You can’t get those subtle sonic variations from just pressing a key. Trombonists move their slides to glide between notes, and so forth. For example, string players use legato, staccato, tremolo and pizzicato, among other techniques. Articulate ItĮxcept for keyboard parts (piano, organ etc.), many controller keyboards lack the ability to duplicate articulations that are integral to the sound of specific instruments. The real bass is playing a simple part, so it wasn’t hard to duplicate it on a MIDI keyboard. If you guessed the first one, you’re right. The other has a MIDI electric bass part, using a sampled bass instrument. One features a real electric bass that was recorded as an audio track. (For more on drum programming, check out this Recording Basics posting.) Electric bass is another instrument that’s relatively easy to imitate with samples, especially if you keep the part as simple as is practical. For example, MIDI drums can be extremely convincing, particularly if you use MIDI drum loops recorded by real drummers. For guidance, you can find plenty of instrument range charts online (try Googling “musical instrument ranges”).Ĭertain instruments are easier than others to emulate realistically. For starters, it’s helpful to stay in the instrument’s actual range. You’re not trying to imitate acoustic instruments, so you can go for any sound that works in the context of your music.īut if you’re trying for MIDI parts that sound like actual instruments, you want to play them as authentically as you can. If you’re producing electronic music, you have the advantage of a virtually unlimited sonic palette. First, here’s a sequenced lead sound from Steinberg’s Padshop 2 synth (provided with Cubase Pro and Cubase Artist), using a preset called Keep Moving: Īnd here’s the result when the track is duplicated and layered with Steinberg’s Retrologue synth (again, provided with Cubase Pro and Artist) playing a preset called Aggressive Saw Plucks: Steinberg’s Padshop 2 and Retrologue. In this next example, you’ll hear how you can substantially change character sonically by using a different-sounding layer instead. I panned both parts slightly away from the center to enhance the feeling of width: First, here’s a single bass sound (with the drum track as well for context) from Steinberg’s HALion Sonic SE: Īnd here it is, layered with another, relatively similar sound from HALion Sonic SE. Here’s an example of layering for a synth bass sound. It’s easy to layer sounds in HALion Sonic SE.īut even for an instrument that can only trigger a single sound at a time, layering is easy: simply copy the track and assign it to either the same sound or to a different one. HALion Sonic SE (included in Steinberg Cubase and available as a free downloadable VST, AU and AAX instrument for any DAW) allows you to assign up to sixteen different sounds to one track. Some virtual instruments let you trigger multiple sounds from a single MIDI track. Because you’re using the identical MIDI part to trigger both layers, it often seems like a bigger and fuller version of a single instrument. Custom combinations can add a lot of originality to your music, and they’re often much richer than individual sounds too.Īnother cool thing about layering is that it doesn’t necessarily sound like two instruments playing. Layered sounds allow you to make your own creative instrument blends, even if you’re just using your instrument’s factory presets. That’s called layering, and it’s an important tool when it comes to doing MIDI arrangements. You can also trigger more than one instrument sound at a time from the same MIDI data. Until you bounce your final mix, you can switch sounds at will. That is, they can trigger any MIDI instrument sound. Those instructions are instrument-agnostic. It tells your DAW what notes to play and when, as well as how hard you played them, along with other information. When you record a MIDI track in your DAW, it contains no audio, just data. Some of the PadShop 2 bass sounds in Steinberg Cubase Pro 11. It will also tell you if you need to purchase more instruments or sounds for the type of music you’re doing. That way, you’ll know which ones you like, and which will work best for specific kinds of parts. It’s essential to familiarize yourself with the MIDI instruments and sounds you have. Most contemporary DAWs come with loops and collections of sampled instruments and synths, and there are countless third-party collections available as well. At the SourceĬhoosing sounds is a crucial part of MIDI arranging. Here are some tips to help you get started. Knowing how to arrange MIDI instruments effectively, either in conjunction with real ones or in MIDI-only productions, is an important part of DAW-based recording. But having access to such sonic diversity is not enough. Among the many benefits of MIDI is that it allows you to put the sound of almost any instrument into your music.
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