Never mind. Turns out it was a weird interaction that I don’t understand yet between the Montage and Cubase. Somehow the drum track of the Pattern was getting routed through Cubase and back out to the rhythm guitar Part on the Montage. Something to investigate tomorrow.

Complicated! Fascinating! Yikes!

I only see MIDI Channel 6 data on the .mid file and this plays the e.guitar.
The MONTAGE CONNECT Performance has the Master Arp Switch set to On — this is a red flag because if you activate the PART’s Arp On/Off incoming MIDI data will Arpeggiate the Arpeggio data (a different kind of chaos from Drums being misrouted).

When working in the MONTAGE Pattern Sequence any active Arpeggio will be *transferred* to the Track as MIDI Events when Record is executed. After the data is transferred, you should deactivate the Arpeggio entirely. Treat the data that was generated as regular MIDI Track events.

Hint: When *transferring* Arp data to a Pattern, use “Key On Start” = On to ensure placement of the first events, and set ”Loop” = Off to automate punch out (this ensures no data gets spilled over past the top).

It is not exactly clear when the merging of data may occur, but remember, unless you are using the INPUT TRANSFORMER in Cubase Pro, an active Cubase MIDI Track will record all incoming MIDI data , no matter what Channel it comes in on, and it will reChannelize it for output. For example a single Cubase Midi Track could record Channels 6, 7 and 8 all to one Track.
(If the Cubase Track is set to “Any” each Channel goes Out on the Channel it came in…)

Looking at the MIDI “List Editor” you will see all the events and the Channels they came In on… on the Track Inspector, if you were to set the OUT CH to “6”, all data would be reChannelized to Channel 6 (chaos) this would explain how data can be merged. You mentioned it was not Type 0 not sure why but I’ll ask, Why not? Or why is this significant?

Type 0 is in MIDI files as Type O is in blood, the universal donor. Everyone can read it.
Even if it were Type 1, the data should divide by Channel. MONTAGE can read either Type. The difference:
TYPE 0 takes advantage of the fact that 16 MIDI Channels of data can remain discreet even when they are on a single Track — it is the Channel # that separates the data.
TYPE 1 you can have several Tracks of data that feed a MIDI Channel -
(when this is loaded, all Channel 1 data is merged to a single Track, all Ch2 data is merged to a single Track, and so on through Ch16).

MONTAGE can read either type.

The Performance on the Montage has rhythm guitar (channel 6), bass (channel 7), drums (channel 8). Cubase has 3 corresponding MIDI tracks with the same channel settings.

What happened was that I inadvertently left Monitor on for the rhythm guitar Cubase track. So when I hit Play on the Montage, all three of the MIDI tracks from the Pattern (rhythm guitar, bass, drums), played into that Cubase track and then out onto MIDI channel 6, back to the Montage rhythm guitar Part. This caused ungodly noise when I hit Play on the Montage, even though when I hit Play in Cubase, everything played just fine.

I had a confusing couple of hours there before I figured out what was going on.

From what you're saying, it sounds like it doesn't really matter whether I create my MIDI files as Type 0 or Type 1. That's good to know. Is there any reason why it would be better to choose one versus the other when creating MIDI files that I am going to load into the Montage?

Is there any reason why it would be better to choose one versus the other when creating MIDI files that I am going to load into the Montage?

Type 1 — when the MONTAGE encounters a MIDI File of this type, all Tracks that are MIDI CH1 will be merged to play from MONTAGE Part 1, Track 1.

How this might impact things is when you are using multiple devices and there are multiple Tracks going out on MIDI CH1 but to separate devices. Each device can have 16 Channels, say you have 16 Channels for the MONTAGE and you have another synth on an entirely separate Port with its own 16 channels… saving a Type 1 file in that situation would not work for MONTAGE… all Tracks that are Channel 1 are merged.

Say you are just working with MONTAGE, but in Cubase you used a separate Track for each principal drum. You have your Kick Drum on Track 1, your Snare on Track 2, your hihats on Track 3. all are feeding the same Drum Kit via Channel 1. You did this so visually you could edit the drums more efficiently… if you export this as TYPE 1… each Tracks exist separately in Cubase, but if loaded to the MONTAGE all Tracks designated Ch1 will be merged… instead of three separate Tracks on Ch1, you get one Track with all three drums merged to a single Track, Track 1.

They will sound the same but look different.

So to answer the question… no.