Using Guitar Pro 5 Midi in Sonar X1D. Can anyone please offer some advice ?

Hi all.

I have been asked by a friend to use midi he has given me in a project. He made the Midi using guitar pro 5 and has made piano , Organ and Synth parts.

I have the midi here and have it loaded in Sonar but the problem I have is that when I try and change any velocity they just change back to what he had it set at and I cant edit them due to this. If I want to use any of the midis through Dimension then Dimension will not play them back.

If I use TTS-1 then I can play the midi but when I change the patch sound it reverts back to a different sound each time I hit play....

If I use true pianos for the piano part then this is the same I can not adjust the reverb as it just reverts back to normal each time I hit play.

Can anyone please help with why this would be happening I am not very clued up with midi but if anyone could even take one of the tracks and have a look it would be much appreciated

Thank you

Norrie

Hi.
Midi is a series of events including the note start and stop plus any controller commands, patch changes, etc. So, it is highly probable that your midi file contains events all over the piece, not just at the begining. If you are changing something at the begining, it could be it is being overriding with later events.
Try looking at the midi file using the event list view. It may give you a clue of what is happening. William.

Patches can be set with the Event List. 

You can change the patch or remove it and then use the patch widget in the track to change the patch. If you want to try out different patches remove the one set in the Event List. 
Velocity is a note property that can be edited in the PRV. 

I was not correcting your post Synkrontron just adding my take on how the OP can do what he is asking. Your post was fine.

synkrotron


Ah yaeh, John, I realised that, but little minor goofs like that can confuse the uninitiated :^) which is why I corrected myself.

Also, Norrie sounds quite green, as he implies in his posts, and that was why I offered to look at his MIDI tracks mysellf, rather than expect someone with little experience to go poking around in the Event List. As is usually the case, getting under the bonnet, so to speak, is sometimes the only way to debug stuff, but you need to know what you are doing methinks...

I totally agree and its good of you to offer the help. Keep up the good work!

Okay Norrie, as expected, the MIDI track you sent me has 20 events, consisting of a couple of "wheel" events, a couple of "patch" change events, some "RPNs" (Registered Parameter Numbers) and "Control" events.

I can't understand why there would be two patch change events, especially as they are both at the start of the song and they select the same patch, which is 0 (zero) and in TTS-1 is the Piano patch.

One of the "control" events sets the volume to 127 (max). Another sets the pan value.

To be honest, I would delete all of those events, and Sonar will then remember what ever patch/volume/pan setting you use for each MIDI or Instrument (soft synth) track.

The easiest way to do that is select the MIDI track that you wish to see in the Event List, so that it highights (turns black with my settings) and then hold down the ALT key, and follow that with the number 8 (not on the numeric keypad however).

That should bring up the event list. I've set my Sonar up so that things like Piano Roll, Console and Event List are in the docking window (or what ever they call it).

Make sure you rewind right back to the start of the track and you will see a load of "events" displayed in rows. Each row is an event. The columns are used to tell you the track the event is on, the time of the event, the channel, the kind of event, followed by any data.

All we are interested in here is keeping the note events, and they are in black, unless you have changed your preferences. But you can see that they are called "notes" anyway.

The non-note events are in varying colours.

Go right to the top of the event list, either by using the up arrow key, or by clicking on the top row with your pointing device. You can now simply delete each event by hitting the DEL key. Only delete the events that are not notes. And be careful not to go too far, although the undo command (Ctrl + Z) does get you your events back if you delete too many (that didn't used to be the case many years ago, IIRC).

Once those events have gone you will be able to change your patch, change the volume, anything you want. In the old days, it was a great way to distribute MIDI files and to retain the settings for each instrument, and it still is, I suppose, but I can't remember the last time I did that kind of programming. Not since I've switched to soft synths. When I was writing MIDI tracks to play my various hardware synths, it was a great way to tweak the patches of the synth, without having to save your tweaked patch to a preset.

With soft synths, each "instance" is saved with its own patch and settings...

Anyway, I hope that has helped a little. Any questions, do not hesitate to come back here and ask :^)

cheers

andy


edit...I remembered that you said that you could not manually edit the note velocity in piano rol. I noticed that too, and I couldn't think of the reason why. However, since I have removed the non-note events from the MIDI track, I am now able to drag the velocity tails around

Cheers Norrie, yeah, I should be hitting the sack myself lol

catch you later :^)

That's good news Norrie, I am really pleased :^)