What do I do with Midi files(excuse my ignorance)?

[keenly]

Hi everyone
I joined here after searching google for metal multitracks.

I am not a musician or engineer, just a huge metal fan with a home theater set up. I have been mixing some songs into surround sound from stems off another forum(purely for my own enjoyment), but they did not have much metal so I found this site.

I have no idea what to do with midi files, and have noticed most of the drums on the download files are midi. I have only been using stems and opening via Audacity, placing in the 5 speakers etc etc.

Please give a quick explanation how to work with them?

cheers

Paul

 

[H-evolve]

Don't know if that'll help you, but most people here who write metal music at home create their drum tracks by programming them through midi. That or, they'll record a real drum and convert the recorded mic signal to trigger midi notes.

With the midi notes programmed, you can use different softwares to trigger a sound sample for each section of a drum kit. For example: I personnally write my drum with MIDI and then I load a software like Superior Drummer which will play a kick sound for every midi note I have put on C2 (note on the MIDI keyboard), a snare hit on D2, etc etc.

So ya... I guess those MIDI files you are talking about are just the "foundation" of the drum tracks. To make them sound like an actual drum, you need other softwares.

I don't know if that helps you at all or if that answers your question...?

 

[Novocaine]

You drag them into your DAW (do get a better one...) and insert a sampler to trigger the notes. If it's a drum track, you may have to change the position of some of the midi notes to correspond to your sampler mapping, and possibly edit the velocity to best suit the samples.

 

[keenly]

Don't know if that'll help you, but most people here who write metal music at home create their drum tracks by programming them through midi. That or, they'll record a real drum and convert the recorded mic signal to trigger midi notes.

With the midi notes programmed, you can use different softwares to trigger a sound sample for each section of a drum kit. For example: I personnally write my drum with MIDI and then I load a software like Superior Drummer which will play a kick sound for every midi note I have put on C2 (note on the MIDI keyboard), a snare hit on D2, etc etc.

So ya... I guess those MIDI files you are talking about are just the "foundation" of the drum tracks. To make them sound like an actual drum, you need other softwares.

I don't know if that helps you at all or if that answers your question...?

Okay that is a huge disappointment to me. I just wanted to open multitracks in Audacity and make some surround mixes, no worries.

Thanks.

 

[keenly]

You drag them into your DAW (do get a better one...) and insert a sampler to trigger the notes. If it's a drum track, you may have to change the position of some of the midi notes to correspond to your sampler mapping, and possibly edit the velocity to best suit the samples.

How to I view wav in Audacity, is this not possible?