Recording Midi Files

[Peter Bell]

A friend (not me, really) is having difficulty in recording guitar tracks onto his pc using a midi program, and is looking for help/advice. I said I bet someone on this site will know about it, am I wrong? will I have to buy him lunch?

Peter

[Guest keith12]

Whats a midi program!!!!!!

[Guest RichardO]

I don't think you will be able to record to a MIDI file. I think it is for controlling a digital musical instrument from the computer i.e. a keyboard.

 

He will need some sort of WAV recording software and plugging the guitar into the line in (or mic) of the PC.

 

Hope this helps and save you buying lunch..

 

 

Rich...

[Guest flightless]

Rich is right,

 

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is designed mainly to handle digital instruments (keyboards, synth drums etc) there are MIDI guitars - if you could call them that, but a normal acoustic or electric guitar just won't do it. Each note played on the device is recorded as a stream digital information these include a Channel number (one of 16), what the note was, attack (how hard you hit the key), sustain (how long you held the key down), decay (how fast you took you finger off the key) plus a few other bits and bobs. when replayed these are then matched to a particular sound (piano, church organ, pan pipes etc) this means any component of the recorded elements can be changed on their own with out affecting any of the other parts

 

There are some MIDI tools that will allow recording of analog tracks against a MIDI backing but you are limited to hat you can then do with them once recorded - the big daddy of PC recording equipment is Pro Tools and this will pretty much handle anything you throw at it - it's basically just a multi track recording studio.

 

 

What software is he using - what's he trying to do with it?

[Guest Guy]

Hi Peter,

 

I have used a program called Cubase, it's a MIDI sequencer that acts like a multi track recording studio. I have also used a MIDI keyboard with a special lead that plugs into the parallel port of the PC. This then records the MIDI data and also spits it back out to a tone generator (Yamaha TG100) which gives me all the instrument sounds.

 

I also play guitar but as said, you'll not be able to convert it, this will be an analogue format such as WAV (unless you have a MIDI guitare)

 

I used to record a backing track on the keyboard and PC then play it back and record it in analogue format (cassette) whilst playing the guitar over the top.

 

I also play the tenner SAX but it's so flippin' loud that I can't here anything else, it's louder than my car !!!!

 

I have to say that I don't play with MIDI much anymore as I prefer playing live, it's more "natural" man !!!

 

Let me know if you want a copy of Cubase, it's a bit old and I couldn't get it to work on my newest PC but an older one might do it.

 

This is one of my Axe's