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Using MIDI devices
The MIDI Device Manager allows you to specify and set up your MIDI devices,
making global control and patch selection easy.
MIDI devices – general settings and patch handling
On the following pages, we will describe how to install and set up preset MIDI
devices, and how to select patches by name from within Cubase.
About Program Change and Bank Select
To instruct a MIDI instrument to select a certain patch (sound), you send a MIDI
Program Change message to the instrument. Program Change messages can be
recorded or entered in a MIDI part like other events, but you can also enter a value
in the Program Selector field in the Inspector for a MIDI track. This way, you can
quickly set each MIDI track to play a different sound.
With Program Change messages, you are able to select between 128 different
patches in your MIDI device. However, many MIDI instruments contain a larger
number of patch locations. To make these available from within Cubase, you need
to use Bank Select messages, a system in which the programs in a MIDI instrument
are divided into banks, each bank containing 128 programs. If your instruments
support MIDI Bank Select, you can use the Bank Selector field in the Inspector to
select a bank, and then the Program Selector field to select a program in this bank.
Unfortunately, different instrument manufacturers use different schemes for how
Bank Select messages are constructed, which can lead to some confusion and
make it hard to select the correct sound. Also, selecting patches by numbers this
way seems unnecessarily cumbersome, when most instruments use names for their
patches nowadays.