Pro Tools: Virtual Instruments

In Pro Tools you have two types of MIDI tracks: instrument tracks and MIDI tracks. MIDI tracks cannot
produce audio on their own. MIDI tracks in Pro Tools must be paired with an instrument track by changing
the output of the MIDI track to an available MIDI instrument in your session. You will only see available
instruments in the output of a MIDI track after a virtual instrument plugin has been added to an instrument
track in your session. The instrument track then acts as a receiver for the MIDI data and will play back audio.
You can write MIDI data directly to an instrument track, however; when this is done the instrument can only
read the MIDI data that is written on the track and cannot play multiple timbre parts. This is because the
instrument track cannot read incoming data from other MIDI tracks while there is MIDI data written directly
to it.

MIDI Track in Pro Tools

To add a virtual instrument in Pro Tools, add an instrument plugin to the inserts section of an instrument
track. For now, let’s go ahead and use the “Mini Grand” piano plugin. Delete the notes you previously drew
into the MIDI editor and replace them with a C Major chord (C E G) starting from the C3 note on your piano
roll. Draw the notes of these chords to equal one full measure.

Notice that the MIDI notes that you drew are all one color. In Pro Tools, note velocities are represented by
the intensity of the note color. The lighter the color, the softer it is. You can adjust a note’s velocity with the
velocity diamonds in the Piano Roll.
We can adjust the properties of a MIDI note in Pro Tools by choosing an option from the events operation
window under “Events/Operations.” In the events operation window, you will see a very important option
called “quantize.” Quantization is the action of automatically aligning MIDI notes to the grid based on a
specified value. The most effective way to quantize is to select a grid value that is closest to the subdivision
of the notes that you are playing. For example, if you were playing a 16th note part, you’ll want to choose
a 16th note value for your quantization. The DAW will recognize that the notes you played are supposed to
be attached to the nearest 16th note grid lines. If your performance is way off and you attempt to quantize,
you may find that the DAW cannot properly place the MIDI notes where you believe they should be and
instead will place them where it thinks they should be. If you play in values of 16th notes and try to quantize
to a value of a quarter note, the DAW will register this as “place these notes on the nearest quarter note
value.” Since a quarter note and a 16th note have a big difference in duration, the rhythm you will get from
quantization will be completely off from what you played.

Quantization is a powerful tool but always remember that it may be the best option to move some notes by
hand if they are very far off from the correct rhythm or if quantization cannot correctly fix their positioning.