Hey Pancenter / Skijumptoes (and others who may be interested)...
Just a bit of an update from my end.
I decided to move away from the Environment fix for this issue, and go back to the method of assigning a different channel to each piece of MIDI gear in my studio.
Here's a rundown of what happened:
ATTEMPT 1:
1. I set up each synth, and the V-Drums, with their own MIDI channel. I have four synths, so they were channels 1 - 4 respectively, and the V-Drums were set on channel 10.
2. I ticked the "Auto demix MIDI parts by channel when recording" option.
3. I set up a project as I would for a jam (I write with two other people, and our process is to jam together as we build up ideas, which we then shape into songs), so specifically:
- Four stereo audio channels for each of the four synths (we record audio from these in our jams, rather than using MIDI)
- One mono audio channel for vocals
- One MIDI channel set to channel 10, with Superior Drummer running, connected to the V-Drums.
4. Note - for this jam, all the synths above are still connected to the computer via USB (as further down the process we would record parts as MIDI, and then print them from the respective synth as audio when the parts are edited etc).
5. I then armed all of the above tracks (5 x audio and 1 x MIDI) for recording. The HIGHLIGHTED track was one of the audio tracks.
6. I started to record. The audio tracks all recorded, but the MIDI (drums) track did not record.
ATTEMPTS 2, 3 and 4
So I tried a slight variation. I performed steps 1 - 4 above, and then:
5. I highlighted the MIDI track, instead of one of the audio tracks.
This time, the MIDI drum part DID record, however all the synths also input their MIDI into the drum channel (making a chaotic drum part made up of all the MIDI inputs at once!!)
6. At this point I thought "that's OK, I need to have TWO MIDI tracks, both armed for record and on different channels, in order for the MIDI demix feature to work".
7. So I set up a second MIDI part, and chose MIDI channel 11 - to which nothing was connected.
8. I armed all channels (5 x audio and 2 x MIDI) and tried to record. The result was exactly the same. When the highlighted track was one of the audio tracks, none of the MIDI recorded. When the highlighted track was the MIDI drum track, all the MIDI inputs (synths and drums) played the Superior Drummer sounds simultaneously!
So... the upshot:
What I had expected to happen was that the first attempt above would not work, as there was only one MIDI track, and hence auto-demix would not work.
However, I had expected that by setting up a second MIDI "dummy" track, auto-demix would work and I would be able to record all the audio channels, along with the V-Drums (and not the synths) passing their MIDI through to the MIDI track.
It appears that none of these options will work for this specific kind of session...
I would love your thoughts on the above. If anything isn't explained as clearly as it could be, let me know!
I'm still hopeful that there's a way around this! In the older days, I had synths with traditional MIDI in/out, and used to simply unplug their MIDI out socket for these sessions! Now with USB, that's not really an option as it would disable the MIDI in feature as well (and hence potentially stop certain MIDI tracks from playing back, if we were in the process of assembling a final song).
Cheers and thanks so much for your input and ideas so far!
Mike
