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.