A Midi Mystery in Reaper

[Rahodees]

I want to arpeggiate a midi track and play it through Surrealistic.

I have a workaround that lets me do this, but here I want to describe the circumstance that makes a workaround necessary, in hopes of either finding out there's a more direct way to do what I want, or in hopes of alerting someone to the existence of a bug.

So, in Reaper, I use a plugin called Randarp to arpeggiate. What I do is, I create an instrument track using Randarp, and then also on the same track I put some instrument, any instrument, it doesn't matter which one. (I am not totally sure I even need one, but it helps because it means I can hear the chords I'm playing.)

I then hit record and play some chords.

I play back and it's arpeggiated. Great!

Next, what I do, is I create a second instrument track. I load it up with any instrument (except more on that in a sec). I route track 1 to track 2. I set track to to record "Midi Output." I then arm track to for recording and unarm track one. Hit record, and blammo: Track two now has a midi clip containing the _arpeggiated_ version of the chords I played. Excellent!

BUT

If the instrument I put on track 2 is Surrealistic--it records _nothing_.

That's the weird part. Any other instrument I put there, it records from track one's output and an arpeggiated midi clip is created.

Surrealistic? It records nothing. It _plays_ during the recording, it plays the arpeggiated sounds. But records nothing.

So the obvious workaround works--I record using some other instrument, then assign surrealistic to play the resulting midi track.

But I'm wondering if there's something more direct that I'm missing that would make the workaround unnecessary.

Any thoughts?

(And btw also, I _can_ record on the surrealistic directly using my midi keyboard if I reset it to not receive track one and to record "all inputs" or whatever that default setting is. So it's not a general problem with recording midi. It's specific to this situation where I tell it to record midi output from another track. Surrealistc won't do it, every other instrument I've tried will.)

[UrbanCyborg]

I'm not familiar with Reaper, but it seems to me that if you just want to record the MIDI output of a track, you shouldn't even need to assign a synth. Also guessing, but I'd guess that the MG-1 consumes the MIDI input, assuming that you want it to interpret that input as audio. Have you tried doing this with any other Cherry Audio software synth?

[SpaceDog]

If I'm doing something similar in Reaper, I take advantage of the MIDI routing between tracks. Apologies if this is going to tell you something you know, feel free to skip lightly over it if it does

Set up a track that has your keyboard as a MIDI Input, and has the arpeggiator plugin on it. Then set up a second track with your instrument of choice and link the two by either clicking on the routing box (it's both audio and MIDI), or dragging from one box to the other. Then click on the receiving track's box, turn off the audio and check that if you're sending MIDI from a specific channel/device this is checked (or just stick with te default "All").

Then force the first track to record MIDI Input and the second to the same, or audio - your choice.

This records your keyboard input (as MIDI) and either the MIDI output of the arpeggiator or the audio from the instrument. This does give you the ability to go in and edit the original MIDI inout should you desire.

I sometimes use this technqiue with arpeggiators and sequencers (as plug-ins), if it's a tricky performance and then I render it afterwards.

[Rahodees]

I'm not familiar with Reaper, but it seems to me that if you just want to record the MIDI output of a track, you shouldn't even need to assign a synth. Also guessing, but I'd guess that the MG-1 consumes the MIDI input, assuming that you want it to interpret that input as audio. Have you tried doing this with any other Cherry Audio software synth?

As to a need to assign an instrument, I tried assigning no instrument and you're right, it creates a midi track, just like when I assign any instrument _other_ than the Surrealistic. When I assign the Surrealistic, no midi track is created!

This does not occur with the other Cherry Audio synth I tried, Polymode. That one works as expected.