Recording MIDI in Presonus Studio One

Hi I am Chris Farrell from Western Australia. The following lesson is for week 2 of Introduction To Music Production at Coursera.

Today I will be teaching you how to record MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I'll be setting up and recording MIDI into Presonus Studio One, but the steps I am presenting would be similar in most DAWs.

Enough acronyms already, let's jump straight into the lesson!

Connecting a MIDI keyboard to the computer

Before you begin recording MIDI it's worth noting the devices that you'll need to follow this tutorial:

• An external MIDI keyboard
• A MIDI in port - your audio interface may have a MIDI in and out port, or you could have a dedicated USB device for this
• A MIDI cable, connected from the MIDI out of the keyboard to the MIDI in port

Setting up the DAW

Next you will need to set up your DAW to be able to record incoming MIDI from your midi keyboard (input device), on one or more MIDI channels. In Studio One this can be achieved by following these steps: 

1. On the Start page, click on "Configure External Devices..."
    
   
2. Click the "Add" button
   
   
3. Studio One comes with a number of MIDI device presets, so if your device is available you can select it from the list.
   
   
4. Next choose the MIDI channel(s) and MIDI port that you want to receive MIDI data through.
   
   I've set up Studio One to receive MIDI data through MIDI channel 1 on "Fireface Midi Port 1", which is the first MIDI in port on my audio interface. I've also ticked the box next to "Default Instrument Input" so that whenever I create an instrument track it will automatically be set up to use my MIDI keyboard as the input device.
5. To test if Studio One is successfully receiving MIDI data from the MIDI keyboard, Studio One has a MIDI monitor located in the transport bar. You can press keys on your MIDI keyboard and see if the DAW is receiving the input.
   
   
   
   The triangle to the left of the MIDI logo will turn orange when MIDI input is being received.

Creating an instrument track

I've now set up a MIDI keyboard, and Studio One will receive input data from the device through MIDI channel 1 of MIDI port 1 - but currently the 0 and 1s are hitting the DAW and going nowhere fast. We need to give them a voice!

1. Right click on the empty track area and choose "Add Instrument Track"
   
   
2. The track will already be set up to receive MIDI from my keyboard because of the setup I did earlier in the tutorial, and when I hit keys on the keyboard a yellow meter shows the track is receiving note on and off events
   
   
3. To add an instrument track, choose an instrument plugin from the "Instruments" tab of the browser and drag it onto the instrument track. The instrument GUI (graphical user interface) will open, but you can close it for now.
   
     
   
   
   
4. It's good practice to name your tracks, so I've renamed this track to reflect the kind of sound the instrument will be generating.
   
   

Prepare for recording

Next I am going to prepare the track for recording by following these steps

1. Arm the track for recording - as you can see in the previous picture the track is already armed
2. Enable the metronome and count in. In Studio One this is achieved by clicking on the metronome icon in the transport bar , and then clicking on the metronome setting icon. I've set the recording to precount 2 bars, so that recording doesn't start immediately.
   
   
3. Set the recording position in the timeline - in Studio One you can click in the timeline to set the recording/playback position, which I have set to begin at the start of the second bar so you can clearly see where the recording will begin.
   
   
4. Start recording. In Studio One I can start recording by clicking * on the numeric keypad, or by clicking record in the transport bar.
   
   

Quantizing a MIDI performance

I can double click on the MIDI clip that I recorded and it will open in the piano roll.

The recording wasn't too bad but there are definitely some timing issues, particularly the note in the middle which is quite late and sounds way off to my ears. Timing issues can be fixed by quantizing midi to a grid, so in Studio One I select the midi notes I want to quantize and then click the Quantize icon in the toolbar - the large letter "Q". 

Quantize settings

In the Quantize settings there quite a few settings I can adjust

• Quantize grid note length: as my performance was mostly eighth notes with a couple of 16ths, I've set the grid to 16th notes. If I quantized to an 8th note grid, my 16th notes would become 8th notes.
• What data will be affected by the quantize? In Studio One you can apply Quantizing to note start position, note end position and velocity. You can also apply this as a percentage so the notes aren't all quantized right to the grid which would sound quite robotic and have no feel. Applying the quantize as a percentage will leave some feel and groove in the performance.
• Apply : in Studio One click the "Apply" button to quantize the selected notes with the chosen settings.

In this example, I started with a 20% quantize on the note start position, which I applied and then listened to the result. I ended up applying 70% quantize to get the feel right - yes, my timing was that bad!

Studio one tip: for a quick quantize you can also hit ALT + Q on your keyboard to perform a 50% quantize.

Conclusion

That concludes my lesson for this week - you've seen how to set up a DAW like Studio One to receive input from a MIDI device like a MIDI keyboard, how to record MIDI to an instrument track, and how to quantize MIDI data. I hope this has helped you to understand how MIDI data is so different from audio data, where it is very easy to adjust note timing after recording. You could also adjust note lengths, the notes themselves (transposing), note velocity and record MIDI CC (control change) messages but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Your DAW may also have much more advanced quantizing features than I covered here, so I encourage you to look in your DAW's user guide.  

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed making it, and feel free to let me know if any of my information is incorrect or could be improved.

Until next time...

Chris