Hello-

Using 2017 Audiophile with build 464-
I'm using a custom style with all real tracks except a midi bass. The ending is a held chord on all instruments. The real tracks behave - hold and fade to nothing. The midi bass holds and sustains until it runs out of measures and then abruptly cuts off.

It doesn't matter which midi instrument or style I use, or with or without sforzando. It happens on my Windows 7 desktop, Windows 10 laptop and my brand new Dell Windows 10 laptop.

When I take the song files and associated style and move them to my 2016 Audiophile, the problem is not present and the songs play normally.

I have tried Return to Factory settings, reinstalling, going through every menu that I can find - nothing. Can anyone help?
Thanks

Dave

Welcome to the forum!

"The midi bass holds and sustains until it runs out of measures and then abruptly cuts off." Midi tells a synth what to do while a synth actually has the job of making sound. Different synths will respond to the same midi commands differently. Some will automatically fade the sound as a note extends but others do not; they must be told. Remember a synth is either modeling a sound or playing a sampled sound. What bass synth are you using? Did you program a volume change or fade on the last note?

OK - I did not program a volume change or fade on the last note and I think my bass synth is CoyoteWT, but I don't know if I'm looking in the right place for that - VST/DX Synths/Plugins.

Dave

Dave,

Open the program, load the song then save the song under a new title so you don't mess up your existing song. (Load "example song.sgu" then save as "example song01.sgu" for instance.) Load the new song.

With the new song loaded, click on the track that has the midi bass then go to "Window" > "Piano Roll" > "Piano Roll Window" or "Moveable Piano Roll Window". These windows are used to edit midi. The first has a fixed location while the second can be moved around your screen. You edit track midi in either of these windows.

In the photo below, # 1 is where you select the track you are editing, and # 2 what kind of midi controller event associated with each note you want to view and / or edit. As you can tell the window is divided into two field where the top field is for notes and the bottom field displays events.

The area marked # 3 is the most important. It highlights the help and video tutorial buttons. They will help you better understand how helpful this window can be.

It will do that because BB has reached the end of the song. Every song has a defined length and end. At the end, everything shuts off. And sometimes rather abruptly to our ears.

So.. the simple solution is to make the song longer. Add 4 or 8 measures to the end of the song. This gives plenty of time for the midi bass to hold and fade as needed.

This is something that I (and you) would need to do for any song that doesn't have a buttoned ending.

I use a DAW for my editing where held chord fades are easy, but in BB you will need to add measures or you get the cutoff. A "normal" faded held chord gets faded to black somewhere around one measure of the song unless you're doing a cover of A Day In The Life by the Beatles.

If I add 8 measures to the end of the song I get 8 more measures of sustained bass - the problem is that it just refuses to fade at all.

Jim - I'm not seeing with Piano Roll anything that shows how the note is supposed to behave as a held note. It shows as a bar for the rest of the bars to the end of the song. If I load another all midi style all the instruments do that but only the bass keeps sustaining to the end.

Dave

Maybe a wishlist item;
Ad to Chord Setting - Fade in/out selected instruments from bar X to bar X with a begin and end value/amount/percentage.

This will depend on the instrument patch you are using. If the instrument has a natural fade (e.g. bass guitar, piano), then expect it to fade. However, if the instrument is a Synth, Organ, Brass, Bowed stringed instrument etc, then expect it to play for the note duration.

What instrument are you using?

If it is one of the above, you need to insert Control Change events (probably CC11, which is Expression) to fade the note.

I'm using 33 Acoustic String Bass, but it does the same thing on any patch I pick.

Dave

OK, then could you try muting all tracks and then just solo the bass track, and then individually solo other tracks to try to identify that the problem is definitely the bass track?

Yes - I have done that with an all midi style - all tracks but bass fade out normally, the bass track sustains until it runs out of measures then abruptly cuts off. This is with the chord input of G...

Dave

Importantly: Is the bass track in the mixer 'Yellow' in color? If not, it's not MIDI.

Yes it is yellow.

1:
If you mute that offending bass track and play the entire song, can you confirm that you don't hear any bass at all, including the held note at the end of the song?

2:
If you open that track with the bass in the piano-roll editor, do you see the offending bass note that is x-bars long at the end of the song?

1:
If you mute that offending bass track and play the entire song, can you confirm that you don't hear any bass at all, including the held note at the end of the song?

Yes, I can confirm that.



2:
If you open that track with the bass in the piano-roll editor, do you see the offending bass note that is x-bars long at the end of the song?

Yes.

Dave

Dave,
1:
Can you tell us more about this Custom Style? Presumably it is a User Style? How was it created etc?

2:
Is it possible to upload the Style and the Song to DropBox or similar so that others could explore further?
What is interesting is that this appears to be an issue with 2017 and not 2016.

Yes, it originally started as one of the bluegrass band styles with all real tracks - _BGBAND8 possibly. I removed the banjo since that is the instrument I am playing. I decided to try to put a midi bass instrument in place of the real tracks bass because I have never been happy with the real tracks bluegrass bass note selection. This is the main style I have been using for 2 or 3 years now without any problems. I renamed the style _BG_NBYS.

I started playing around with modifying the Bass patterns in Stylemaker and will fully admit that whatever is causing me this problem is probably my fault. I was trying to get the style to stay with a strict low octave 1-5 driving style. However I don't see how that should cause a problem with the hold note at the end of the song.

I don't see how sharing these files with anyone will help since it works fine on my 2016 Audiophile version, but I will be happy to do so if anyone thinks it will help.

Dave

Dave,

Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to solve problems when only typing is available. If you've ever tried to do it on a forum, then you'll know what I mean. Most times if is so much easier to have something to work with and to test.

The above being said, if I am understanding your problem, try the below, it might work.

I just tried the Acoustic Bass and it sustained for me, too, when I used the chord with three dots C... (I have Coyote WT running as my VST synth).

This is what I did.

1. Before doing anything, save your song with a new name so that you can always get back to the original if needed.

2. Go to Piano Roll view.

3. Select "Control" and then "7 Main Volume MSB" as shown on the upper image below.

4. Now follow the 'click here and drag mouse' instructions on the image.

5. By doing this, you are creating a volume envelope. When you release the mouse button, it should look like the lower image.

Now generate your song and try it. Does that help?

If the "Main Volume MSB" is not what you are after, use CTRL+Z to undo and remove the envelope and redraw it using "11 Expression MSB" and try this one.

Regards,
Noel

Dave,

You may consider to email the files to PG Music Support and explain the issue, while referencing this thread.

They would probably be interested to determine why, esp. as you mentioned that it didn't do this with 2016 Audiophile.

Let us know how you go.

If you can posts your custom style and BiaB file here and I will take a look at it.

Noel - You said - "I just tried the Acoustic Bass and it sustained for me, too, when I used the chord with three dots C... (I have Coyote WT running as my VST synth)."
Does that mean that you duplicated the problem I'm having?

Yes, creating a volume envelope in Piano Roll and freezing the Bass track does make it fade properly (thank you), but I was hoping for more than a work-around. I have 30+ songs that are involved with this. Anybody know where the control for Held Chords for midi instruments is located?

Looks like it's time to call PG Music Support again. I tried talking to them a while back, but there was only one person there at the time and he wasn't able to duplicate the problem with the files I sent him.

Dave

Dave,

I might be wrong but, in my case, I think it might be due to how Coyote WT plays sound 33 (Acoustic Bass). I changed to Cakewalk TTS as my default soft synth this morning and the bass sound died away with the other sounds (as it should). Coyote WT, on the other hand, just plays at a consistent volume and then abruptly stops.

I'll pass this information on to the developers and I'll include a link to this thread so they can read about your problem.

Regards,
Noel

Dave
I have done some editing of styles and occasionally had problems with endings. This almost always occurred because I had either deleted the ending for the instrument, or not written one.

When you look at the bass track in the style editor, you see the 'a' and 'b' patterns and below that the ending patterns. Check there to see of the notes are the correct duration for your application
Dave

Some soft synths fade naturally over long notes. Others just keep playing through (even if the real acoustic version wouldn't do that). There is nothing in specifying a hold that tells it to fade (for example, an organ wouldn't naturally decay just because it was a long note). So it really is dependent upon the implementation of the soft synth.

As Noel noted, the bass in the TTS-1 soft synth naturally decays; I suspect the Microsoft provided synth (which the CoyoteWT is just a wrapper for) doesn't. I would check it, but not at my music computer right now.

I would try it with a couple of other synths if possible to see what happens.

I tried different synths and nothing changed.

This happens not only at endings but anywhere I put Held Chords in the song.
I use the same style in Audiophile 2016 and it works fine.

Thanks everyone for trying to help me out. If I get a solution from Support I'll post it.

Dave

Dave,

After changing to another synth, did you regenerate the song so as to make sure that the previously generated track didn't impact on the present one?

Regards,
Noel

Yes

Dave

Just heard from Support - they were able to duplicate my problem and it has been reported as a bug.

Thanks everybody for your help and thanks Neil for the work-around.

Dave