Hi folks,
Just getting started with GP here, and I’m having a bit of trouble getting Pianoteq (6.5.3) to respond to program change messages from GP. Here’s what I’ve done:
Created a new rackspace with Pianoteq, a MIDI IN, and a MIDI Monitor
Verfied that Pianoteq is getting note and CC MIDI messages correctly
Create a button widget that sends a PC
Hit the button
Here’s what I see - All note and CC data arrives at Pianoteq, and Pianoteq responds correctly, but PC messages seem to just never get there. The screenshot below illustrates the problem. The Note On and Note off are both seen in the GP MIDI monitor and the Pianoteq MIDI monitor, but the PC message is only seen in the GP MIDI monitor. Pianoteq seems to not recognize the MIDI message (or just not think it’s arriving).
If I redirect the PC message to an instance of Kontakt6 it works fine, just not in Pianoteq. I’ve tried toggling the “Use zero-based PC numbers” option but it doesn’t change the behavior.
It is probably because your PC message is supposed to go through a MIDI out. The GP MIDI monitor displays the overall MIDI activity, if you want to display only what is sent to your plugin, add a MIDI monitor in the connections view and do a connection from your MIDI in to it (that’s what goes to the VST).
If you want to know exactly what is being sent to the Pianoteq plugin block, you can use a MIDI Monitor block which (in contrast to the global MIDI monitor) shows you just the MIDI messages from its incoming connections
If you want to send program change to Pianoteq, you must set up the presets you want to select in Pianoteq’s Global MIDI Mapping. No PC presets are previously defined by default. You can set up other MIDI commands here, as well.
That’s right and this will show you that no PC comes to Pianoteq. If you want to play with PC and send it to Pianoteq add a Knob widget and connect it to the PC parameter of your MIDI in block plugin.
That’s definitely the canonical way and better in the sense that it gives you more freedom when changing your hardware controller. But I‘m pretty sure (though currently not able to check) that it’s possible to route incoming PC messages directly to plugins.
Of course it is possible, but @deanwinter tried to do it with a “PC” widget button. At the end the good idea is not to send PC but to have different rackspaces with the right PC.
Thanks for the responses, folks, and apologies if I’m missing something obvious.
If I use the blocks that I show above (I’d post another screenshot but I only get one image per post right now), here’s what I see:
The widget (button, knob, whatever) sends a PC message that the MIDI monitor sees, but Pianoteq seems to not. Note that I’ve set up a number of PC mappings in Pianoteq:
Thanks for the help, folks. I thought maybe a MIDI filter in Pianoteq as well, but for the life of me I can’t find one.
Maybe there’s another way to skin this cat. I’ve been using different rack spaces for each of my Pianoteq sounds. For example, one rack space for Grand, one for upright, one for honky tonk etc. That works OK, but then I figured I’d try to be more efficient by just using one rack space for Pianoteq and using variations for each preset. Alas, Pianoteq does not expose presets as a VST parameter, so that’s what made me go down this program change rabbit hole.
Now, there’s nothing preventing me from continuing to use 1 rack space for each of the six or so presets I use and having multiple instances of Pianoteq loaded (using predictive loading might with RAM usage), but it’d be nice to be more efficient. Could I, for example, somehow set each variation to send a PC to Pianoteq rather than controlling it with a widget? Or is there some other mechanism that you folks use?
Turns out you have to go into their Options (click the button near the top right of the plugin), then in the drop down list of presets, you have to click in the MIDI column, THEN you have to send the desired program change number from your controller (via Gig Performer) for Pianoteq to learn them.
Hi djh, thanks for checking that. It’s weird, that doesn’t work for me. You can see in this screenshot I’m trying to learn the MIDI PC message and it just never learns it, like the PC messages aren’t arriving or not recognized.