User manual

Table Of Contents
460
Using MIDI devices
Background
The MIDI Device Manager allows you to specify and set up your MIDI devices, making
global control and patch selection easy.
But the MIDI Device Manager also features powerful editing functions that can be
used to create MIDI device panels (Cubase only). MIDI device panels are internal
representations of external MIDI hardware, complete with graphics. The MIDI device
panel editor provides all the tools you need to create device maps where every
parameter of an external device (and even an internal device like a VST instrument)
can be controlled and automated from inside Cubase.
For descriptions of how to create device maps and the powerful device panel editing
features, see
“About Device panels (Cubase only)” on page 467. For additional
information on how to create panels for VST instruments, see the separate PDF
document “MIDI Devices”.
MIDI devices – general settings and patch handling
On the following pages, we will describe how to install and set up preset MIDI
devices, and how to select patches by name from within Cubase. For a description on
how to create a MIDI device from scratch, please refer to the separate PDF document
“MIDI Devices”.
About Program Change and Bank Select
To instruct a MIDI instrument to select a certain patch (sound), you send a MIDI
Program Change message to the instrument. Program Change messages can be
recorded or entered in a MIDI part like other events, but you can also enter a value in
the Program Selector field in the Inspector for a MIDI track. This way, you can quickly
set each MIDI track to play a different sound.
With Program Change messages, you are able to select between 128 different
patches in your MIDI device. However, many MIDI instruments contain a larger
number of patch locations. To make these available from within Cubase, you need to
use Bank Select messages, a system in which the programs in a MIDI instrument are
divided into banks, each bank containing 128 programs. If your instruments support
MIDI Bank Select, you can use the Bank Selector field in the Inspector to select a
bank, and then the Program Selector field to select a program in this bank.
Unfortunately, different instrument manufacturers use different schemes for how Bank
Select messages are constructed, which can lead to some confusion and make it hard
to select the correct sound. Also, selecting patches by numbers this way seems
unnecessarily cumbersome, when most instruments use names for their patches
nowadays.