Using MIDI Thru

Metro’s MIDI Thru controls which module you hear when you play your MIDI controller. You can play any of your MIDI sound modules without having to reroute cablesor switch channels on your MIDI devices. MIDI data is sent from your MIDI controller throughMetro and rerouted out to any of your MIDI devices. When you work with a MIDIcontroller and one or more sound modules, use MIDI Thru to select which sound you’ll hear when you play your controller.

We recommend turning off Local Control on your MIDI controller when using MIDIThru as the primary means to trigger your sound modules. MIDI Thru reassignsthe output from your MIDI controller to any available port and channel number.

Click the Local Ctrl Off button in the Instruments Mixer window to disable Local Control.

Let’s try an example to learn more about the capabilities of MIDI Thru:

  1. Open the Transport window and expand it to its full size, if necessary.

  2. Click and drag the MIDI Thru popup and set it to Off. This disables MIDI Thru.

  3. Open the Instruments Mixer window and click the Local Off button located above the Master Fader. Now play your MIDI controller. If your controller has its own internalsounds, you should NOT hear the instrument playing.

  4. Within the Transport window, click and drag the MIDI Thru pop-up and selectyour General MIDI sound module. The popup window closes.

  5. Choose channel 10 from the MIDI channel popup directly below the MIDI Thrudevice name you selected.

  6. Play your MIDI controller and you should hear the drum sounds associated withchannel 10 of your General MIDI sound module.

  7. Switch the MIDI Thru channel to 2. Now play your MIDI controller and youshould hear the sound on channel 2 of your General MIDI device.

When you record new MIDI tracks, use MIDI Thru in Metro to route data from your MIDI controller to any channel of any of your MIDI devices. Enable Automatic MIDI Thru in the Switches menu to instruct Metro to automatically change the MIDI Thru device to match the Output channel and port setting of the record-enabled track, when you use Metro Outputs. When using Ports, Metro will automatically set the MIDI Thru to all channels through, meaning that any channel received will be echoed straight through to the output port.

The next step in your first session is Customizing Metro's Window Layout.

Using MIDI Thru