Totally stumped by a MIDI issue. Any help truly appreciated.
I'm a bit of a MIDI novice, so bear with me if I'm missing something that may be obvious.
Here's my situation:
I'm working on some music for which I wanted to add some bagpipes. I purchased a really cool VST called "Studio Piper," which offers a wide range of Scottish pipe sounds. If you're not familiar with the parts of the bagpipes, there's the "chanter," which plays the melodies, and the "drones," which give you that deep low droning sound throughout.
In Studio Piper, I'm able to hear the drones fine when I turn them "on" in the interface. As far as I can tell, there's no key on my keyboard that activates them. The keys on my midi keyboard only activate the chanter sounds, but I can HEAR the drone sounds and they also show up level-wise in my track. They just don't come through after recording.
I've had some trouble figuring this out and getting feedback from the company, but I did manage to find this answer from someone associated with the company when googling the problem. Someone with my exact same issue posted a similar question, and here was the response:
You will need to record the chanter and drones separately. One track to record the chanter as you have, this is recording the MIDI input. And another track to record the drones. Set this second track to record the audio output and just play the drones by themselves for however long you need.This is because the drones are not triggered by whatever input device you are using. They are purely a real, minute long looped sample of actual drones.
So my issue is ... how do I "set the second track to record the audio output"? I've tried everything I can think of and cannot figure it out. Do I need to route my Studio Piper midi track in some other way? I've tried creating a new audio track and setting it to record the output of the Studio Piper VST, but that turns the audio track into a MIDI track, and the result is the same ... I hear the sound of the drones, they show up in the meters, but when I record, there is nothing.
Sorry for the novel here, and I wish I could explain what I've done better, but I feel like I'm just taking shots in the dark. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it. I've only recently delved into the MIDI world, and I still find some of it confusing.
Thanks so much.