Trackin' my drums? No prob.. Trackin' my instruments? Prob..

Here's the deal. At the present time I can only track 2 sounds at a time into my DAW (Sonar/Cakewalk.) But I actually only track 1 sound at a time to keep things real simple until. I can solo an audio track and track it to Sonar no problem (everything synced and ok)... Problem is that when I solo a track that has midi information recorded on it, I can't track it to Sonar. My soundcard only has 1 midi in and 1 midi out, and 1 audio in and 1 audio out.. (NOTE: My Fantom Xa is equipped with a MIDI Thru.. also what does THru really do and could it be useful in this situation?) Anyway, I have my Fantom midi'ed to my MPC 1000 using MIDI 1A (no prob). How can I track these midi tracks into my DAW? Before I explain how I track, you should know that I do this only b/c I have a lack of cables and I am not sure what I need yet (audio & midi or both?).. Follow me here, when I track, first I have to unplug (lack of extra midi cables) my midi cables from my Fantom and plug those in the MIDI in and out of the soundcard. Problem is that this takes my signal away that carries my midi information. My drum sounds track & sync very nicely into my DAW cause they're not midi. There's the problem. Because I have to unplug the MIDI cables from my Fantom there is no avenue for the MIDI signal to travel.. Do I simply have to buy 2 more Midi cables and plug them from my MPC 2 B and run these cable directly to my soundcard? Would that work? Any suggestions would be tried and greatly appreciated?

Thanks alot,

Chris
a.k.a. MastaMnd

I'm not sure did I understand this correctly, but what I do with my midi instruments, is that I resample them into waw in the mpc. That way, there's no midi data in the instruments and it's only sound like your drums. I don't know did this help you..

That's possible. But I think you're talking about a different production technique. I don't think that would work in this case.. I think your talking about sampling something you play from your keyboard and then assigning that to a pad and triggering it from a pad right? If so, this is not exactly what I want to do. Basically, when I unplug my midi cables from my keyboard, I'm breaking the midi link between my keyboard and my MPC.... Without it the MPC doesn't know what to play/trigger... How do I get around this? So that I can track these tracks/patches/sounds into my DAW (Sonar) along with the rest of the beat...

You just need to buy more MIDI cables!

A MIDI THRU port simply passes the MIDI data through the machine. As an example, you can hook several modules together by daisy-chaining them like this: Sequencer OUT to moduleA IN, moduleA THRU to moduleB IN, moduleB THRU to moduleC. A reason to do this is you have a controller OUT to your sequencer IN and you want the sequencer to trigger all the sounds in the modules, but the modules don't need to send any data back. Hooking them up as outlined above, the first module simply passes the data through (THRU) to the next machine. Your sequencer can pass info on the same MIDI pathway, using different channels for each different module.