Any way to get more than 256 MIDI tracks?

[msawitzke]

You guys must not work with film composers...haha

It isn't just an orchestra, it is many different articulations, effects (trills, sforzando, etc. etc.), as well as huge libraries of drum samples, ethnic instruments, choirs etc. etc. These guys run 10+ external machines and want to have everything available all the time so they can score quickly.

400+ tracks are common with composers like Hans Zimmer, John Debney, etc. etc. Those guys use DP, Logic, and Cubase...some guys are trying to move into a PT environment and recreate their templates...thus the need for all those tracks.

Mike

[Keybeeetsss]

I guess Keyswitches & mod wheels dont work well with them...

[msawitzke]

Originally Posted by Keybeeetsss

I guess Keyswitches & mod wheels dont work well with them...

Believe me, it is a lot more complicated than that.

[lwilliam]

I haven't used that many myself, but you could easily have 10 articulation tracks for Violin, 10 for Viola, etc....then each of the woodwinds, horns, etc. It can add up if you don't use keyswitches but prefer separate tracks.

Keyswitches can be tempermental if you start in the middle of a section where it just changed. Sometimes the right switch gets implemented, and sometimes it doesn't. If you use separate articulations per track, there's no keyswitch chasing to worry about - and you don't have to worry about not printing some C#-1 note on the score.

[msawitzke]

Originally Posted by lwilliam

I haven't used that many myself, but you could easily have 10 articulation tracks for Violin, 10 for Viola, etc....then each of the woodwinds, horns, etc. It can add up if you don't use keyswitches but prefer separate tracks.

Keyswitches can be tempermental if you start in the middle of a section where it just changed. Sometimes the right switch gets implemented, and sometimes it doesn't. If you use separate articulations per track, there's no keyswitch chasing to worry about - and you don't have to worry about not printing some C#-1 note on the score.

Absolutely...and it can also be difficult to keep track of all the different keyswitches for any given instrument. It is one thing if you just use one library and they're all relatively similar, but when dealing with very large and diverse libraries just keeping track of which key does what can be a challenge.

On that front I saw an interesting approach at Ed Shearmur's studio. He primarily uses Vienna, and has a Lemur set up to control keyswitches. The lemur allows him to label the midi notes on a touch screen, so he just has virtual buttons that are labeled with what each keyswitch does. It was a pretty cool approach...though his rig is much simpler than what some guys are doing.