Sidechaining MIDI Note Info

Development
1

Is it possible for a plugin to receive MIDI note info (C,E,G) from a DAW’s sidechain information?

Thanks,
Zac

2

Not from the sidechain, but you can configure an effect plugin to have MIDI input and use it.

Bear in mind that in Logic you must use the sidechain input as you need to add the plugin on an Instrument track (see details here) and then send the audio from another channel to the sidechain of that instrument track.

1 Like
3

Ah, gotcha. My plugin is an instrument :confused: It’s a pretty unique scenario.

What about just sidechaining in audio and then using an audio to midi converter? I imagine that the accuracy could be mediocre with audio featuring drums and multiple tonal instruments, but with individual tracks featuring just one instrument it should be pretty viable I would think.

Thanks for the feedback!

4

Is there any reason why you can’t respond to different channels on the MIDI input?

What is the use case you’re after?

5

Yeah, we could do that but I would prefer to have it work in a more automatic manner where users don’t have to route like that. Also Maschine and Reason don’t allow you to send midi from one track to another.

Basically I want the plugin to register midi chord information without that midi playing the instrument. So it would need 2 midi inputs, one for chord recognition and one for actually playing the instrument.

6

I’m not sure I’ve seen any DAW that can send MIDI like this (although I’ve quite often wanted to be able to do exactly that in Cubase when writing music).

So if I understand correctly, you would want something like:

Track A is playing MIDI (chords?) into Random Synth A
Track B has your plugin on it, is receiving MIDI from track B, but also is accepting MIDI from Track A for the chord recognition

I don’t think it’s really possible as far as I’m aware. The only way I could possibly imagine it is if you had a small insert plugin that you add on Track A, which is passing through the MIDI, but also sending it via IPC or some other method to your plugin on Track B. But this will be fraught with issues around synchronisation most likely, and probably won’t be very compatible with all DAWs.

7

I think an external midi port might work for me actually. Send midi from a DAW track out to it, and then send it back in to my plugin. Probably create some latency, but a short delay should offset that fairly well.

Thanks for your help!