MIDI Master: Tips & Tricks for MIDI in Live

From its 1980s origins as a technical standard allowing electronic instruments to communicate with one another, MIDI has also become a versatile technology for sequencing and manipulating virtual instruments. We’re going to look at some killer tips and tricks for mastering MIDI in Live.

Before we move on, we should point out that the tips in this article are mostly at an intermediate level - if you need an introduction or refresher to MIDI in Live, check out these tutorial videos.

First up, Certified Trainer Paul Laski of Icon Collective looks at resampling MIDI. Live comes with a number of cool MIDI effects, allowing you to easily shift pitches, make chords and arpeggios, and more. But what about printing these effects to clips? Learn how in the video below:

Next, another tutorial from Paul demonstrates a quick tip for rounding off your MIDI loops so that they’re perfectly in time, as you make them. Never stop the music while layering on new clips:

For a themed musical interlude, listen to Ford & Lopatin’s retro-futuristic “Too Much MIDI (Please Forgive Me)”:

Live 9 introduced a number of new editing options for MIDI Clips. If you aren’t familiar with them or don’t remember them all, Dubspot’s Evan Sutton provides an excellent rundown of the features below:

That’s all for now - now, to the sequencing! Don’t be shy to share what you make online, and remember to use #MadeWithLive and #MadeWithPush so we can check it out too.