Recording and syncing individual audio tracks

[musicteach]

I have been reading the forum threads on exporting individual midi tracks into a DAW and then rendering them with the genos.  This is pretty time consuming.  I am wondering if there would be a way to record each audio track of a style individually as a .wav, and have them synced?

My guess is that this is not possible, but I don't want to miss it if this is indeed a possibility.  When recording it would be nice to mix, eq, pan the wave tracks separately, without going through the laborious process of exporting each midi track.  I use Garageband, and have posted a few tracks to Spotify, which got more than 10,000 listens in the last week, so now I am more motivated to make some more!
Thanks in advance for any advice.

[RoyB]

It is possible and I do it now with many of my recordings.
Unfortunately, there is not a ready-made solution, but it can be done using a few 3rd party tools.

This video

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GiYYT9KsK1tv9Bc7pWYp4Gc6pTo-cH11/view?usp=sharing

demos my semi-automated method of producing individual wav files for each midi channel in a midi recording.

To do this, the tools you need are:-

gn1to0 (from gnmidi.com - free utility in the Freeware section). Use this to convert the midi file format to Type 1 (midi2wav works with Type 1 midi files).

midimutt (from gnmidi.com - commandline utility in the GN MIDI tools section, cost 18 Euros). Use this to create individual MIDI files for each midi track/channel. It is a commandline program so you need to be familiar with using DOS command line utilities. You would need to create a batch file containing the conversions command for each midi channel (if your midi file has 16 midi tracks(channels), then this will contain 16 commands, and then just run the batch file. You would only need to create the batch file once and then use for all your midi files.

midi2wav (from midi2wav.com - cost $29.95).  Use this to batch convert the all the individual midi files to individual wav files using your Arranger as the sound generator. It sequentially plays each midi file to record a wav file, so if you have 15 midi files of 2 minutes each, the process will take 30 minutes. But it is automated and you can go away and do something else while it is doing it. AND - all the wav files are synchronised so they play together perfectly when imported into your DAW.

As shown in the video, I have prepared my own program to help launch there programs. But now I only actually use it to generate the inidividual midi files using midimutt.

(by the way, I also have a Roland FA08, and this has its own built-in utility for doing all this).

Hope this is helpful.

Regards

Roy

[musicteach]

Wow Roy B, your detailed response is much appreciated.  This is exactly what I am looking for, but I am a mac user, so I would have to get a PC to run those programs that you are using. 

It does seem like what you are doing is a fairly technical process, but it would save a lot of time if you are trying to render a lot of songs.  I guess the alternative is to get the midi in a DAW, then record each track separately by soloing each track one at a time and recording into the DAW using the genos to render the midi.  Have you tried this? 

[musicteach]

Great video, by the way.  Not if I can just do the same thing on a mac....

[RoyB]

The alternative would be to do it all manually within a DAW, but that is too time-consuming for me.  Using these tools, I spend about 5 minutes at the computer to set it going, then come back after an hour and its all done.

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi
Best to play a song all the way through on the Genos sequencer.
Edit the midi in a Daw like cubase.
What i do is record each track at a time and split the drums into separate tracks .
The is easy in Cubase using Disolve.
So track 1 being the lead track it can have a few program changes.
So i cut them with virtual scissors and drag to another vacant track being careful to keep then in line.
If you want you could also record pads and send them over to enhance.
This way you have now contol over every instrument in the mixer.
The next fun part is to mix the song and after add finishing polish.
It all depends how deep you want to go.
It has taken me at least three to four years getting a song to how i want it and now
things are looking up. Now i am starting to make templates.
I still get Blonde moments though!!!