Something to share...

Hi every one
 
Today i might have realized something. I had one midi track for my drum (Ez drummer) and another midi track for my bass (Trillian) the two split in many sections (i usually split the midi drum track so i could build my midi bass to follow the drum parts fills, groove etc...). To make a story short, when saving it was taking more time than other project that are practically the same (vst, track etc...). As soon as i regroup the midi track (bounce to clip) it then reduce the saving time quite a lot. Question; Do you thing that having a midi track split in multiple part could have an'effect on my laptop performances?
 
Thanks

Do you mean that instead of a single drum MIDI track, you have one MIDI track for kick, one for snare, etc?
 
I almost always do that and have never noticed a difference.  MIDI data is very small and should save almost instantly.  It is usually either audio files or patches from large sample libraries that take a lot of save time.
 
It will be interesting if you discover something quirkly about Sonar that makes this operation slower.

All drum instruments (snare, cymbals etc...) are on the same midi track. The midi track is divided (split; see split tool). Another thing; While working in the piano roll view (moving notes etc...) things started to get so slow it was a nightmare. It was hard moving let's say a couple of notes one quarter note away from there original place. As soon as i regroup the drum midi track together (bounce to clip) everything was fine. So i was wondering...since my laptop is not that super fast machine maybe little details like that could make a difference on my laptop performances?

Are these regular MIDI clips or Step Sequence clips? What's the diference?

HELLYA
Are these regular MIDI clips or Step Sequence clips? What's the diference?

A "regular" MIDI clip is either created in the Piano Roll View or played in via a MIDI controller.   By default these MIDI clips are independent of each other.  A Step Sequencer clip is generated in the Step Sequencer, and all copies are linked to each other by default.   I'm just wondering whether a SS clip split into multiple pieces is more resource intensive, since as John mentioned regular MIDI clips tend to be very small.   I've never split SS clips myself...
 

Well it's a regular midi clip (bass/Trillian and drum track/EZ drummer) and as soon as i make a one big midi clip (bounce to clip) with my track, it's obvious that it tooks less time to save the project...

I would expect the project file to shrink a little after merging many MIDI clips, simply because you have only one clip header instead of many. But the difference is going to be small, perhaps a few kilobytes.
 

mmorgan
I'm curious what the advantages are of a single MIDI track for each piece of a drum kit. Would it be having individual envelopes for each piece as opposed to one set of envelopes for the entire kit?
 
Very curious about this, any hints would be welcome.
 

For more routing possibilities.
 
Separating drum instruments into their own tracks lets you easily substitute other synths, e.g. using Kontakt for just the snare and Superior Drummer for everything else.
 
You can also clone and link MIDI tracks for layering purposes, e.g. stacking an 808-type kick sample over the acoustic kick in BFD or Session Drummer to fatten the bottom. 
 
Having separate tracks for each drum lets you put each drum on a separate MIDI channel. This is necessary for some synths such as the TTS-1, which go by the MIDI channel to determine internal audio output routing. It also makes it possible to drive multiple instruments within one instance of Kontakt.
 
Separating instruments makes it easier to adjust velocity globally for each instrument. For example, if your toms are all on one track you can use the velocity offset slider to raise or lower all your toms' velocities as a group.
 
There isn't much advantage as far as automation envelopes, unless they're on separate MIDI channels or routed to separate instruments, because most automation is going to be global to the synth regardless of which track it's on. You cannot, for example, use a volume envelope to control just the snare's volume even though it's on its own track. Not unless the snare track is also routed to a separate instrument.

Yes thanks bitflipper, good tips.