Clips View for MIDI and Instrument Tracks

MIDI and Instrument tracks can be viewed as Clips, which is similar to Waveform view for audio tracks. While a track’s notes are visible in Clips view, individual note editing is not available in this view. Instead, all editing occurs across a time range encompassing all track data, including continuous controller events, program changes, and System Exclusive events.

Use Clips view to define clips that represent song sections and clips, or to rearrange or assemble track material.

In Clips view, the vertical zoom is automatically scaled to fit the entire range of pitches of MIDI notes on a track.

You can double-click a MIDI clip to open it in the MIDI Editor window. See MIDI Editors.

There are a few things to consider when selecting, copying and cutting, and trimming MIDI clips:

When cutting or clearing a clip or clip group selection that includes a note’s start point, the entire note is removed. This is even the case when only a portion of the note (that includes its start point) is selected.

When cutting or clearing a clip or clip group selection that includes a note’s end point (but not its start point), the note remains and overlaps the edge of the clip.

Similar rules also apply when MIDI clips or clip groups containing MIDI clips are trimmed with any of the Trim tools. If the MIDI clip’s start point is moved beyond a note’s start point, the note is removed. If the clip’s end point is trimmed so that a note’s start point is within the clip but its end point is not, the note remains and overlaps the edge of the clip.

When moving and placing MIDI clips with overlapping notes, the notes always move with the clips. When placing MIDI clips with overlapping notes next to or near another clip, the overlapping notes extend into the next clip on the track.

 

To separate MIDI notes, rather than leave them hanging, when separating, cutting or copying clips, make the Edit selection you want, switch to Notes view and use the Separate At Selection command, then switch back to Clips view and make the edit (separating, cutting, or copying).

MIDI Clips Created on Barlines

When recording MIDI, or when manually entering MIDI notes, the beginning and ending of resulting MIDI clips are constrained to bar boundaries. This facilitates arranging MIDI clips in a musically meaningful way, in whole bar lengths.

The beginning of a recorded MIDI clip always starts on the barline immediately before the first MIDI note (Note On) of the clip. Likewise, the MIDI clip ends on the barline immediately following the last note (Note Off) of the clip.

MIDI Clips and Continuous Controller Events

Continuous controller events reside in MIDI clips and not in tracks. This means that when dragging clips that contain controller data from either a track or the Clip List, the controller data is written to the destination track.

You can edit continuous controller events by switching track views or by revealing the controller lanes under the track.

For more information on editing MIDI controller data, see MIDI Editing.

MIDI Mute Automation

Unlike continuous controller events, which represent nuances that are part of a MIDI performance, Mute in Pro Tools is an automation playlist that actually mutes the MIDI engine. Mute automation does not correspond to actual MIDI events and is therefore not exported when saving as a Standard MIDI File.