Was trying to demo Ardour to a couple of friends, but got completely stuck trying to work out what midi channel was being used by each track. I know this is real basic noob stuff, but every time I try to search the forum it comes up with an error, and the manual gives no specific ideas that we could find.
Had particular problems with General Midi which displayed loads of midi channels, a sound going with each one, but we could not work out what channels was being used by which track as each track displayed the same info, even if it was playing a different sound on a different channel. Is there a simple way to display which channel is associated with which track?
Unless filtered any one channel can accept and record/playback all 16 MIDI channels at once. So far as I know there is no function to “fan out” the MIDI channels over 16 channels.
Hi Len…
Can you explain ‘filtered’ and ‘fan out’ please? There must be a way to know which sound is assigned to which midi channel, otherwise it is all midi chaos…
filtered means only letting one midi channel through via some filter. Ardour does allow filtering after playback, but before the synth… this is not helpful for editing though as all channels are there. By Fan out I mean the MIDI stream in is broken apart into 16 streams sent one to a track. So one MIDI stream in, 16 tracks out. Sounds like a great feature request to me… but there seem to be a lot of people who are used to having the whole MIDI stream in one place. I don’t do enough MIDI editing to really know…mostly live recording or one analog track at a time.
Thanks again Len… Think I am getting muddled by all the inputs and outputs… I think I have found the filtering, right click on the midi track, choose Channel selector…
Then shows a dialogue box with ‘Inbound’ and ‘Playback’. I have selected channel 1 for ‘Play only selected channels’ which I think puts midi channel 1 on this track, big step forward if that is the case…
But I am also after a way of displaying that somewhere that is easily visible, ideally on the mixer track graphic. Otherwise I would have to open that dialogue box on every track just to see what I have set the midi to, or get a much better memory…?
Nope… ended up more confused than ever… Have one sound coming out my midi keyboard, a different sound coming out of the virtual keyboard on the patch selector and yet another different sound coming out of the virtual keyboard on the track… and still dont know which midi channel any of it is set to… perhaps I should just stick to the live stuff like yourself?
Right click on the midi track, choose Channel selector…
Then on ‘Inbound’ choose ‘Force all channels to 1 channel’
On ‘Playback’ choose ‘Use a single fixed channel for all playback’ and make sure to choose the same channel number for both Inbound and Playback on each midi track.
I have also renamed each midi track to include the midi channel number (eg. Bass 1)
This allows me to have each midi track have its own channel and to change patch sounds more easily. I have to be mindful that only one midi track can have my midi device selected as an input, or it will play multiple sounds…
I doubt I have discovered anything, and would be surprised if I am doing the correct thing with Ardour, but this should at least allow me to try and wean my friends away from using cubase and to maybe explore this for themselves. I was getting in a right muddle yesterday with them and caused more frowns than interest…
Please feel free to correct me if there is a better or more appropriate method…