What if I want to use 20 instruments in a song? If I have 16 MIDI channels and I use instruments from Motif7 how can I use more different instruments (recording in CubaseLE)?

Also, when recording in Pattern, how can I record solo piano playing that lasts for 2 measures (I hope I’m getting the right words)? Is that possible?

thanks

Re: Above 16 channels.. and LONG recording in Pattern

What if I want to use 20 instruments in a song? If I have 16 MIDI channels and I use instruments from Motif7 how can I use more different instruments (recording in CubaseLE)?

The question is curious. Because it makes someone reading have to ask you more questions.

The Motif is 16 PART multi-timbral. This means it can play 16 Parts at one time. Does you 20 instrument song have all 20 instruments happening at the same time????

Most likely not. So you can use Program Changes to switch instruments on tracks that are not playing.

If it does have 20 instruments at once (wow very busy)… then you can record some of them as audio tracks. This can be done by resampling in the Motif7 itself or recording the audio tracks to an external software sequencer like Cubase LE.

Either way is easy to do. And by recording audio tracks it does not matter if you have 20 or 40 instruments at once… you simply record them as audio.

The difference between AUDIO and MIDI is very important to understand. MIDI is not audio - it is a bunch of coded events that represent music. In order to be music the event must be interpreted and reproduced by a MIDI tone engine - which turns them back into musical audio. Audio tracks do not require the tone engine to read the coded messages so you can create audio tracks that contain the music itself.

Re: Above 16 channels.. and LONG recording in Pattern

In addition to what Bad Mr suggests - since MIDI works on 16 channels, in order to have more than 16 channels you need a second interface with its own independent set of channels.

Actually in the Motif classic and ES it is possible to run up to 34 MIDI channels independently of each other, however you need some extra PLG cards and need to be running the USB MIDI interface, which actually allows for up to 8 independent sets of 16 midi channels.

You would need an XG card and any two other cards to have 34 channels.
You would also need to send MIDI
to the host Motif on USB 0-1,
to the XG PLG on USB 0-2
and the remaining PLGs on USB 0-3.

So what you ask is possible. However, Bad Mr’s suggestion is actually better in teh long run - render the extra MIDI parts as audio and move on. This way you are independent of an overly complex MIDI setup.

Cheers