8 Recording MIDI

This book is centered on recording live performances and not necessarily detailed MIDI programming. That topic is a combination of recording, editing, and composing all in one and could fill an entire book on its own. MIDI recording of live performers will be discussed in this chapter, along with how that can be used to increase your production toolkit for creative results.

MIDI recording is similar to audio recording in that we are capturing musical data, just in a different format. This format is much more basic and fundamental to music than the audio itself. It’s the raw musical information in terms of notes and articulation that we can capture as MIDI data. That data, in turn, can be manipulated in ways both obvious and more subtle to enhance or even reinvent musical and sonic ideas. What can often be overlooked is MIDI’s abilities as a sound design tool for creating and performing sound effects for picture.

Combine this with Nuendo’s history steeped in the long MIDI tradition of Steinberg, and you have a fabulously efficient and feature-rich MIDI sequencer at the foundation of the DAW.