In our last Pro Tools tutorial we looked at using software instruments. Now we’re going to take a closer look at Pro Tools’ MIDI capabilities.
Although now pretty old, MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) is sill a powerful tool in electronic music production. Here we’ll have a look at what it is, and how you can use it in your Pro Tools set-up.
What is MIDI?
MIDI is a protocol that allows all sorts of different electronic instruments and devices to communicate with each other. It is basically just data, so if you download a MIDI file of a song it will be electronic data for all the notes of the song, often split into different instruments too. One MIDI note can carries data for pitch and velocity. If you play a MIDI file straight from the desktop on a Mac or Windows computer you will hear the notes being played, but this is the sound of an audio engine interpreting the MIDI notes, and not the MIDI notes themselves, as they carry no audio, just data.
Sounding a bit computery? All you need to know is MIDI is data, and you need to send it to something for it to actually make a sound.
What you can do with MIDI in Pro Tools
You’re going to need something to send your MIDI to in order to make some sound. As I mentioned in my previous post, if you’re using a software plug-in to make the sound then you’ll need to use an instrument track.
If you have something like a digital piano or synth with a MIDI input that you want to use, you’ll need a MIDI track. So create a MIDI track using Cmd + Shift + N. You’ll notice that it doesn’t have the usual inputs or outputs as an audio track. This is because it’s just data we’re dealing with here, not audio. You can program the notes into the track in the edit window in the same way I explained with the instrument track. If you have a MIDI keyboard and you want to play in the notes, then you need to connect its MIDI out port to your audio interface’s MIDI in port (choose its first one if you have more than one).
Now in the mix window of Pro Tools, choose the input of your MIDI track as channel 1. It will look like this:
Pro Tools' MIDI instrument setup
If you put the MIDI track into record mode, press ‘record’ and have a play on your MIDI keyboard. Pro Tools should now record the notes that you’re playing. You still won’t be able to hear anything though, so it’s time to connect your external device. I’m going to use a synth with MIDI capabilities as an example here. So plug a MIDI cable from the MIDI out of your audio interface to the input of the synth, and then plug the audio output of the synth into the audio input of your audio interface.
Getting confused with what to connect to what yet? The picture below shows the connections to the synth: MIDI out of the interface goes to MIDI in of the device you’re using to make the sound. Audio out of the device goes to audio in of your audio interface.
So now make a new track to record the audio that the synth is making. Make sure it’s input corresponds to whichever input you plugged it in to.
Now put it into record mode, and using the pencil tool click a couple of notes into the MIDI track, if everything has worked they should make the synth play some notes… which you will then hear from the new audio track. Geddit?
The rather crude video below shows the whole thing set up. The synth is connected to Pro Tools, so clicking a note in the MIDI track has the same effect as pressing a key on the keyboard. I programmed in a simple arpeggio figure, and once it’s playing I can fiddle with the controls on the synth to control the sound that’s being fed back to the audio track in Pro Tools, as you’ll see:
So you have two tracks, a MIDI track and an audio track. The MIDI is sending the notes to a synth, and the audio is recording the sound of the synth:
[MIDI data on a Pro Tools MIDI track, entered using a keyboard or the pencil tool]
↓
out to…
↓
[Synth or other external instrument]
↓
back to..
↓
[Pro Tools audio track - separate from the MIDI track - which records the final sound]
All clear? If not, give me a shout in the comments!
