MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is one of the greatest tools for contemporary music producers. It allows the user to control, synchronise and record the performance of any electronic instrument. This ranges from synthesisers, drum machines and electronic drum kits, to sound modules and computers. MIDI has been around since 1983 and with the advent of samplers, virtual instruments, and plugins, its functionalities and usage has become ubiquitous in every songwriting and production process.
Thanks to MIDI you can write a full orchestra arrangement, play drums or get classic synth tones with nothing more than a MIDI keyboard and your computer. The MIDI data gets stored in the DAW session, and it plays back over and over with no degradation, letting the artist add, modify, rewrite or even layer different sounds with the same information. But what happens when it comes down to mixing? Should we keep MIDI programs or should they be rendered to audio? Is there any difference? Let’s see what’s going on behind the scenes.
MIDI and Instruments Tracks
Every time we create a virtual instrument, or MIDI track, in our DAW session, the software stores all the MIDI information and presents it as clips or items in our timeline. This data could be sent to MIDI outputs to play on external devices and then record their output sound. That’s how it was done back in the day, and in some scenarios this technique is still used.
Nowadays it’s more common to see MIDI clips in your sessions, and………….
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