kronos Sequencer Converting MIDI track to Audio Track

[blazerunner]

What would be the best way to get this done?

Currently I have a Midi track that's stealing notes on the sequencer and throwing off the song. I'd like to take that Midi track and convert it to an Audio track to eliminate that problem.

Is there a built in way or an ideal way to get this done? Thanks!

[voip]

Go to Sequencer Audio Track tab. From the screen top right drop down menu, select Stereo Track, and select the track pair you want the MIDI song to be recorded to. Pan the first track hard left, and the second track hard right. Turn off Metronome, or route it to another channel to stop it being recorded (you will get two measures count in anyway). Set the first track of the stereo pair from Play to Rec. They should both turn red. Make sure no MIDI tracks are armed to Record, and mute the ones you don't want to be recorded to the Audio track. Hit the Sequencer Rec/Write button, followed by Start/Stop, and the recording should start. Allow it to finish fully i.e. all sounds stop. Hit the Start/Stop button. Disable Record on the Audio tracks. To listen to the audio track only, mute the MIDI tracks.

Note that it's not strictly necessary to select Stereo track, but the Track Source will then have to be set to L for the left channel and R to the right channel, and Multi Rec will need to be selected, and both audio tracks armed to Record individually.


PS - note added to save some grief in getting this to work - see my next post, and Wocoming's after that, giving the last bit of the jigsaw to make it all work.

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[blazerunner]

Thanks a bunch for that step by step instructions on how to get this done. I appreciate it much. I will give it a good attempt. Hopefully it will be a smooth process... but who am I kidding this is a Kronos.

[wocongming]

Go to Sequencer Audio Track tab. From the screen top right drop down menu, select Stereo Track, and select the track pair you want the MIDI song to be recorded to. Pan the first track hard left, and the second track hard right. Turn off Metronome, or route it to another channel to stop it being recorded (you will get two measures count in anyway). Set the first track of the stereo pair from Play to Rec. They should both turn red. Make sure no MIDI tracks are armed to Record, and mute the ones you don't want to be recorded to the Audio track. Hit the Sequencer Rec/Write button, followed by Start/Stop, and the recording should start. Allow it to finish fully i.e. all sounds stop. Hit the Start/Stop button. Disable Record on the Audio tracks. To listen to the audio track only, mute the MIDI tracks.

Note that it's not strictly necessary to select Stereo track, but the Track Source will then have to be set to L for the left channel and R to the right channel, and Multi Rec will need to be selected, and both audio tracks armed to Record individually.

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sorry. doesnt work. theres not even an active record level in preferences when you do it that way. if in preferences you dont see a record level be active, nothing will be recorded

[wocongming]

Go to Sequencer Audio Track tab. From the screen top right drop down menu, select Stereo Track, and select the track pair you want the MIDI song to be recorded to. Pan the first track hard left, and the second track hard right. Turn off Metronome, or route it to another channel to stop it being recorded (you will get two measures count in anyway). Set the first track of the stereo pair from Play to Rec. They should both turn red. Make sure no MIDI tracks are armed to Record, and mute the ones you don't want to be recorded to the Audio track. Hit the Sequencer Rec/Write button, followed by Start/Stop, and the recording should start. Allow it to finish fully i.e. all sounds stop. Hit the Start/Stop button. Disable Record on the Audio tracks. To listen to the audio track only, mute the MIDI tracks.

Note that it's not strictly necessary to select Stereo track, but the Track Source will then have to be set to L for the left channel and R to the right channel, and Multi Rec will need to be selected, and both audio tracks armed to Record individually.

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First off, are we to assume you meant to say STEREO PAIR, and AUDIO TRACK MIXER? thats NOT going to work becuase the recording audio tracks are waiting for a signal from the back of the kronos where you PLUG IN your instruments. How can it possibly recognize the midi track as being the source? please advise on THAT one. thanx

[voip]

The audio tracks in the Audio Track tab can be set to get their record signal from the L/R bus i.e. the output bus. Any number of MIDI tracks can be set to play, and thus be the source for the recording and, provided their output is going to the L/R output bus, it will be recorded to the audio track, and this includes audio inputs set up in the Audio In/Sampling tab, and showing on the level meter there. There is no level meter activity showing on the audio tracks being recorded, for some reason.

This process is not something I do very often, so was wondering if maybe I'd missed something, but it works fine here, using the procedure detailed above. I think audio tracks designated as a stereo pair are handled slightly differently when editing.

The Audio Recording section of the Operations Guide, page 103 onwards, has much more detail.

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[wocongming]

The audio tracks in the Audio Track tab can be set to get their record signal from the L/R bus i.e. the output bus. Any number of MIDI tracks can be set to play, and thus be the source for the recording and, provided their output is going to the L/R output bus, it will be recorded to the audio track, and this includes audio inputs set up in the Audio In/Sampling tab, and showing on the level meter there. There is no level meter activity showing on the audio tracks being recorded, for some reason.

It's not something I do very often, so was wondering if maybe I'd missed something, but it works fine here, using the procedure detailed above. I think audio tracks designated as a stereo pair are handled slightly differently when editing.

The Audio Recording section of the Operations Guide, page 103 onwards, has much more detail.

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Yes you have to go to the top part of the Left audio track and change it to L/R. yep it works. then as you record you can set the recording levels in preference tab and then push the compare button on the keyboard to start over with the correct level setting.

[wocongming]

The audio tracks in the Audio Track tab can be set to get their record signal from the L/R bus i.e. the output bus. Any number of MIDI tracks can be set to play, and thus be the source for the recording and, provided their output is going to the L/R output bus, it will be recorded to the audio track, and this includes audio inputs set up in the Audio In/Sampling tab, and showing on the level meter there. There is no level meter activity showing on the audio tracks being recorded, for some reason.

It's not something I do very often, so was wondering if maybe I'd missed something, but it works fine here, using the procedure detailed above. I think audio tracks designated as a stereo pair are handled slightly differently when editing.

The Audio Recording section of the Operations Guide, page 103 onwards, has much more detail.

.

Yes you have to go to the top part of the Left audio track and change it to L/R. yep it works. then as you record you can set the recording levels in preference tab and then push the compare button on the keyboard to start over with the correct level setting.
This is a very cool feature because you could sample the whole midi part of the song on 2 audio tracks(for stereo purposes) then have 16 midi tracks freed up again to add to the song. weeeeeee btw,
i havent tried it yet, but does that work for if i play the audio tracks also? will the audio tracks ALSO be recorded onto those 2 specified audio tracks? thanx

[voip]

Yes. Everything that is being sent to the L/R bus can be recorded to another pair of audio tracks in this manner, and it all remains in the digital domain, so theoretically no loss of quality. It is also the basis for bouncing down to two tracks ready for creating a CD.

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[voip]

Just added a note to my original reply, because I realise that I missed a bit of important detail to get this to work. Thanks to Woconming :-)

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[blazerunner]

Thanks for all the insight to this procedure. I didn't read the "multi Rec" part when I first glimpsed at this but I figured it out. True to the Kronos it's not a straight forward process.

The results of this technique kind of sort of works. It does indeed record your midi track into audio but the sound is somewhat diminished. Maybe it has to do with the leveling or if you have certain effects on on the originating. It's an interesting alternative but it just created bit of havoc on the mixing end for my project.

It might end up as one of those things where you fiddle around all day trying to find the right levels and EQ positions.

I think my backup will be to record the tracks I want into my MPC and then play it back and record it into a single audio track on the Kronos. which I might end up doing if it gives me less of a headache.

[voip]

Using this technique, the recorded audio track should essentially be indistinguishable from the playback of the original MIDI track, and should include the contribution made by all of the effects. The original MIDI track itself ought to be muted for playback, else the played back audio will seem louder or, if the phases are different, perhaps via an LFO-driven parameter, the net result may be some sort sort of interference beat type effect.

The playback level for the audio tracks is set to 100 by default, whilst the maximum setting available is 127. Increasing the playback level to 127 should restore the level to that originally obtained when playing the MIDI track. This is all standard multitrack studio practice, where each track would generally be recorded at -6dB, so that when multiple tracks are mixed together, the audio chain is not overloaded, as it would have been back in the days when 0dB was tha absolute limit before overload. We are fortunate with the Kronos, in that it has an extremely high overload margin. The other thing to remember is to pan the first track of the pair to the left, and the second track to the right, else the stereo effect is lost, which can make for thin sounding recordings. There should be no need to record again, because the first audio track should contain the left audio and the second track should contain the right audio. That is, as long as those were set correctly prior to making the audio track recording, by going to the top of the audio track and setting the source to L/R for a stereo pair, or the first track to L and the second to R, if not set up as a stereo pair. Hope that makes sense.

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[blazerunner]

Thanks I appreciate the suggestions. I ended up fooling around with the volume and levels to I got the audio just right. The Midi tracks always seem sound lower that the audio tracks at max volume. Which would make sense since your external source loudness is basically set by you and MIDI is limited to 127. I have my own trick for recording audio so that my volume levels are normalized for the most part. I just had to apply it to the Midi to Audio recording which I was able to finally set after a few tries. Now the volume is acting properly. Still I ended up losing my last 2 remaining audio tracks I had open. So something had to be sacrificed.

The end result of all this is that the song is at full power now and for the first time I've been able to hear it properly after weeks of working on it which as you know as a fellow musician how satisfying that feels.

On a side note about doing the method you suggested I ran into a few automation problems and that was with (solo). On my track I pretty much utilized most of the Kronos's automation capabilities. So certain parts of the song had instruments that came in for solo parts or drop out sections of the song. Which was cool but when recording the Solo parts came in and interfered with the recording of the track. I ended up setting the track source to "solo" so that it still remained playing when the other songs solo sections came on.

Another problem I ran into were the IFX's. I had set on my midi track. It gave me a hard time when trying to mix the sound. I ended up turning off the IFX for the source midi track and recording it raw to the audio track and then setting the IFX I had on the original midi track to the audio track instead. Well just call it like it is this is basically just sampling so I used the sampling technique of isolating the sound and recording it raw and then adding in effects in post. That fixed my problem on that end.

I thank you all again for the help and advice. I've been pushing the Kronos's sequencer pretty hard trying to keep up with current production techniques that would usually require a DAW to do so I've gotten a bit used to hitting the road blocks but with some imagination and hair pulling there is a way to get it done on the Kronos. I don't think if I played any song I made on this keyboard anyone would ever think it was made on a keyboard but there is a lot of creative things you can do with the automation and IFX's. Most of all I think I've now learned the hard way to watch the Polyphony when using Midi tracks on the sequencer that's how I got into this problem.

I hope some smarter person learns from my mistakes and fumbles.