Last month, we hopefully enhanced your composition sessions with seven indispensable MIDI programming and editing tips, and – as promised in that post – here we’re following it up with a collection of similarly thought-provoking suggestions on the closely related subject of recording MIDI performances live. Read on…
Go Beyond The Keyboard
It goes without saying that a decent controller keyboard is a must if you want to get the most out of your MIDI recording efforts – even if you’re not a particularly competent pianist (see below) – but the good ol’ ivories certainly aren’t the only triggering game in town.
For drum and percussion parts, a set of pads gives a far more naturally percussive physicality than keys ever can, and these days you’ll find them built into almost every keyboard on the market. Nonetheless, a dedicated pad-based controller can prove hugely inspiring in its own right, embodying that perennially cool MPC vibe that’s been central to beat-based electronic music for the last 40 years, and taking your MIDI parts in all kinds of new directions. Novation’s Launchpad, Native Instruments Maschine, Ableton’s Push (Live only) and Akai’s MPD series have all been built with exactly that legacy and angle in mind, and serve as stalwart studio companions that can complement or even – for the truly committed beat maker – replace the MIDI keyboard.
Stepping the pad controller concept up several levels, if you’re a drummer yet to discover the profound joy of triggering the ultra-realistic likes of Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 3 and FXpansion’s BFD3 from a ‘proper’ MIDI drum kit, rest assured that you don’t have to spend thousands on a top-flight model to bring such capability to your studio. After all, the only requirements are a MIDI Out port and a decent playing experience, so any low/mid-range kit will be up to the job. Take a look at Roland’s TD-1DMK and Yamaha’s DTX6 Series, for starters.
Drums might be the most readily represented instrument among non-keyboard MIDI controllers, but MIDI guitars and wind controllers are available for those looking to replicate said instruments digitally, too, not to mention the weird and wonderful likes of the Haken Continuum, Artifon Instrument 1 and Lumatone Isomorphic Keyboard.
Another thing to mention here is MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression), the exciting new(ish) MIDI protocol supported by Roli, Haken, Artifon, Eigenlab, KMI and others, which expands greatly on the regular MIDI Continuous Controller (CC) standard by applying pitchbend and modulation polyphonically – a game changer for those skilled in its handling. Only a few DAWs and virtual instruments currently support MPE, but it is gradually gaining traction and so might be worth thinking about when considering your next keyboard buy.
Slow It Down
So you suck at keys but you really want to record your own MIDI parts rather than draw them into the piano roll. We’d heartily recommend taking some piano lessons – in either the real world, online or via an educational app – but given that you’d probably like to make the recording in question now, not in six months, the easiest solution is to simply lower the tempo of your project to a level at or below which you’re able to play the part – even if that means dropping from, say, 120bpm to 40bpm. With the speed so drastically reduced, you can plod your way through the passage to the best of your ability, then restore the tempo to its actual setting and bask in the glory of what should ultimately sound like a perfectly executed performance.
Indeed, even if you are a dab hand at the keyboard, this tempo reduction trick can be used to tighten up any recording, as the increase in temporal accuracy brought about by playing everything slowly will see the resultant MIDI notes more closely lining up with the grid.
Use Overdubs To Build Complex Parts
The MIDI recording system in your DAW should enable overdubbing of new material on top of existing parts, adding notes to those already there; and this is endlessly helpful when it comes to performing drum tracks and layered harmonic lines in multiple passes. Of course, it’s especially useful for the aforementioned untrained keyboardist, making it possible to construct chordal parts note by note, which may well be easier than learning to perform them on the fly; but again, even skilled players can get plenty of use out of this particular technique as well, whether for assisting in building up complicated elements that simply can’t be played in one pass, or compositional experimentation.
Integrate CCs Into Your Performances
As well as its mod wheel, your MIDI keyboard no doubt includes a bank of CC-outputting knobs that can be assigned to virtual instrument parameters within your DAW, so don’t be shy about doing so in the interest of performance embellishment. Even if you only assign a single knob to your synth’s filter cutoff, being able to sweep that one profoundly affecting parameter as part of your captured performance will invariably lead to a more organic sounding end result than you would get by recording the notes, then drawing in cutoff modulation by hand afterwards. Elevate your modulative ambitions rather higher, though, and the overdubbing facility discussed above makes it possible to record multiple parameter lanes using any number of knobs one by one (or two by two) as the part cycles through.
Anything you can do to maximise the human feel of your MIDI clips can only be a good thing most of the time, so don’t let those tactile controls sit idle.
Use MIDI FX Plugins
Most DAWs these days include sets of MIDI FX plugins for manipulating note and CC data, which can be creatively energising at the recording stage, transforming your performances in real time ‘on the way in’ – so don’t just call them up to alter parts you’ve already made. Examples might include note snapping plugins that constrain incoming notes to those of a particular key and/or scale; arpeggiators, which are often considerably more powerful in dedicated plugin form than their integrated synthesiser counterparts; and randomisers, which can really turn a live performance on its head. You might not always know what you’re going to get when you fire one of these things up and start playing into it, but that’s all part of the fun, right?
Do you find yourself calling on any particular techniques when recording MIDI? Let us know in the comments.
Hero image by Hai Vo Minh from Pixabay