I’m halfway through GP trial period and I’ve got a hold of the basic concepts of it. I created a few racks but today, when I was simulating a live situation, I came across an undesirable outcome: stuck notes from VSTi plugins that had been bypassed and then enabled again.
I realized that happens when I bypass a plugin while holding down the sustain pedal. When I re-enable the plugin, even if I have stopped playing and took my foot off the pedal, the notes are still ringing.
But I also noticed this only happens with some plugins, incidentally, the ones I need the most, sigh!
I tried to find a function to include a pedal-off message associated to the plugin bypass message, but couldn’t find it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I am still evaluating whether to buy GP or not (this, you’d agree with me, would be a real deal breaker).
First, don’t hesitate… buy GP. You won’t be sorry.
As far as your specific issue, would your desired outcome be to simply have the notes stop playing when the devices are disabled? If so, some creative GPScript may be the appropriate option. There are some here that are really gifted in that area that would know if this can be done via GPScript and if so, how to approach that particular script.
What I’m more interested in though is your specific use case for enabling/disabling devices while playing. Why are you doing this? What is the desired outcome?
the typical cases are layers piano + strings and e.piano + pads. For instance, when I want to bring in the strings or pads and then out again. I believe I can do that with variations of the rack. Is that what you would suggest?
I’m wondering if an option that might work in this case is that instead of disabling the plugins, you could remove the midi routing to the instruments you want to ‘stop’ rather that disabling them. I think this would still allow the sustain ‘off’ to reach them, thus having the same effect.
From my standpoint, I would typically take a different approach and use either a second pedal or an expression pedal to turn the audio ‘off’ on the plugins I want to silence and use a single rackspace with no variations. Of course, I have two controllers and each one has an expression pedal, so that approach makes sense for me. Your mileage may vary.
Someone might correct me, but I believe this is a similar issue to what I was seeing with some reverb/delay plugins - in my case when I disabled the plugin and then re-enabled, whatever was in the delay/reverb buffer when I disabled it carries on playing when I re-enabled it - sounds like this is similar but for a virtual instrument. If that is the case - and the fact it only happens with some plugins suggests it is - then it’s not an issue with GP, but sadly is with the plugins. Have you tried the same plugins doing the same sort of thing in another DAW? That would be another check that’s it’s not a GP issue.
Hopefully someone will clarify that as I’m not 100% certain!
The sustain pedal has special functionality in GP, in particular it’s used to support Patch Persist. Why exactly are you trying to bypass a plugin with the sustain pedal? Is it intended to be bypassed for a very short period of time? (FYI, you could bypass the MidiIn block that connects to it as doing so will send Note Off events to the plugin)
Do they ring forever or do they fade out?
Which plugins? When a plugin is bypassed, it is told to “reset”, and the plugin should, well, “reset”, which means, among other things, that any sound generation should be stopped. If it doesn’t, that’s a plugin bug.
That’s yet another way. However, if you’re doing that kind of thing, it might be easier to simply use a mixer block with a widget to control the MUTE of one of the inputs
I.e, here’s a rackspace with a single keyboard connected to all three instruments
Thank you dhj, I did this also but I read that muting is not like bypassing, as bypassing doesn’t allow the plugin to be triggered, taking load off the CPU and/or RAM, which is something desirable.
Hello, dhj, I am not using the sustain pedal to bypass the plugins. I am using buttons on my MIDI controller to bypass the plugins, and I use the pedal to sustain the sound. The notes get stuck forever, they don’t fade. Well, a piano sound would decay but if you play the same not again they will get sustained, the note on message is still there.
I use a lot of free plugins some of which don’t have this issue, some have (like KeyZone Classic and Cheeze Machine 2).
It was not intended to be sarcasm - it was intended to humorously make the point that we get overly focused on the wrong thing, i.e. being worried about using too many CPU cycles, when there isn’t in fact a problem.
So, as I said earlier, unless you are actually experiencing glitches that are clearly due to too many CPU cycles being used for audio processing, it’s not worth being concerned about saving cycles.
I use SampleTank samples that are huge, like some Yamaha pianos that are as big as 3 GB and when layered with another plugin cause huge CPU usage, and even glitches. I will try bypassing the midi inputs and see how it goes, thanks for the suggestion, I appreciate.
Oh — yeah, I’m not sure they really thought about it being used in live performance (as opposed to recording it by itself in a DAW and then freezing the track) other than by itself.
For piano, I use Modart Pianoteq which is really amazing (and it’s a physical model so no samples to deal with).
Also, plugins like Kontakt, which do direct from disk streaming, are way less CPU intensive.
Some of ST samples are really good but I have to say it is more suited for the producer rather than the gigging musician. I have downloaded and tested Pianoteq and I can’t convince myself to like it, but I guess I will have to compromise at some point (the model I liked the most is the K2). I want to be able to switch sounds immediately in a live situation and save my Surface resources.
Also, depending on your budget, another very powerful trick is to use Kontakt and just sample all the notes of the other plugin and throw them into Kontakt. Tools like SampleRobot are designed for exactly this process.
I am ready to spend any reasonable amount of money as I am a full time gigging musician and I want to invest in my job but I want to do it wisely (not like I did with ST and Syntronik, lol!). So before I buy more advanced and sophisticated stuff I want to educate myself better. I am in the process of switching from hardware gear to a computer based rig. I am just starting out with VSTs, Plugin Hosts, Soft Synths etc. I’ve tested some competitors but now that I found GP I think I am on the right path.
