Per-Anders EdwardsI assume there is a midi CC set up for this that controls a global velocity multiplier, but which one is it?
JohnHi,
where are you looking for this kind of control and what is the intended purpose? E.g. are you looking for a real-time control for incoming MIDI or do you want to affect already present MIDI on your Song Track.
BR,
John
John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
Per-Anders EdwardsThe second, to quickly automate velocity of an existing track in a DAW for smooth build up/down.
Are you saying there’s isn’t one for this? If so then please add it to the suggestions list as it would speed up workflow a great deal as opposed to manually editing each hit to create the smooth builds within a single pattern that I want.
In an ideal world I’d really want to be able to automate both this and the “quantity” dial from the pattern editor to effectively emulate the way e.g, a jazz drummer will simplify and lower volume when it’s time for an instruments solo. It would be especially useful in a live situation where you can’t necessarily pre-program, but could attach an expression pedal and give yourself a much more flexible virtual accompaniment.
Mark KingSurely what you are explains is dynamics and not velocity. Wouldn’t you program dynamics into your track so the quiet parts would also have a different tone due to softer hits? Especially for jazz.
To drop the track though it’s cc7 for overall volume. In Cubase you can just draw in a volume curve.
SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors
Per-Anders EdwardsNo I mean velocity. Dynamics is the available range between quietest and loudest hit, volume is the (output) audio signal attenuation. Velocity is how hard you hit a note, represented as a MIDI value.
I’m looking to have a natural pulled back sound. So I don’t want to make the notes more even, if anything they should be slightly more erratic at lower volume because it’s much harder to hit evenly. I don’t want to just reduce the volume, I can automate the channel fader for that. I want to automate the relative velocity of the notes.
It’s dead simple stuff. I just don’t want to have to manually program every notes velocity.
Bear-Faced CowSorry, but Mark is correct. Altering the relative velocity IS altering the dynamics. Aside from using the grid editor and a pencil tool to change the dynamics, what you want is more of a DAW functionality in which a MIDI transform would be used to translate a MIDI CC code into velocity. Such a feature is found in DAW‘s like Logic.
Frankly, you are better off doing the work by hand on the timeline if you want the realism that you seek.
jord
Per-Anders EdwardsNo, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what I mean and what I want.
Velocity is the second byte of the “note on” message within the midi spec, it’s well documented and understood. How a VST uses it is up to the VST, in the case of most drum libraries including SD velocity is mapped to a combination of sample layers and direct volume control of those samples to create smooth transition between them.
What is the point of your interjection? The dynamics will of course be affected by adjusting velocity either relative to the surrounding velocities or relative to the overall values depending on whether it’s a multiplication or a clamped subtraction. That’s neither here nor there though, a control to modify dynamics would only modify the available range of sample layers and output volume, I need a velocity control before I need an “evenness” control though both would be great. I see no advantage to manually editing lots of midi events to do basic things a control curve was designed to do.
Bear-Faced CowI fail to see the point of your education attempt here. I know exactly what the velocity component of a midi note is and have known for 40 years. I have also known for all that time that you cannot automate it in that sense. You can either transform it or edit it. Transformation is done within a DAW by either a real time transformation component or a script, relying on a MIDI CC, either drawn or played in which the transformation function can remap your MIDI CC value to a velocity value. That’s pretty much how it works. In there you can have your curves all you want. However, I also know from many years of drum programming experience that this will not give you any type of realism. However, there’s no point in discussing this with you, since you’re convinced otherwise.
jord
Per-Anders EdwardsWhat was your attempt at education for? You injected yourself into this topic and seem to have difficulty with reading comprehension and a big need to interject with straw men.
Did I say directly manipulate the MIDI? I said automation, fairly standard language.
Your apologist opinion on how ineffective automation is simply isn’t relevant to my post or request. I’d be very surprised if it want there already and even if not what I’m asking for doesn’t obviate any ability to manually edit notes. Despite you and your protestations over accuracy and desire to hold things back SD even includes the convenience ability to manipulate a clip’s velocity before placement in the timeline, so the programmers already disagree with you and I believe them to be more competent than apparently you believe them to be.
What works for you, works for you. That’s great. This isn’t about you.
Bear-Faced CowWhat part of “velocity is not an automatable component of MIDI – you need a transformer type object” are you not comprehending?
There is no apologist opinions given here. Just facts. Seriously, skip the pedantic and trollish response. And don’t bother telling me my name means “dirt” in your language either. It only makes me laugh.
jord
Mac McCormickI’ve been working with MIDI since the mid 1980’s. (thanks Dave Smith, et al) I worked with music software and hardware companies for almost 20 years, and Jord (Bear Faced Cow) is correct. He’s given you all the options of “automating” velocity. (a term I had never heard before)
How do YOU automate volume or any other CC? You use a curve tool, or pencil tool, or whatever tool, to draw in what you want. You can do this same thing to velocity in a DAW. It’s easy peasy. Or do you mean randomize velocity? Yeah, you can do that too. So I don’t get what the deal is here.
Velocity is not continuous like a CC. You can’t change the volume/accent, etc. of a MIDI event over time with velocity. But you can still “automate” it like a CC by drawing in the velocity lane of your DAW like you would for any CC.
If none of this is making sense to you it’s because we don’t understand your question. There are a lot of smart people here and looks like either we don’t get what you are asking, or you don’t get what we’re saying
Cubase Pro, Korg Kronos, M-50, Hammond XK-1c, Toontrack SD3, EZBass w/lots of expansions, many VSL Vi's, Shreddage 3 everything, and shit-tons of FX plugins.
Mark KingYeah I’m not getting it either. I play drums and if I’m doing a jazz type part on SD3 I hit hard when I want it loud and sift when I want it quiet as the drums sound different hit soft. Turning the volume down will just have it quieter but with the wrong type of sound.
Just use volume automation in a DAW for the whole kit turned down. Not too difficult as mentioned in one of the other answers.
SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors
Per-Anders EdwardsReading comprehension folks. I specifically stated velocity, not volume. Velocity is not the same thing as volume, nor is it purely an input event, again – I stated automation for playback.
Automating velocity is quite common, competitors products offer this as standard. It doesn’t mean automating the values coming in externally nor did I say as such and you would really have to do a heck of a lot of mental gymnastics to imagine as such.
This is an incredibly basic idea and I can’t help but feel people are being purposefully obtuse for the sake of trolling. Seeing as you veritably demand a full explanation then here goes in rough technical form, try not to get lost :
SD owns it’s own timeline, at the same time any VST can support a large number of automation lanes and even offer descriptors to the host so that it can offer them to the user with readable names. How the VST uses the resulting values it gets from the host is up to it. In this case it’s trivial – the note values are read from the internal timeline, the velocity value for any new note is modified by the value passed from the host before it reaches the audio engine (sample player) which then triggers the appropriate sample playback at the appropriate volume.
The modification itself is simple. In this case it’s simply note.velocity = note.velocity * attenuation (where attenuation is the normalized value from the automation lane with a default value of 1.0) if you wanted to replicate the existing velocity clip modified behavior or if you wanted to behave a little more like a real drummer then note.velocity = max(note.velocity – attenuation, 0) as drummers don’t tend to play with more precision the quieter they play.
Bear-Faced CowThank you for describing MIDI Transformation and not automation.
jord
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Thanked by: Mac McCormickPer-Anders EdwardsSo I guess you don’t know what those words mean. I described a process. The transform is a tiny part of that.
MIDI transformation isn’t a technical term so you can stop holding onto it like a totem it’s just a description, simply – the modification of MIDI data. As it’s a communication standard you can transform MIDI with hardware or software. It’s a function. Automation is the process and workflow used to apply a function over time common to most DAW software. MIDI need not be involved but uses common language, in fact within SD it’s doubtful the imported data is kept in the format.
More to the point it’s irrelevant. My posts are perfectly clear of intended workflow and outcome. There was never a need to go into any further detail.
@mods – Please clean the fluff from this thread up.
Bear-Faced CowHardly irrelevant. Your own words prove you can’t even make the distinction between something that can be automated and something must be transformed. And you keep proving it over and over ad nauseum. Automation is used on UI parameters that modify data. Automation doesn’t modify data itself. It requires something in the middle. UI parameters are indeed transformers. You seem to fail to understand this very basic concept.
And just so you know, transform is not simply to modify. Transformation is indeed a technical process. In fact, it is a mathematically technical process where you are using one piece of data to modify another either by directly mapped formula or mapped by some other mathematical formula. Either way, there is something in the middle taking the piece of data on the left to map it to the piece of data on the right. In fact, without transforms you wouldn’t have many of the plug-ins you get to enjoy using. Then again, you wouldn’t even have various pieces of hardware like guitar amplifiers without mathematical transformations.
MIDI is nothing more than data. That’s it! It’s a stream of numbers. The only part that makes it a standard is how all devices communicate. Being a standard has absolutely nothing to with automation. In order to be able to modify MIDI data using any type of automation data, you need something in the middle to map it. That something in the middle is called a transformer and it is a DAW functionality. In fact, it has been a feature in Logic for the past 35 years, dating back to its predecessors. I’m sure other DAWs have this as well. Logic Pro X users also have MIDI FX Scripts. Again, they take incoming MIDI data and either modify or map it to other MIDI data. That is also a transformer.
Do you wish to tell me otherwise? Please, you’re only making me, as well as anyone else who’s trying to tell you, look better, and your little personal jabs already do that because they only prove you admittance of not being able to make the distinction. The only fluff that needs cleaning are the ones in your posts.
Jord
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