That's a single MIDI note that I've just drawn. Technically, a MIDI note consists of a MIDI note value which translates to a certain frequency, a start command, and a stop command. However, on the front end, they'll just appear as green bars (red when they've been selected). Let's draw in another MIDI note for good measure!
We're off to a great start. Now what if we're still not happy with these MIDI notes? We can elongate them, move them, and manipulate them in any way we want by selecting the "Internal Edit Tool" on the toolbar, next to the "Draw" tool.
Along with Quantization and Legatization, you can also Transpose your notes based on given intervals, or Transform different aspects of them, such as their Velocity (which is the speed at which the note is initially played, which can affect timbre and volume). I'll quantize and legatize these notes to show you what the finished product might look like...
In this case, after Quantization and Legatization, the top note snapped to the center of the grid, and was made shorter, whereas the bottom note now starts right where the top note ends. This sounds much cleaner when played. Now, let's remember our original MIDI melody that we recorded earlier, pictured at the beginning of this article. It looked pretty rough. Let's quantize, legatize, and edit that up a bit to make it sound a bit more professional.
From this...
To this!
It sounds so much cleaner now (and ended up being a bass line rather than a melody)...
And with these tips, you can make sick MIDI tracks like this too. The best way to improve is just to get in there, hook up your MIDI controller, and start experimenting. You'll be shocked at the sheer number of operations you can use on MIDI data to manipulate it and make awesome tracks.
Let's assume we have an empty MIDI track, like this one shown below.
Note that the MIDI track appears highlighted in green. Next we want to record something on the MIDI track so we can get some MIDI data to work with. To do that, we need to make sure our MIDI is properly configured. We discussed configuring MIDI in the article titled, Creating Audio and MIDI Tracks, so have a look at that article for assistance. To refresh, here's an image of what your track, plugin toolbar, and play toolbar should look like before recording.
Make sure your MIDI Input toggle is on, your MIDI controller is selected in your input source, and the record buttons are toggled on both the track and the play toolbar. Once you're all set, press play on the play toolbar, and you'll be recording MIDI notes!
When you're finished, you'll see something like this...
Those green bars are MIDI notes! But it's hard to record MIDI perfectly live, so chances are your MIDI notes aren't all in the right place. Luckily, that's alright, because it's easy to move and manipulate MIDI notes in Ardour after the fact.
Let's explore this by looking at a blank MIDI track, shown below.
If you don't have a MIDI recorder, or want to add notes to what you've already recorded, you can do this easily by selecting the "Draw" tool from the toolbar at the top of your session.
Once you have the draw tool selected, you can move back down to your track and simply click and drag to create a new MIDI audio region, shown in opaque gray below.
That's a single MIDI note that I've just drawn. Technically, a MIDI note consists of a MIDI note value which translates to a certain frequency, a start command, and a stop command. However, on the front end, they'll just appear as green bars (red when they've been selected). Let's draw in another MIDI note for good measure!
We're off to a great start. Now what if we're still not happy with these MIDI notes? We can elongate them, move them, and manipulate them in any way we want by selecting the "Internal Edit Tool" on the toolbar, next to the "Draw" tool.
You can change the note value or frequency of the MIDI note by dragging it up and down with the Internal Edit Tool selected. You can also extend or reduce the note by dragging it from either side.
Those are the same two MIDI notes after having been edited. I moved them apart slightly, lengthened the top one, and shortened the bottom one. But, you'll probably notice they aren't on the measure lines, and that might sound a little funky when we play the MIDI data (unless that's the sound you're going for.) In fact, most MIDI recordings won't be exactly perfect right off the bat. Luckily, there are easy ways to fix this using the Quantize and Legatize tools.
Quantization, in digital music, is the act of automatically fixing notes to be precisely at designated rhythmic marks. Legatization automatically extends or contracts the notes to connect with each other, fill empty space, and sound more legato. You can access both these features by selecting the notes you want to manipulate (either by CTRL + clicking on them, drawing a box around them, or typing CTRL + A to automatically select all notes in a MIDI region) and then right clicking on any note.
In this case, after Quantization and Legatization, the top note snapped to the center of the grid, and was made shorter, whereas the bottom note now starts right where the top note ends. This sounds much cleaner when played. Now, let's remember our original MIDI melody that we recorded earlier, pictured at the beginning of this article. It looked pretty rough. Let's quantize, legatize, and edit that up a bit to make it sound a bit more professional.
From this...
To this!
And with these tips, you can make sick MIDI tracks like this too. The best way to improve is just to get in there, hook up your MIDI controller, and start experimenting. You'll be shocked at the sheer number of operations you can use on MIDI data to manipulate it and make awesome tracks.
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