Well, there is a lot one could talk about when it comes to MIDI, I'll give it a try and explain the basics.
(I don't know how much knowledge you have of the topic, so I'll start with the basics... This is a guide to MIDI for someone just starting to use it - if you already know all of this, just ignore it, I don't mean to patronize anyone, those are just some things I wish someone had told me when I first started using MIDI)
I guess the first (and possibly most important) thing to know about the topic is that a simple MIDI track, unlike the wav files in an audio track, does NOT produce ANY sound on its own.
You can think of MIDI notes as notes on a music sheet: they don't make any sound, they just tell the musician, e.g. a piano player, what key to press, when to press it and when to release it again (And possibly a few other parameters, I'll get to that later).
So in order to get sound out of this, you have to tell your DAW what to do with the MIDI notes you recorded/wrote. Here you have two possibilities I can think of now:
- Create a new track with a VST-instrument, and route the MIDI track into the instrument track (so basically the MIDI track tells the instrument track which notes to play, and the VST-instrument then produces the sound). This is probably the easiest way to start with and learn about MIDI.
(I'm not that familiar with Sonar or Reaper, so I'm not sure how exactly the routing works in these programmes, maybe someone else can help here?)
- Alternatively (if you have the necessary hardware), you can route the MIDI track to a USB-MIDI interface and connect it to a hardware synthesizer or keyboard and have your software tell the actual instrument what to play.
To get a MIDI track going, you can either "write" the MIDI notes yourself on your PC/Mac within the DAW, or you can record the notes into the DAW by playing them on a MIDI-keyboard (This usually sounds more natural with most VST-instruments because of the little timing imperfections the human player will always make while playing. Writing the MIDI notes in your DAW can sometimes sound very artificial and unnatural).
The big advantage you have with MIDI recordings is the possibility to correct mistakes and change things after you played them.
If you make an audio recording of a piano, and afterwards find that the tune would sound better with a slight variation, you'll have to record everything again, there's just no way to change details in an audio file.
With a MIDI recording, you can always change every single note and correct possible mistakes you made while recording without having to re-record everything.
Plus, if you suddenly change your mind about the VST-piano you used to give voice to your MIDI notes, you can decide to have the exact same melody played by some strings, or a synthesizer with just a few clicks, all you have to do is change the routing of the MIDI track again.
Beside the note-on and note-off commands I described before, there are a few other parameters important for a MIDI track:
- Velocity: Describes how hard and fast you hit the piano-key, on most VST-instruments this affects the loudness of the note. Velocity can be edited for every single note in your track. Is often represented by the color of a MIDI note.
- Pitch-bend: Just like the little wheel on the left hand side of a keyboard, this parameter changes the pitch of the note you play. With this you can produce notes with variable pitch, just like bending the string on a guitar. With most DAWs, this parameter affects all the MIDI played at a certain time (so in a chord of 3 notes the pitch of all the notes is shifted in the same way). Usually represented by a seperate line below the MIDI notes, not sure how it is in Sonar though.
- Modulation: The effect of this parameter depends on the VST-instrument you use. Often it produces a vibrato-effect, though it could be used for a lot of different things. Like pitch-bend, this affects all notes played at the time it's used. Again, I don't know how Sonar or Reaper depict this parameter
This is all I can think of now that's important to know for a MIDI-learner, hope I could help so far. If you have any questions, feel free to give me a shout
