Allow instruments to overlap on same MIDI channel - Not working?

[NorrinRadd22]

Hi Gang,

I am trying to export a 6 channel track using 20+ or so instruments to MIDI for remixing in Cubase. I need the MIDI file to stay as a six channel project in Cubase, and not a 20+track project, but whether I toggle this option on or not, I get the same MIDI file in Cubase.

Is this a bug, or am I not understanding what this feature is? I just need a 6 channel track in Cubase that doesn't care at all about the instruments. Let them all be Piano for all I care. Old version of Modplug can do this, but It doesn't seem like I should be using an old version for this.

Any ideas?

[Saga Musix]

OpenMPT previously exported one MIDI track per pattern channel, but that doesn't make any sense in a musical sense. There was a large amount of requests to export one MIDI track per instrument instead, and that's what OpenMPT is doing these days. Each instrument gets its own MIDI track, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they all get their own MIDI channel of course. The option you mentioned is only important when two instruments share the same MIDI channel; it decides whether those two instruments should "know" about each other and cancel each other's notes, or if they may overlap. The latter would be the correct option for a tool like Cubase where each MIDI track is sent to its own plugin typically, while the alternative is more useful when all instruments will be sent to the same plugin or MIDI device.

Can you please elaborate why you need each pattern track to have its own track in Cubase? I don't quite see the necessity as Cubase is instrument-based, so each instrument in the source module should be mapped to an individual instrument in the exported MIDI. What is you use case for doing something different?

[NorrinRadd22]

Certainly. In my case I am taking one of my own 6channel 8bit NES chiptune .it files and exporting it in to Cubase to turn it in to a Sega Genesis style chiptune with some guitar tracking over it. A lot of the instruments in my 8bit chiptune are just variations of the same instrument. For example, a Square wave that has a different attack, or a different duty cycle or whatever. Very minor stuff which all still falls under the category of the single performed instrument. For all intents and purposes, think of it as velocity key switches or something. I don't need to find a new instrument for a 12% duty cycle and a 25% duty cycle when I am just going to treat them as a guitar patch in Sega Genesis format. I just need the midi information, and I need it contained to one channel like it is in my .it file.

In my case it would be easier to take the original 6 channels and decide where they may need to have new instruments from within Cubase. Not have all instruments on their own midi and look like Swiss cheese in my Cubase.

Is there no functionality for this in the modern MPT? Seems really weird to have just taken out, especially if it used to be in there.

[Saga Musix]

Is there no functionality for this in the modern MPT? Seems really weird to have just taken out, especially if it used to be in there.

It wasn't really "taken out", it's more like that the entire MIDI export had to be rewritten (you may remember that the old MIDI export was very basic and didn't support most pattern commands) at some point and a completely different approach for converting the song data was chosen. The new approach isn't really compatible with per-channel export, but I'll see what can be done to improve the situation.

For the time being, as you are just working with a small amount of channels, you can probably export 6 MIDI files and before each export put a different channel in solo mode. MIDI export respects muted channels, so you will essentially get 6 files with the contents of each channel, but you'd still have to merge the instrument tracks in each file into a single track before you could proceed.
Alternatively, as you mentioned that the program changes are not important for you, you could use Find & Replace to turn your track into 6 unique instruments, but obviously that is only a solution for when the track writing is finished. Find & Replace can work on ranges of instrument numbers and can be limited to only replace data in a single channel.

[NorrinRadd22]

The solo channels is somewhere I can start. I'll report back!