Guys,

I feel an absolute fraud today as I recount my tale:

Yesterday I had a new song project to start and I plugged up everything and started to sketch out my project ideas in MIDI. Except every time I hit record on Cubase, the track would begin as expected but as soon as I hit stop it would disappear. What? So I started to explore the various MIDI bits and bobs in Cubase to make sure all was functioning and all the MIDI preferences were set correctly. I had recently loaded up some old Cubase 3 projects and ‘obviously’ they had ported in some weird settings - they must have, but well, I could not find them - everything seemed normal.

For a couple of hours I messed around trying to find the software cause of my lack of ability to record.

A fresh hot cup of coffee later and my thoughts strayed on a different and more logical path. Lets follow this through from the start and work out where its all going wrong.

OK - MIDI is generated by the Motif where it travels to the computer via the USB cable where it passes throughthe PC and into Cubase so is it getting to Cubase - I realised I was seeing an audio activity light but no MIDI activity.

Finally the penny dropped - Cubase couldn’t record (and if it receives no signal does not present you with an empty midi track, but rather, no MIDI track!!) because it was receiving no MIDI - but why - the whole cash register dropped! I had last used the Motif out of the studio stacked with an XP80 and connected via MIDI not USB - Doh!
It was still set to MIDI and not USB.
What a waste!

I thought I would recount this tale for a couple of reasons:

1 It is not always the software’s fault
2 Whilst this seems like a rookie error (and it is) if you use your axe mostly in one scenario and only occasionaly in another, you tend to forget things like the MIDI/USB switch or perhaps Local on/off when you use your studio axe on stage
3 Daft things can cause the wierdest of glitches

Please make a mental note of my stupidity and vow never to make the same foolish mistake. Thankfully, no one knows about this one - lets all keep it that way, ok?

Cheers :)

LOLz its o.k brother Wellie, not so long ago… i couldn’t hear any sound from my left monitor so i struggled with the soundcard switched cables… and finally i discovered that it was turned off… now, who is stupid hhe?

Nice one Wellie, and your secret is safe with us!

Now, if we are talking stupid........

A while ago I was looking at the screen and my hand settled on the wireless mouse. I moved the mouse around but the cursor stayed still. When I looked down at the mouse, I found it was elsewhere, and I realised that my hand was on my glasses case which I had been moving around with clearly no result!

How about using the wrong pedal over and over, and then one day - Wham!  Hey - that’s the wrong pedal!

Makes us human…

Bob