Cymbals some times choking on downbeat for unknown reason…

[John Enroth]

Tech Stuff:

NEW 2019 MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz 32 GB Ram. Mac OS Mojave, Logic Pro X 10.4.6.

Just bought Decades and made sure all my Superior Drummer 3 things are up to date, as of yesterday, and now today sometimes when I start a sequence if I have a cymbal on the downbeat, from where I’m starting my sequence, it will choke the cymbal.  It doesn’t happen all the time, so it’s hard to replicate. It’s not just the Decades kits, it’s happen on several kits. When it does happen it seems to be when I start the song from that downbeat, for instance if I start playing from bar 9 and I have a cymbal crash on bar 9 it will choke the cymbal.  It doesn’t seem to happen if I play a bar before, just only when I start on the same downbeat. I program my own drums, mostly, and make sure its a cymbal hit with a long release.  I’ve made sure there is no channel pressure in the MIDI region to make sure that’s not happening. Anyone else having this issue? It’s not a work breaking bug, but it is annoying, specially when it happens when I try and bounce the music. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.1.4
Operating system: macOS Mojave (10.14)

Topic

[John]

Hi,

please check your MIDI for AfterTouch messages. AfterTouch will choke cymbals.

EDIT * I just saw that you wrote there is no channel pressure messages. Well, can you ZIP the logic file without any audio and attach it to a post here, so I may have a look?

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Henrik Ekblom]

John Enroth wrote:

I’ve made sure there is no channel pressure in the MIDI region to make sure that’s not happening

Since Channel Pressure and Aftertouch are two different things, there could still be Aftertouch in the MIDI? Both are used in SD3 and can trigger mutes of the cymbals.

If you don’t want to use muting at all, you can disable it by selecting the cymbal and unchecking Aftertouch in the property box Choke/Mute Trigger.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[John Enroth]

Thanks for your response, but Logic, as far as I know does not differentiate between Channel Pressure and Aftertouch so I don’t think that’s the issue.  IF you know how to choose between channel pressure and aftertouch in Logic, please let me know as I love to learn something new about a program I’ve been using for almost 20 years.  And again, when I had this problem in the past I would just erase the channel pressure data and the the problem would go away until yesterday and even launching one of the problem sequences I had yesterday it’s not having that problem…of course…I hope it fixed itself.

 

 

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.1.4
Operating system: macOS Mojave (10.14)

[John Enroth]

In preparing the Logic File for .zip I think I figured out what the issue is, but I’m uploading the file anyway, because I don’t remember SD3 doing this before yesterday.  The file in the .zip is for an upcoming episode for a Cartoon Network Show.  The cue starts at bar 217, I do a save as for each new thematically related cue so I have previously material to pull from if needed, if you start from bar 217 it plays fine.  If you start at bar 218 it chokes the cymbal.  I do have a choke at the END of the cue, on purpose and it works great.  I have have some other chokes in PREVIOUS cues.  If I erase the cues prior to the one starting at 217 the problem goes away, even starting at bar 218.  If I put the cues back and start from 218 it happens again.  I get this issue with Kontakt sometime that if there is automation message where I start playing, Logic doesn’t read the information and it gets the information from previous bars of music, so if I erase the previous cues, Logic has no information to pull from and it works fine, as soon as I undo erasing the cues and put the previous cues back in and start at bar 218 it happens again.  While I do believe that this is more of a Logic problem than SD3, I don’t remember having this issue before today. I’ve used SD3 for the entire run of this show and only started having this problem yesterday. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s user error, but please do check out the .zip file and let me know if it’s an actual problem or not.  I do have a work around for this, that I’ve used for Kontakt(which is to just have a “reset” message some time before the cue start), I just never needed it for SD3 before yesterday.

 

Thanks!

[redlogic]

Try putting an automation point (to unchoke) just before the cymbal midi event, so Logic sees a “recent” point. I’ve had the same problem with automation in Logic for years. The extra automation point just before the midi event usually fixes it.

Macmini 2019 3.2 GHz 6-Core i7, 32GB RAM, MacOS 10.15.2, LogicProX 10.4.8, FF400, UAD2 Satellite Octo

[John Enroth]

Yeah, that’s what I’ve always had to do for my Kontakt instruments, but up until 2 days ago it never happened to me with SD3, which is why I posted about it.  Since you’ve had the same issue I must have just been lucky before and always had some sort of event that would let the cymbals ring out.  It’s just so weird that I’ve been using SD3 since the day it was released, SD2 and EZD2 years before that and NEVER had that problem before.  At least I know what to look for and do the next time it happens.

 

Thanks!

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.1.4
Operating system: macOS Mojave (10.14)

[Henrik Ekblom]

Go in to File > Project Settings… > MIDI > Chase, and disable Aftertouch and Polyphonic Aftertouch ?

This will make sure Logic doesn’t look back (what’s happened) before the place where you started playing – in your case bar 218.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[John Enroth]

Thanks! That’s a good idea, unfortunately I do use aftertouch to choke the cymbals and stuff, plus I use it on other synths as well. I’ve go a whole other issue with my Minilouge XD involving aftertouch so I’m just going to have to go in on a case by case basis and turn on and off my aftertouch…woof.

 

Thanks!

[Author]

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