Logic Pro 9 Separate MIDI events by event channel

[doofus]

I'm in the process of transferring some old projects from analog tape to Logic 9. Most of the songs have time code (SMPTE or whatever nonsense the Alesis MMT-8 spat out) recorded on track 8 of the tape. A lot of sounds were never recorded on tape, however; they were played by MIDI instruments and flown into the final mix, sync'd to tape. So, in addition to the audio files I've transferred into Logic, I'm recording the sequences off the MMT-8 as well. No problem so far, but...

The MMT-8 sequences contain three or four MIDI channels of information, which is being recorded onto one region of Logic. I know that in the past, it was possible-with a quick key command or whatever-to "separate MIDI events by event channel" or some such command-and split out the region into the three or four (or whatever) tracks for the various MIDI channels. So after the command, I'd have three or four (or whatever) new tracks in the Arrange window, each one with its own "instrument", like bass, congas, whatever.

Here's where I'm running into a problem...I sync up the sequencer to the sync track, record the MIDI sequence, now I have this region in Logic which is the MIDI sequence of the song in question. I know it's all there cause I can assign it to say, a piano (in Logic) and I can hear all the parts even though a lot of it sounds really stupid cause there's drum tracks, etc. But, when I try to separate it into the various MIDI channels, the result is just a blank region...nothing, nada. It's the same, single region, just...nothing. The same thing happens in Piano Roll...before I attempt to split out the channels, I can open Piano Roll and see all the notes in one window; afterwards, the window is empty. (the sequence still plays, btw). I don't understand what's happening.

I'm using an old system...G5 (Power PC) running OSX 10.5.8. Yes, I know Logic 9 isn't supported on this machine, but it worked up through version 9.0.2, which is what I've got (it wouldn't update after that). I haven't had any problems with this rig up till now, have worked on some pretty big projects without incident. What I am going to try is opening the sequence in Logic 7 (if I can-otherwise I'll re-record it) and see if I can split it out in that world. But, I'd certainly be grateful for any suggestions..thanks in advance!

 

[doofus]

okay, an update...I tried recording a sequence in Logic 7, and had the same result; when I try to separate the events by channel, all the notes in the sequence vanish (they also vanish from the piano roll). Logic 8, same thing. I'm really baffled as in every other aspect (as far as I can tell) the system is working perfectly. Anyone out there?

 

[doofus]

ok, since no one replied so far, I'll update this in case anybody's out there...

I still don't understand why I can't split out the individual channels from the "multitrack" MIDI file that came from the sequencer (using the command "separate MIDI events by event channel", but I did find a workaround for anyone that might have the same problem. Here's what I did:

1) for the sequencer track that has multiple channels: open the piano roll, and select "View" and then "MIDI Channel Colors"
2) Click on one note that is the color of the instrument you want to separate (i.e., drums) onto its own MIDI track. It's pretty easy, looking at the colors in the Piano Roll, to figure out which color is the bass, which is the drums, etc.
3) Shift-C to select equal colored events
4) copy and "paste at original position" onto a new MIDI track, labeled for instance, "drums".
5) alternatively, in step 4, cut rather than copy, so as you sort through the tracks you gradually eliminate the mess from the original MIDI track. That way when you're done, the original track will be empty.
6) if your're obsessive like me, you'll save each "copy and paste" step as a new version of the track, so if everything goes to hell, you can backtrack to your last good version.

as a side note, a weird thing that I was experiencing during some of the transfers was that if there was a MIDI channel that had volume changes on it, it would cause volume changes on other tracks in the Arrange window (that were not related to that instrument). This was driving me nuts until I figured it out; at first I though it was Automation or Hyper Draw that somehow got mixed up in the track (for one thing, on a track this was happening on, Hyper Draw's Volume function had mysteriously gotten turned on for some reason) but it turned out that it was just MIDI controller messages that were somehow affecting other tracks. Not MIDI tracks either, I mean audio tracks that were already recorded. So it seems there's some sort of cross-talk in Logic when it comes to MIDI controller messages.

(in case you're wondering why my process seems ass-backwards, it probably is; it's not obvious from my original post, but the procedure I was following was this: I was transferring analog tape tracks to Logic, then using the SMPTE or MMT-8's tape sync function to sync up to the sync track that had been recorded in Logic, then recording the MMT-8's sequencer track onto another track of that song in Logic.The only reason I started that way was because I didn't have access to the MMT-8 sequences when I started the process-they were buried in a storage unit in a box of old floppy disks. But because of the differences in tape machines (years had gone by since the tracks were recorded and I wasn't using the same machine) I realized after doing a lot of work trying to line everything up that the right way to do it would have been to send the analog tape's sync tone directly into the MMT-8 during the transfer, so that the sequence was being recorded along with the audio and therefore locked to any variations in tape speed. Now that I've recovered (most of) the sequences, that's what I'm doing, or rather, re-doing. In addition (since I wouldn't need the MMT-8's sync tone anymore) I used the 1/4 note click output from the MMT-8 and sent it to the track in Logic that previously would have received the sync tone from the analog tape. (This was just in case I ever had to line up a device that was Pre-MIDI, or if I had a problem and had to generate a MIDI map on a song that didn't have a drum track with distinct transients, etc., it would be easier). In a perfect world, I could have recorded both (the sync tone and the 1/4 note click) along with the audio tracks, but my old MOTU 2408 will only record 8 analog inputs at a time).

I'm actually amazed at how far I've gotten with this..I didn't expect 25 year-old floppy disks to even work...had to learn how to bake reels of tape, etc., etc. So far, so good...