Adjusting MIDI Timing to Free Recordings

When you use the in-place editor, it is easy to visually adjust the timing of MIDI events to match up with recordings that were not made with a click track or not referenced to Nuendo’s timeline.

The in-place MIDI editor is accessed in the track list by pressing the Edit In-Place button. (See Figure 11.25.)

Figure 11.25 Edit In-Place button.

Once Edit In-Place has been activated, MIDI notes can be edited directly in the project window. This allows you to view the notes in direct relationship to other tracks in the project. Moving a MIDI note to line up with the transient of a drum recording is easy to do by watching the crosshair beam as it lines up across all the tracks in the project.

In this example, a MIDI bass part needs to be aligned with the kick drum of an acoustic drummer’s performance. Even if the drummer has played to a click track, not every hit will be perfectly in line with the grid. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and in order to keep the humanity in the performance, the MIDI bass might need to be adjusted to lock in with the human drum performance. (See Figure 11.26.)

Figure 11.26 Crosshair lining up with audio transient while adjusting MIDI note start time.

MIDI editing and manipulation have many uses that are too numerous to fit within the scope of this book. Nuendo has a deep heritage in the Steinberg tradition of being a first-class MIDI sequencer, and maintains all of that pedigree from Cubase. This chapter has been but a brief summary of the basic editing functionality of MIDI in Nuendo.