Input monitoring MIDI issue
I'm just starting to do meditation music using Sonar X3. One of the unique characteristics of meditation drones is that they have these long, sustained notes that sometimes can last for 30-45 minutes. To be more specific, imagine a Moog synthesizer with a sustained bass note that rings out for the entire length of the track. On top of this drone other overdubs are added to fill out the music and enhance its calming mood.
The problem comes in where — I am working on a bit of the tune that is about fifteen minutes from the start of the track — I add in an overdub ... I then want to go back and listen, to it to see if it worked, but I can't hear the long droning bass note anymore if I start the track playing back from where the overdub was made. You can't playback a sustained MIDI note through the audio engine unless you go all the way back to where the drawing of that MIDI note begins in the timeline and playback from there. Since MIDI is actually input monitored and all happening in real time, the playback engine won't capture notes that are in the middle of their sustained length for playback.
Does that make sense? This is really hard to explain.
One obvious workaround is to bounce the track to audio ... then you can play it back from any point in the track and still hear it in all its glory. But this is really awkward to do as your are composing the track ... usually at this point in the composition process I still don't know how long the song will go, and just doing everything by feel. Leaving the bass track as MIDI is very helpful since it's so easy to edit that way.
Does anybody know a way to force the audio engine to playback a MIDI note if you should start playback of that note from anywhere other than the absolute beginning of it in the timeline?