I use a single midi track to record any articulation for a given instrument - the EastWest instruments seem to have on average the most articulations available for a given instrument in my collection, so for a violin instrument I will record note data on 1 midi track, and anytime I need a different articulation, that gets recorded on a 2nd midi track that also points to the same soft synth violin instrument.
 
For me, I would have legato and differing levels of vibrato articulation data both recorded on that 2nd midi track for the violin sound, as it makes it pretty easy to see that one has been inserted.
 
Bob Bone

robert_e_bone
I use a single midi track to record any articulation for a given instrument - the EastWest instruments seem to have on average the most articulations available for a given instrument in my collection, so for a violin instrument I will record note data on 1 midi track, and anytime I need a different articulation, that gets recorded on a 2nd midi track that also points to the same soft synth violin instrument.
 
For me, I would have legato and differing levels of vibrato articulation data both recorded on that 2nd midi track for the violin sound, as it makes it pretty easy to see that one has been inserted.
 
Bob Bone

Bob, that's exactly the way I typically do it, and it works very well.  Unfortunately for this particular library there is no one single instrument to load that contains all the articulations within the library.  The articulations are distributed among 5 separate instruments, so to get all the possible articulations, I have to load all 5 flute software instruments, even though the samples and articulations are of one single physical instrument.
 
That leaves me with 5 MIDI tracks with keyswitches for each, so with your and my usual setup that would amount to 10 MIDI tracks - a note track and a keyswitch track for each instrument ... and the issue of developing a reasonable and effective workflow on how to program the MIDI for this single flute part split between 10 tracks arises.
 
I need to have a way to view all tracks at once (e.g. a cohesive view of the melody as well as keyswitches), and be able to easily assign any note to an articulation, which in my case, amounts to sending the MIDI note and associated keyswitch to one of the 5 MIDI instrument/keyswitch pairs.  Do you follow what I'm saying?
 
Unfortunately this library is not a simple one-instrument-contains-all-articulations case.  As you described in your reply, dealing with the one instrument case is pretty easy and effective.
 
I've been making some headway in figuring out the best way to do this, and I hope an acceptable final answer will arise.  Feel free to suggest anything else in light of this being a similar, but more complicated case.
 
Thanks,
Pete

Wow - that's a stumper - I would probably find a different flute instrument that was more easily controlled through articulations than that one.
 
Have you tried contacting either the support folks for whoever makes that flute instrument, or perhaps posting on their user forums - or even contacting Native Instruments technical support to ask them for ideas?
 
Bob Bone
 

PeteL

ralf
To move midi data from one track to another without changing the position, use the track view. There, you can drag selected midi events with the mouse and prevent position changes by holding the shift key.

Yes, in the Track View you can easily constrain the horizontal movement when dragging notes.  But I can only seem to drag the notes within the source track, not from the source track into a different track.  Is there a method to do that I'm not aware of?
 
[Edit: forgot to proofread, so fixed some typos.]

You have to drag the clip at the top header, not the notes.

Thanks Ralf, that works much better!

robert_e_bone
Wow - that's a stumper - I would probably find a different flute instrument that was more easily controlled through articulations than that one.

Yeah, but I chose the particular library based on sound after listening to many. Bummer.
 

robert_e_bone
Have you tried contacting either the support folks for whoever makes that flute instrument, or perhaps posting on their user forums - or even contacting Native Instruments technical support to ask them for ideas?
 

Yes, I've actually contacted the company twice. First time - no response. The second time was yesterday. I hadn't thought of NI support/forum, I will try that.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Why can't you include the key switches on the same MIDI track as the notes?  That's what I do. I've never used a flute, but for the Kontakt instruments I do have, all the key switches are in the lowest octave of instructions, which won't overlap with what the flute is playing.
It won't resolve your problem, but will half your number of tracks...

Slugbaby
Why can't you include the key switches on the same MIDI track as the notes?  

I prefer the keyswitches on a different track because then that track can be assigned to a drum map which has the articulation names displayed rather than just ... well ... notes. It makes it really easy: in the PRV I have articulation names up top (drum map) and the musical notes below. Need a staccato articulation? Just draw the keyswitch on the line labelled Staccato. Doing it this way also makes it easier to line up keyswitches with notes since you don't have to zoom out and scroll downward to see both in one window.

Try it!

I've never thought of adding the keyswitch names to a map.  Good idea!  That'll save a lot of back-and-forth when I'm programming.
 
You could still do it on one track (i think) by creating a "flute map" that is just the notes and keyswitches listed.  There are 3 panels in the PRV - one for the piano roll notes, one for a map, and one that shows velocities.  By using them in the same PRV, splitting the view screen vertically, you could see the notes aligned to piano keys, and still have the mapped/named keyswitches.
 
EDIT:  I'm not at my DAW right now to confirm, so i may be wrong.  You MIGHT have to direct the MIDI track to a "flute map" with the key switches, and then reroute it to the synth once you've programmed the switches...

Slugbaby
You could still do it on one track (i think) by creating a "flute map" that is just the notes and keyswitches listed.  There are 3 panels in the PRV - one for the piano roll notes, one for a map, and one that shows velocities.  By using them in the same PRV, splitting the view screen vertically, you could see the notes aligned to piano keys, and still have the mapped/named keyswitches.
 
EDIT:  I'm not at my DAW right now to confirm, so i may be wrong.  You MIGHT have to direct the MIDI track to a "flute map" with the key switches, and then reroute it to the synth once you've programmed the switches...

I was about to ask "how the heck you could do that?" when I noticed your edit.  As far as I know, you are correct in the edit.  If a track is assigned to a drum map, you will not be able to place "piano key notes", which is why I think I went the two-track route long ago.  I did try, though, assigning the whole track to a map with named keyswitches and note names (C#1, D1, D#1, etc), and that'll work, but you lose the nice "piano key" display.  Doing it as in your edit would solve that, but then you're back to 10 tracks at the start.