Love the concept of MIDI Chord Maker and have incorporated it into a couple of my rackspaces. I’m using GP 5.1.6 on a Mac OS Tahoe 26.3. While rehearsing for some shows, I came across an issue where MIDI Chord Maker will illuminate one of the chosen chord notes in green, even when no note is being played. When the note that contains the lit note gets triggered, the illuminated note will continue sounding. Pressing the panic button will stop the note sounding, but the issue persists every time a note is played that triggers the lit note. I’ve experienced this happening with both a SWAM Alto Sax VST3 3.11.0 and Vienna Synchron Player VST3 1.3.2994. Now, this doesn’t occur right away, but only after the GP file has been open for quite awhile, from one to several hours. For the last round of live shows, my solution has been to quit GP after sound check, then relaunch and reload the gig file before performance and again during intermission. Screenshots are attached to demonstrate what’s happening.
I’ve seen something that might be related. What I see in common between our wiring is that you have chord maker AND a MIDI in block feeding the same VST. I have that in my situation as well.
What happens on mine is everything works just fine until I am playing parts that use both the MIDI in and chord maker to play that single VST at the same time. I end up with a hung note. And it’s fairly consistent. Hitting the panic button is not required in my case. I can clear the hung note by pressing and releasing my sustain pedal. I wonder if that would clear your hung note as well.
In this particular rackspace, I’m using MIDI Chord Maker as an in key transposer, i.e. the pressed key isn’t the actual note that sounds, but the note a minor or major third above it sounds. Since the SWAM sax VST is monophonic, trying to get more than one note at a time isn’t possible. I did replicate the stuck note today, but the sustain pedal did not clear the sounding note for me, only the panic button would. And only temporarily at that. The stuck note returned the next time I played the key. Your comment about having the chord maker and a MIDI in block is interesting, but I don’t know of another way to trigger the chord maker. When I disconnected the MIDI in block, unsurprisingly there was no sound from the plugin at all. I may swap out chord maker with the Obelisk VST from Frozen Plain, which performs a similar function and has never given me stuck notes.
If I understand correctly, he is talking about the other connection into the instrument:
There might be duplicated events coming into the plugin which cause this.
I would like to try to reproduce this, maybe can you export the rackspace?
The other line is coming from my Softstep, which is only sending out CC values, in this case CC 11 for expression. No note data is coming from it, but that brings up an interesting point. I’m already testing Obelisk in its place, but perhaps swapping it back to chord maker and putting a MIDI filter block in between the Softstep and the SWAM plugin might have an effect. I’ll give it a go and export the rackspace once I’ve tested it.
Another thing you can try is add additional chord makers on each path incoming into SWAM, these chord makers will not map any note, they will just passthrough the MIDI notes as they arrive.
If a note will be stuck again then you’ll be able to see it in one of these chord makers and know what source is responsible to send a note on without a note off.
I swapped chord maker back in for Obelisk and also added a MIDI filter from the Softstep set to block notes. Almost immediately started getting stuck notes again on the alto sax plugin, so back to Obelisk. Rackspace is attached if you’d like to take a look at it.
Jet.rackspace (851.8 KB)
Thank you, will check it.
@baritone
Can you please send me the rackspace in which the issue is reproducing?
The rackspace you sent above contains the Obelisk, not the chord maker.
Sorry. Here’s the version with chord maker.
Jet.rackspace (852.2 KB)
I tried to reproduce the issue without success, I understand that it takes time. I’ll keep on trying.
Is it always the same note that is get stucked (I suspect the D3 or F#3)?
Can you view the stucked note in green color in chord maker?
Does it reproduce when setting the ‘Legato retrigger notes’ to Off?
I wonder if it reproduces with other plugins, e.g. replacing the SWAP with an Arturia plugin.
I had the exact same issue. If I restarted gp, it all worked fine until it didn’t again.
I ended up replacing with another chord maker, which works fine
Yes, I believe it’s the D3 that gets stuck and yes, after it does get stuck, the note will always display green until quitting, relaunching the app and reloading the gig file. I’ve also had it occur with a VSL Synchron plug in, but I’ll try toggling the Legato retrigger notes switch and see if that helps.
Thank you for this, I’ll also try to reproduce it.
OK, I found my problem and it has nothing to do with chordmaker. Under very specific conditions, Native Instruments Symphonic Strings will hang a note on even though a note off for that note has been sent. Since pressing the sustain pedal causes that note to be released, I must assume it is a problem related to sustain within that VST.
Wow…great catch. What are the circumstances that cause this?
Best I can determine, I am releasing the sustain after changing from a current note to the new one after pressing the new one. I do this several times in a phrase. But only E3 hangs, none of the other notes where I do this overlap. I’m feeding symphonic woodwinds and strings and pro strings from the same MIDI in block. Only the one note on symphonic strings hangs, nothing on woodwinds or pro strings.
Regardless, absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I also use chordmaker in that phrase. The note hangs before chords are actually activated. So, my problem would have no bearing on @baritone 's original problem.
I tried hardly to reproduce the stuck note you reported using your rackspace without a success.
I also applied an automated stress test sending thousands of notes mixed with CCs for a long time, but yet couldn’t get a stuck note.
As you can reproduce it, can you please add a MIDI Monitor plugin right before the chord maker, open it while running and reproduce?
If succeeded, then please copy the notes and send them back to be to analyze.