I know to do vocals and other instrument you have to use audio, but I'm a keyboard player and I'm more familiar with midi and it's uses as far as editing is concerned. I'm not that familiar with audio although I've been recording audio with my keyboard and it seems pretty easy. So the questions are, is there a better time to use midi instead of audio. Can you do the same editing with audio as you can with midi? I know with midi if I play a wrong note I can simply go in and change it...among other things. Another example is in midi if you record all the drums on one track, you can take that track with all the drums and give each part (snare, cym, B.D etc) there own separate track. Can you do this with audio? Since I am a keyboard player I'm a bit confused about when to use midi or audio. thanks Peter

Hi Peter, If you can create your parts or sounds using software instruments then 9 times out of ten that will give you much more flexibility when it comes to editing than audio. Times are beginning to change though. Check out Melodyne for an example of how it's possible to pitch shift audio like MIDI (which was but a dream until recently). If you have recorded drums onto one single audio track, then no, it's very very hard (if at all possible) to separate the snare from the cymbals etc.... What most recording engineers and studios do is to record the drums onto different tracks, e.g. using 8 mics positioned on 8 different elements of a real drum kit. however, if you're talking about recording drums from your keyboard, then definitely record the MIDI data and then you can bounce it to audio later when mixing your complete track... Cheers Rounik

Very true about Melodyne. Also, the thing with software instruments is that they draw a considerable amount of CPU power, so you can only have so many going on at the same time. You might find yourself bouncing out some midi once your done editing it just to save on some CPU power. Though, time ARE changing and pretty soon we'll have all the power we could ever want!

Rounik & Rove What exactly is Pitch Shift? You mention recording drums from my keyboard using midi and then when I mix to bounce it to an audio track. Do you usually bounce all your tracks (midi, software inst) to audio and then mix everything in audio? If so, why? If I want to quote a sentence or paragraph from your previous post, do I just copy that and make it Italic or bold and paste it here? thanks Peter

I'll work from the bottom up as far as your questions are concerned. 1- If you hit "quote" it will bring up a reply window and then you can simply delete everything between the quote tabs minus what you want to keep 2- No i wouldn't necessarily bounce everything, though it is ultimately up to your personal preference. Let me give you an idea of what I would do: bounce midi tracks as I finish them (as I start with drums they are usually converted to audio tracks before I move on). I usually like to keep synth sounds as MIDI tracks so I can tweak their sounds all the way through mastering. Remember lots of synths have their own EQs, cutoff's, envelopes, etc. Sometimes it's better to edit those rather than throwing in extra plugins. 3- Pitch shifting does exactly what you'd think it would: shift the pitch of an audio track. The particular plugin that we were referring to is called Melodyne by Celemony. I personally do not have access to it as it is rather expensive, but it is an excellent program. For more information watch the video below as it is hard to describe in words. [url]http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna[/url] Hope that helps! - Revo

Revo Thanks for your response. Everything seems a little clearer now. As I get into this more I'm sure I'll have more questions. Thanks again Peter

Feel free to ask 'em as they come up! Glad I could help.