9.5

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.
To help with this, you can use the MIDI Device Manager to specify which MIDI instruments
you have connected by selecting from a vast list of existing devices or by specifying the details
yourself. Once you have specified which MIDI devices you are using, you can select to which
particular device each MIDI track is routed. It is then possible to select patches by name in the
track list or Inspector.
Opening the MIDI Device Manager
Select MIDI Device Manager from the More Options submenu of the Studio menu to bring up the
following window:
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