Hi All

I have a sustain pedal that sends continuous (incremental) sustain and a piano module that receives it (Dexibell) but when I look at the track I just see 0n and off. Is there a reason why it's not recording all the sustain info? I can manually input the data but that's obviously not a workable solution

Greetings androidus,

Welcome to the forum and to PowerTracks!

Which continuous controller number (CC#) does your sustain pedal transmit? There is a really good chance the pedal is NOT transmitting a CC#. The Dexibell piano likely is picking up the CC# from a specific jack which the operating system has assigned the sustain function. That way when any pedal is plugged into the jack labeled SUSTAIN the Dexibell understands how to handle the data.

What sustain pedal are you using that continually transmits MIDI sustain values?

By adding the word incremental in parenthesis are you implying that the sustain pedal transmits a value and transmits another value when the value changes? If so I believe this is normal. If a pedal transmitted all the time it would clog up the MIDI pipeline.

I'm confused here, I thought MIDI CC 64 was for sustain. Sustain pedals are usually on or off....nothing in-between. Unless there is a polarity switch some place...that could result in sustaining all the time except when the pedal is pressed down or until the polarity switch is set right for the keyboard.

Jeff

Some sustain pedals can indeed output a range of values from 0 to 127 on MIDI CC 64, not just on and off. With some digital pianos or VST's this is treated as it would on a real piano, allowing you to half-damper or slowly mute the strings rather than just having sustain vs no sustain. Of course, most keyboards and VST's only handle sustain on/off which means that any value less than 63 on CC 64 will be not sustained, and 64-127 will be sustained.

Powertracks can handle this of course, with the correct hardware and/or VST. Can you open a Piano Roll window on a track and see what data you can see under Control # 64? This is under Window > New > Piano Roll Window, and change View/edit to Control 64? That data will show up in the bottom section under the Piano Roll itself.

This can also be viewed in the Event List for the track, if you are more familiar with that.

If it was me I'd highlight the whole track, select any Edit process, then use the Data Filter check box, and in the resulting options select the CC only, and maybe even filter the results further to view what you want.
Then Cancel out of it.

Is the pedal recording on the correct MIDI channel for the track you intend to use it on?

Thanks to everyone. Sorry for the late response. I have the variable sustain pedal plugged into an M-Audio Hammer 88. Powertracks records the sustain but when I look at the event list it only shows 0 and 127 on controller 64. Maybe the Hammer 88 only transmits on or off (0 is off and anything higher converts to 127) as I am not hearing the continuous levels of sustain even in real time as I am recording. But that would be weird because its sole purpose in life is to be a midi controller. I did find this in a Hammer review just now (see below). Perhaps this is the answer. I am going to see if the Expression control which responds to continuous can be reassigned to Sustain.

"Given the limited controls, a good number of options are available. The fader, mod wheel, buttons and the three footswitches can all be configured to send a wide variety of messages ranging from notes, CCs, program changes and MMC commands. The message types available are appropriate to which controller you’re editing, so obviously you can’t assign the fader to send program changes (imagine trying to do that accurately!). Minimum and maximum values can also be specified for continuous controller values.

The three footswitches can also be assigned to various functions, bearing in mind that the Exp (expression) is designed for continuous footpedals, and the Sustain and FS2 are for momentary footswitches.

It should be noted that the fader, mod wheel and expression pedal can all be assigned to send Aftertouch messages — the keyboard itself is sensitive only to velocity.

Yeah, that right there tells me the regular sustain jack can only handle on/off sustain pedals. Try it in the expression plug and see if it can be reassigned, or at the very least you can look at the MIDI monitor to see if the pedal can at least transmit a variable signal through that jack.

In this case I think the M-Audio keyboard Sustain port is acting as designed. The midi standard describes Continuous Control (CC) number 64 - Sustain as On/Off where 64 is the split point. Values higher than 64 are On while less than 64 are Off.

PG Music has a +++ really nice chart +++ describing all the Continuous Control values and their use. I've also attached a small pdf file that provides the same information.

PowerTracks, and RealBand, accept CC # 64 discrete values so I would use the M-Audio Expression port to send CC # 11 discrete values to PowerTracks then convert the CC # 11 to CC # 64.

Thanks Jim, that second one is very complete and has a few I didn't know.

Jeff