VSTPlugin + MIDI event patterns: velocity?

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1

Hi,

I’m refering to the examples 1a and 1b I’ve given here:

How would I set amplitude/velocity ?
When sending MIDI like described in the example of

http://doc.sccode.org/Tutorials/A-Practical-Guide/PG_Cookbook04_Sending_MIDI.html

then amp (and chan) are automatically packed into the midi message to the MIDIOut object. VSTPluginController.midi mimics a MIDIOut but it doesn’t seem to take over velocity. Did I get the something wrong or is this missing currently?

2

MIDI velocity works fine for me (tested with “Dexed”). I suspect you are using a VST instrument without velocity sensitivity (e.g. a digital organ). In this case, the exact velocity is ignored by the instrument, it only matters if it’s greater 0 (= note on) or equal 0 (= note off).

3

I just checked with Dexed and it doesn’t work here (on OSX):

// start synth and controller

~synth = Synth(\vst);

~ctrl = VSTPluginController.new(~synth);

~ctrl.open("/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Dexed");



// define pattern

(
p = Pbind(
	\type, \midi,
	\midiout, ~ctrl.midi,
	\dur, 0.3,
	\amp, Pseq([1/126, 0.9], inf),
	// at least this works, every second event is silent:
	// \amp, Pseq([1/128, 0.5], inf),
	\midinote, Pwhite(70, 90)
);
)

// constant amplitude though

x = p.trace.play

x.stop

Am I doing something wrong? I checked the same example with a genuine MIDIOut and SimpleSynth and it works.

Could there be a problem when converting to Integer values from 0 to 127 ? Note that method ‘round’ doesn’t produce Integers but Floats, it demands an addtional ‘asInteger’

4

Again, it depends on the sound. The default program 0 in Dexed is an organ-like sound. Try for example program 4 with the following amplitude values: \amp, Pseq([0.1, 0.9], inf) - you should hear a clear difference in velocity.

Note that the \amp to velocity conversion in the Event is done with asInteger((amp * 127).clip(0, 127)). I think it should rather be asInteger((amp * 127).clip(0, 127) + 0.5) to round to the nearest velocity step, so you can do \amp = 1/127 and reliably get MIDI velocity 1 (which is very quiet).
.

5

~ctrl.midi.program(0, num: 4)

Ah, that’s it, bad luck with defaults - thanks.
Inserting this line before playing the Pbind switches to the expected behaviour:

~ctrl.midi.program(0, num: 4)

Reasonable, a candidate for a PR, or?

This however also works with current “wrong” rounding.

6

Yes, by accident :-). For other readers: with floating point math, (1 / a) * a is not guaranteed to equal 1.0.

or just ~ctrl.program_(4);. This works for all plugins.