Old 07-29-2014, 06:40 AM   #1
sseeland
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Default Midi Routing Problem

Hello everybody!

I'm pretty new to Reaper but I already love it to bits! The amount of customization one can do is absolutely amazing!

My current "project" is to set up a nice way to work with multi-articulation soundfonts. The Sonatina Soundfont has different sfz files for each articulation so I need to load them in seperate instances of the sfz-plugin. What I want to do is this:

Set up a parent track (folder) with three children. The children are for the articulations of the soundfont, each containing a sfz-plugin with one articulation of the desired instrument (legato, staccato, pizzicato). The parent track is supposed to receive midi events from a midi keyboard and send this midi data to the child tracks. I've made a keyboard shortcut that will "solo" a certain send on the selected track (mute all sends, unmute desired send) so the midi data should always go to one child only and I can switch the "active" child with the press of a button.
The "active" child will then record the incoming midi and send the audio output from the sfz-plugin to the parent track. So much for the theory. I hope this makes sense.

Unfortunately it doesn't work.
When I set the child input to "Midi: All Channels" it will receive all midi events, not just the ones sent by the parent. Therefore all articulations are active all the time. That's not what I want. If I set the input to "none" it will receive nothing at all. So nothing is recorded, no sounds are made. All four tracks are armed of course and are set to record monitoring. Whether I mute or unmute the send on the parent track doesn't seem to make any difference. How can I make sure that a child track will only receive the midi events from explicit sends and not all incoming events?
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Old 07-29-2014, 08:01 AM   #2
vanhaze
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Hi !

Those articulation files, are they supposed to be triggered by different velocity ranges ?
If that's true, i can imagine that there is the possibility in Reaper to filter all incoming midi events to their respective child track, by means of a midi velocity filter plugin on the Paren Track.

Sorry to say but cause i am a Reaper novice, i can't you explain hiw to work out the details.
I am still in heavily learning the whole fabulous routing aspect of Reaper.
Hopefully for you, some Reaper Guru will chime in on this to help you further.

Robbie.
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Old 07-29-2014, 08:20 AM   #3
sseeland
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Hi Robbie,

Thanks for your reply! Velocity based triggering is not what I want. I know that some keyboards and synths do this but I find it to be too restrictive. It would mean that I have a rather restricted dynamic range for each articulation and I don't want that.

What would be ideal would be some behavioral modelling like the Roland "Super Natural" synths do it but that is too involved to recreate in Reaper and I can't afford an Integra 7 right now. Therefore I find keyswitches to be the next best thing.

I will still look into it though since it could enable some very nice and expressive blending of synths. I don't really have a use for it right now but it sounds interesting to explore the possibilities.
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Old 07-29-2014, 08:47 AM   #4
Mink99
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Have the children directly receive midi and collect the audio output in the parent track. Would that work or do I oversee sth obvious ?
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Old 07-29-2014, 09:01 AM   #5
sseeland
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If I did it that way all child tracks would record the whole performance. This means I can't really play it back later. What I want is the legato track only recording the legato parts, the staccato track only recording the staccato parts etc.

This is the same effect as setting up several selections with a utopisch and tracks set up to monitor only while recording. The only difference would be that I don't have to set it up ahead of time. I can just play and with the buttons I can say "now record to this track! And now to this track!"

That we his be really neat. You know what I mean? It seems like this should be possible with Reaper.
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Old 07-29-2014, 09:36 AM   #6
darkcloud2973
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Are you sure that soloing a track while recording will stop the other tracks from recording? I've never tried it, but I always thought that solo/mute controlled the tracks OUTPUT but didn't affect the input. It seems that the easiest way would be to set each articulation to a different MIDI channel and switch channels on the fly from your MIDI keyboard. Of course, this is assuming that you have a MIDI keyboard that can switch channels quickly. If not, there may be a way to set up a workaround using ReaControlMIDI.
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Old 07-29-2014, 12:59 PM   #7
sseeland
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I'm not actually soloing the track. I'm muting all the other sends, so that only one send is unmuted and therefore the receiving track is "record soloed" within the folder (notice the quotation marks).

Anyways, I managed to get it to work, sort of...

Strangely enough, it works when the main midi track is not the parent. the setup is like this:
Main Instrument track (no input, recording disabled)
-> Midi In (input all midi channels, recording disabled, sends to each of the following tracks)
-> Legato (no input, record midi output, plugin set to merge midi out with bus)
-> Staccato (no input, record midi output, plugin set to merge midi out with bus)
-> Pizzicato (no input, record midi output, plugin set to merge midi out with bus)

To sum it up:
The parent track is basically just for the mixing: it receives the audio generated by the three articulation tracks.
The midi track does the routing: it sends the midi signals to the correct tracks.
the articulation tracks don't have an "input" per se. They receive the sends from the midi track but those can't be recorded as inputs. Therefore I have to set the sfz plugins to pass on the midi events and record those. The audio output goes to the parent as per default.

It's a bit more involved than I would like. Especially the fact that the sends can not come from the parent track for some reason. My use case would have been to have the parent track expanded and all the children minimized so that I can click on the parent track, arm it and start recording. The way I have it now I have to remember to keep the midi track selected since that is where the sends are. So I have to first arm the parent track to arm all children (via a track group) and then click on the midi sub-track to enable the switching shortcut.

There has to be a better way... I'll keep on digging but I'm still open for suggestions. What puzzles me most is why it doesn't work with the midi track as the parent. With no other changes, when I turn the midi track into the parent it stops working. When I revert it to the same level as the articulations it works. Really strange...
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