Question

When I first realized I was going to need this, I thought it would be the simplest thing in the world to achieve. But I still don't seem to be able to see how this can be done. I have a piece consisting of this one instrument track that has (as probably the majority of all that were ever recorded by man) several notes sounding at the same time in places. What I want is to make just the bass notes of the instrument sound louder (ie, simply have their volume increased) for a part of the track but not the whole of it - only for when the non-bass notes are at their loudest themselves.

I realize that this can probably be achieved by other means, and would be quite thankful for advice on that too I guess, but I would really love to know how to do this specifically the way I'm talking about right now, namely penny-plain volume adjustment, but selective. If it is possible at all... Even if it is, I also realize that this may not be the best way to get a good sound, but I figure I'll at least learn how to do this first and then figure out alternatives if need be.

What I managed to fathom so far is that, unless I misunderstood something, one can highlight a set of notes in one track and then make out of them their own 'event', as I think this is called. I clicked here and there and everywhere and consulted the manual but could not figure out the action for this. Would love it if someone could explain it (especially if I'm on the wrong track here, if you'll pardon the pun). Thankie!

Answer 1

This is one way to do it that might work for you:

1. Duplicate Track so you have another identical copy of the Instrument, call it “Bass Notes”

2. Select your bass notes from the MIDI Editor window and cut them.

3. Paste them in a new MIDI part on the “Bass notes” track.

4. Hit the [A] key to show automation.

5. Click on the volume fader for the bass notes track so the last touched parameter information in the top left corner of the Arrange Window now says “Volume”.

6. Either click on the A button in the top left corner or drag the little hand next to it to your track to create an automation lane.

7. Draw in the volume automation you want and make sure the track’s automation setting is in Read mode.

At this point you should have a track for bass notes that you can process differently than your other notes.

Alternatively you could use “Part automation” if you want the automation embedded in the MIDI part. There are some good videos for that on YouTube.

Answer 2

robertgray3, thanks a lot! This definitely helped me. Just one small thing though: I figured out that one should in fact not 'duplicate track', as this will make it so that the volume fader will be responsible for both tracks, as there can be only one volume fader per instrument, and the instrument remained exactly the same on the second ('bass') track - the function does not make a copy of it; and it doesn't look like tracks themselves have their own faders, only instruments. So what one should do instead is set up by hand an exact copy of the original instrument for the second track, i.e. all the same settings and everything (including the same default volume in the mixer - unless you want to start fiddling with it already from there on), but make sure that it does in fact register as a separate instrument. Hopefully this helps someone who stumbles across this posting having the same problem as I did!
P.S.: it didn't take me 4 months to do, just had to get away from the place where I had my studio for a good while