How to Use MIDI

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Gary Vandy from garyvandy.com here at Studio Center. In this clip we're going to talk about how to use MIDI. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI is basically, just controls the switches and the notes on a piano, there are no, there's no audio that passes through MIDI. A lot of people make that mistake, they'll hook a MIDI piano up to an audio input and expect sound to come out. It carries no sound, it only remembers what keys you push, what program is on your synthesizer or software, and where the notes are played and how they're played. Now let's talk about recording it into Pro Tools, we're going to go to the monitor. As you can see, I'm in Pro Tools now and I've put up a new track, it's called an Instrument Track. Which is basically a combination of a MIDI track and an auxiliary track. The Reason is a separate program but it does go into Pro Tools by what they call, Re Wire, which is an interface. That allows it to run through Pro Tools as a sequencer. In Reason I've put up one new instrument module, I've put up a subtracter and I'm using the electric piano module. In order to get this into Pro Tools, I've got, I've got, basically got the Pro Tools channel set up, coming to using subtracter. When you go into the Input, you'll come up and you'll see Subtracter Channel 8. And you'll have your Pro Tools, you'll have your actual plug in down here, this is actually the return from Pro Tools. Make sure your channel is in Record, and then once you start recording here, you'll see that the recording is started. I'm just going to play one note on here, so you can see it. O.k., these are the MIDI notes here, if you can see it, I'll make it a little bit bigger for you. These are actually the MIDI notes that you can see playing in and they will play back through Reasons. This has been Gary Vandy, thanks for watching."