Huge Midi Oversight? --> Nna For Midi Out And Plugins Missing

Help, Support & Bugs
15

The point is it does behave differently if you use one or more columns. This is clearly down to the fact Renoise must be sending a Note Off directly before an Note Event in the same column (I assume looking back to send it on the correct Note value.) With internal samples you can choose whether it does this or not.

Is there any reason somebody shouldn’t be able to record a live drum pattern, which will obviously all go in one column as long as only one hit is activated at a time, and not have each drum sample play to the end? Doesn’t matter if we’re talking a drum machine like a SR16, an MPC type machine or the V-Drums used by the original poster you are still talking about samples, many of which are less than half a second, longest probably no longer than 2-3 seconds. Why should Renoise not be able to handle all these in the same column like it does its internal samples. A Note On is only followed by a Note Off or a Change! There is not a This Note Is Still Active sent every polling opportunity! As we are talking short drum samples there is little need to send Note Offs a lot of the time and overlapping within the same column would make live recording from MIDI devices so much less of a pain!

Or maybe some kind of Drum Recording Mode, where you can create a Track of a certain amount of Columns and Renoise would advance on to the Right with each Note entered, thus reducing amount of Notes erroneously cut short?.. If people really don’t like the idea of the user being able to control Note Off generation being in the hands of the user.

16

Apparently Kazakore is the only one understanding what the actual issue is! It is not about not sending note offs, it is about the case when the note of will be later then a new note (which will force a premature note off)!

In my first post I linked to another post with a MIDI example which Renoise just cannot handle! Period! That is the problem which I think should be faced.

17

Yes, but the easiest way to visualize the problem is that this is not possible:

C-4(1)
…
C-4(2)
…
Off(1)
…
Off(2)

The C-4(2) will cut off C-4(1), although it shouldn’t. This is solvable by using another column, but only up to 12 and this will also not happen automatically when recording (if I correctly understood the post I linked to in the beginning).

18

The issue is simply that the 2nd note in a column will cut off the 1st note in that same column, while two notes played in separate columns works normally (assuming that they are actually different notes). The first 2 patterns in your example demonstrate things quite sufficiently in this regard.

The last 2 patterns are unnecessary I think. If anything, they only reveal how well that particular MIDI device handles its note input, which is not really a limitation that Renoise can control. Attempting to trigger 12 simultaneous C-4 notes in any synth is going to be weird.

Many will simply reject 11 of those notes, for example, while others will handle it differently. My own “Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth” (set to a nice classy GM piano sound!) simply triggers all 12 in rapid fire style, leaving only the final C-4 playing. Again, this is mostly a limitation of the synth itself (and MIDI in general) rather than how Renoise handles it.

In any case, I think it would be a bit more accurate if you change your example so that it attempts to play 12 different notes all at once. Here’s a slightly modified version:
http://illformed.org/temp/MIDIPolyphony2.xrns

Edit: With all the back and forth that’s occurred within this thread, I think the answer is simply more available note columns, and some smarter behaviour on Renoise’s part when recording notes into the pattern itself. Trying to hack in NNAs for MIDI notes doesn’t feel like the right approach to me.

19

Actually, rereading the post I linked to, even this does not seem to be possible:

Column1…Column2

C-4(1)…—
------…—
------…C-4(2)
------…—
Off(1)…—
------…—
------…—Off(2)

As reported in the other thread, again, C-4(2) will cut off C-4(1).

20

(edit: nevermind)

21

That is to be expected and a fundamental feature to how MIDI works. You only send as Note On for a value (0-127 being the notes) they do not have a unique ID associated with them. You are never going to be able to cut off the notes separately like that!

But I believe the way most sequencers get around the Note Off problem is by having MIDI/Music Tracks and Drum Track, where the Drum Tracks usually don’t sent Note Offs as they are assumed to be used with short samples/envelopes and thus not needed.

22

Okay, now I am officially confused :)
I thought that this would be possible in a piano role, but you seem to suggest that it is not.
Then what is the issue here? Why does the V-drum example work in Reaper (with the same hardware!), but not in Renoise?

23

The issue of notes cutting each other off when programmed in the same column isn’t a problem imo, it is a feature!

24

It probably is, at least one some sequencers. I know in the old days I’ve played around with layering the same vocal sample from the same key on a sampler but can’t remember if I could be done from a normal track or if I had to pretend it was a drum track to get it to work (changing MIDI Channel from 10 as that is always default for drums.)

But a MIDI Note Off relates to the Note number/value of the Note On, so all repeats of that same note (sample/whatever) will stop with a Note Off to it. All that is needed for what the original poster wants is an absence of Note Offs unless specifically requested.

As to V-Drums using Note Offs to do things like Open/Close a hi-hat I believe a Note On with Velocity of 0 (zero) is the same as a Note Off, or you could use the cut in one tick command and have very low velocity if this doesn’t work (if you need exact precision playing delayed on line before.)

yes it’s a feature called NNA which we have control over for internal samples.

25

…but whether you input your sounds into different columns of the same track with according note offs, or be able to define overlappable note-offs like you seem to want, it will result in almost the same amount of programming work, no? Only recording notes live automatically divides across columns based on the time notes are held, how would renoise know where to place note-off’s through programming without you specifying the lengths?

I probably just don’t get it :)

26

What Note Offs? The point is drum tracks don’t usually have them!

Well unless you purposely want to cut a hit short, such as the effect of grabbing the rim of a cymbol, or as has been posted out for special tasks where V-Drums uses them in that one particular case.

In your drum tracks from samples within Renoise how many times do you enter a Note Off compared to a Note On? Very few I would imagine!

27

I just tried microtonic demo, drumatic & drumular and all these drum vsti’s subsequent note events programmed in one track don’t cut each other off! A crash keeps on playing for example even though it is immediately followed by a snare or whatever. Maybe it is something that doesn’t work in your drum vsti or hardware unit?

28

It’s not me personally and the guy who started this is talking specifically about external hardware, so maybe it is to do with MIDI only, not VSTi.

29

I actually thought a little about this the other night, after posting that, but am having serious computer problems at home currently.

[s]In many ways the comment that NNA options for MIDI shouldn’t be available from Renoise is correct. It should be down to the MIDI Hardware how it behaves if it sees two consecutive Note Ons for the same Note.

But this does still mean that Renoise should not send Note Offs before a Note On in a …[/s]

Actually, as writing this I see that if Renoise did not send Note Offs to the preceding Note then it would break any normal playing and chords played on MIDI Instruments so is still actually required for the (probably majority) of situations.

I really do see the simplest way of solving this of basic NNA settings for a MIDI Instrument, Note Off or Continue, with Note Off obviously being the default (and as Renoise currently works) and likely to be all that is needed in the majority of situations,

30

There have been done a lot of improvements on the midi area in Renoise because of hanging notes and missing the first note in a pattern to play.
Midi gear just limits the host developer to go a certain way or you just get confronted with bad behavior complaints.
Midi has a lot of limitations which is why hardware controler manufacturers attempting to bring their own proprietary format to compensate for this, like Novation designed Automap, pure to get around a lot of limitations that Midi has.
I partially understand the decision but i also mainly disagree.
I would rather have the manufacturers upgrade the existing midi standard, but it hasn’t been cleverly designed in the past that it allowed room for future expansions.

31

OSC, and also arguably M-LAN, have both attempted to do this but unfortunately never got that far with being taken up by manufacturers and standardised.

ut you do see that fore normal (synth/piano/pad/lead) playing Renoise needs to work with MIDI as it currently does, Note Off going to preceding note in column? Yet also that this may not be desirable at times, especially with drums? Would it really be so bad to give the user control of this per Instrument?

32

This is really something the hardware and plugin has to take care off. With the plugin you still have the advantages that you can also automate it’s parameters using the VST device, because the plugin also exposes parameters to influence.
There is not much extra around here for midi and what exists still has to go through the same cable. For this reason you e.g. also cannot use the volume and pitch envelopes in the native instrument section, on plugins and midi instruments when we speak of polyphonic instruments.
I would personally love it if that would be possible, but as soon as polyphone comes into the game, you affect all notes and not just those you want independently.

33

How can MIDI hardware know to strip out extra Note Offs that have been inserted by Renoise?!!

Really feel like I’m banging my head against a brick wall now!!!

34

I know what you want, but let me ask you a relative question, but then on the Renoise side of the midi cable; i more or less attempted to create this imagination somewhere in my first reply, but perhaps you have a good idea that you can put in a mock-up for us here which would resolve the problem i foresee:
How would you design a midi NNA feature that allows you to manually send note-offs to your midi hardware, for note-ons that have been triggered two or three notes back in the same column?

I’m honestly curious…
Just let’s pick an example mockup from my side:

  
00 C-5  
01 ---  
02 D-4  
03 ---  
04 G-4  
05 ---  
06 [-]

On row 6 you want to send a note-off for the C-5 triggered in row 00. the NNA has been set not to send note-offs before each new note is triggered.
Tell me how we can realise this?

you could perhaps say, okay, the first triggered note-off shall be sent to the first triggered note.
For the above example, that still is fairly easy, but now we pull in the sequencer and make some changes:

  
Sequence [64]  
 00 00 C-5  
 01 01 [-]  
 02 02 D-4  
[01] 03 ---  
 02 04 G-4  
 03 05 ---  
 03 06 [-]  
 05

Sequence 3 is currently visible (pattern 01).
Same question, but now which is the first note and how many sequence positions would you have to scroll back to figure out where the first note starts? Where is the last note-off? For which note is the note-off on row 01?

You might invent a whole new kind of note-off that really only relates to the note triggered by switching the note-char and octave value from position:

  
Sequence [64]  
 00 00 C-5  
 01 01 5-E  
 02 02 D-4  
 [01] 03 ---  
 02 04 G-4  
 03 05 ---  
 03 06 5-C  
 05

Makes it a bit more on target because the 5-E will send a note off to an E-5 casted somewhere in pattern 2 (or perhaps ending in pattern 01 on sequence position 1) and the 5-C will be casted to well, at least the first C-5 that had been triggered, you don’t know for sure if that will be the one in the current pattern or one in pattern 2, so you still might end up searching for lost notes that aren’t being cut or faded and you have to figure out which note.

You can also say “I don’t not want to send note-offs to any notes, i just want them to continue” because that is what you aim for, but the above is also a realistic picture if NNA continue would be applied for midi.

But we still have this thing:
Does your midi device automatically shut down the playing note as soon as the sample has been fully played until the end? or does it remain waiting for the note-offs before it again accepts a new note for its internal sample channel?
If it keeps waiting for the note off values, also your midi device will run out of polyphonic voices and will stop responding to new note input or will replace the last played note for the newly triggered one.

Gear is different, some midi devices support 64 voices polyphony, some go up to 32 and some only go up to 12. You can’t use over ten fingers anyway.
Plugins differ as well. If a solution has to be written, it has to support all these devices and plugins properly.

So, now you have something to feed your point of view, perhaps i’ve overlooked something.