MIDI to Multiple Tracks: One Working Solution

There have been many, many threads discussing the subject of MIDI 'sends', and having the ability in Sonar to output MIDI clips to multiple tracks. Given the amount of confusion and disinformation floating about, I thought that I'd put together some images of one solution that's been around for as long as these forums have.

All that's needed is a virtual MIDI cable, installed to your system. They're free (and freely available), download & install in seconds, and are easy to configure. Yet they are versatile enough to serve as the foundation for any number of unique configurations in Sonar, and fill in solutions that Sonar currently lacks. For example (not illustrated here), VMCs can be used to 'print' the output of drum maps to a parallel MIDI track.
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Here's a few links to some virtual MIDI cable downloads.
Most feature multiple MIDI cables, defined by virtual MIDI ports, with each 'cable' containing 16 MIDI channels.

Maple Virtual MIDI Cable
LoopBe1
MIDI Yoke

Not a 'native' solution, you say? Neither is any other third-party plug-in device that doesn't ship with Sonar. That's the beauty of having an open architecture. Install once, and you're done. No need to re-install at upgrade time. It's just a patch cable: out-to-in; in-to-out. But you have many the advantages of hardware MIDI router, including 'mults' and isolation by MIDI channels & multiple ports.
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In the image above, live keyboard input and/or resident MIDI clips are routed to three separate synths. It's also routed to 2 MIDI tracks; each containing an MFX plugin. In turn, the MFX processing is 'printed' to 2 more MIDI tracks in real-time. All of this happens over a single virtual MIDI cable.
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In this image, the process is reversed. Six MIDI tracks of source clips are routed to a single synthesizer. In this case, the synth was set to multitimbral mode. The combined clip in the destination track maintains its MIDI 'channelization' in the recorded results. Again, this is all done over a single virtual MIDI cable, and accomplished in real-time.
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very cool !
thanks a lot for sharing that info

Nice job. Everyone appreciates colorful pictures! That virtual MIDI cable looks pretty neat, and a freebie to boot. (However, it's should be noted that the Maple Virtual MIDI Cable is not 64-bit compatible.)

I don’t want to sound like an idiot and I have only briefly read the original post. My question is this, would one of the virtual midi cables let me record multiple midi tracks from my Motif ES Rack to multiple audio tracks in one take. In other words could I record say Bass, Piano, Organ and Drums to 4 separate audio tracks in one take. At the moment I have to record one track at a time and things really get slow when it comes to drums. Kick, one take, snare one take etc. I have my fingers crossed.

Thanks b rock, I needed this today!

Couple of quick comments:
In Sonar 5 you need to set the input echo 'on' for the midi channels with input from the virtual cable.

Also, LoopBe1 doesn't seem to work for me because it won't let me use inputs and outputs in the same application simultaneously. A pity as it looks like a well-maintained piece of software.

Maple works and can be found here http://www.maplemidi.com/Maple_driver.html

I'm 32 bit for now and may stay that way for several years, but I'll eventually move up, so I'd be reluctant to invest in the use of anything that won't be able to make the move.

I can understand that approach.  But in the interim, you'll be missing out on a lot of routing capability that Sonar doesn't have.  Virtual MIDI cables (I prefer the Maple VMC) have become my 'Swiss Army knife' for carving out features that wouldn't be possible otherwise.  FWIW:  It's a painless installation that takes a few seconds, it's free, and you'd have to re-install/image to a new system no matter what the bit depth was.

do the new 32/64 compatibility features of 8.5 make this a non-issue?

I can't speak to that from direct experience, but I think that I know where you're coming from here.  Since you're effectively adding virtual MIDI ports to your system, I don't believe that any host-specific features are going to help you out in this respect.  I imagine that you wouldn't get past the VMC installation on a 64-bit system; let alone be able to utilize that inside Sonar 8.5.
 
If it isn't available already, I'd speculate that some enterprising programmer is going to see the value of a 64-bit virtual MIDI cable.  The wide path will become 'mainstream' before too long.  Supply & demand.

An update to this oldie but goodie...

Virtual midi ports have moved on some since this thread too so don't use what is previously suggested here use this instead for both 64 bit and 32 bit flavours of windows, XP thru 7.

http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/loopMIDI.html

It is much more elegant than the older software featured in this thread.