MIDI is thousands of times more editable. With a good sound module, your synth sounds will be almost as good as a digitally recorded instrument (as in real tracks) but you can do so much more with MIDI.

Excerpted from Keyboard magazine, March 2014 by Craig Anderton:

…Today you can easily record 100 tracks of digital audio on a basic laptop, so MIDI may seem irrelevant in the studio. Yet MIDI remains not only viable, but valuable, because it lets you exploit today's studio in ways that digital audio still can't.
…
Deep editing. Digital audio allows for broad edits, like changing levels or moving sections around, and editing tools such as Melodyne are doing ever more fine-grained audio surgery. But MIDI is more fine grained still: You can edit every characteristic of every performance gesture: dynamics, volume, timing, the length and pitch of every note, pitch-bend, and even which sound is being played. MIDI data can tell a piano sound what to play, or if you change your mind, a Clavinet patch. With digital audio, changing the instrument that plays a given part requires re-recording the track….but MIDI can do much more…


The following are just some of the things that are easy to do in MIDI and either difficult or impossible with prerecorded Audio tracks
  • The endings on BiaB styles are limited to 2 bars. Some of the endings in styles are pretty lame. You can fix time by exporting to MIDI
  • Some songs need "song specific" licks, often on a guitar or the bass. BiaB style by their nature are more generic and they should be. A style with a song-specific lick would generally be good for only one song. (I know, in my early days, I wrote an Elvis "Don't Be Cruel" style and with that "signature" guitar riff. That style really isn't good for much other than "Don't Be Cruel".)
  • Some songs have rhythmic kicks (I was jamming with some Salsa guys and they called them "breaks") -- a section of music where the entire band plays a passage consisting a number of what PG calls Shots and rests in a very definite, rhythmic pattern.
  • Some songs could use volume manipulation on individual drum instruments (bring up the snare, take down the cymbals), this is easy to do in MIDI, next to impossible to do in Audio Loops
  • Sometimes you may want to change a drum sound, for example, on a Latin/Rock tune, change the ride cymbal to a cowbell, easy in MIDI, darn near impossible in Audio.
  • I've often changed instruments on some of the BiaB output parts. (That piano part might sound better on a Rhodes for a particular song, or a nylon string guitar, or a Clavinet and that Clean Guitar might sound good as an Acoustic Guitar on another song.) Again, easy with MIDI, impossible with Audio
  • Expressive devices that are lacking in BiaB, easy to do in MIDI, extremely difficult or impossible with Audio Loops -- crescendo (A directive to a performer to smoothly increase the volume of a particular phrase or passage) -- diminuendo (A directive to a performer to smoothly decrease the volume of the specific passage of a composition) -- accelerando (Gradually accelerating or getting faster) -- ritardando (Gradually getting slower) -- fermata (notation marking directing the performer or ensemble to sustain the note of a composition affecting all parts and lasting as long as the artistic interpretation of the conductor or performer allows)
  • Composing - you cannot get audio loops to do what you want, but you can change or add anything you want in MIDI format very easily.
  • Sometimes when changing from an A substyle to a B substyle you might not want a roll. In MIDI it's a simply copy and paste operation.
  • You might want to rearrange the drum rolls in a piece or change the roll from a snare to a tom. Again in MIDI it's just copy and paste or a simple transpose command.
  • And so much more


Yes, it does take some time to learn how to get the best out of MIDI, but then it takes some time to play any musical instrument. In the end, it's worth it.

I think the Real Tracks are a bit of genius, and I do use them when they fit perfectly with the song I'm making, but if there needs to be any editing at all, I go to MIDI.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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