I’m using the BeatBuddy “Note Out” stream to trigger notes on a mini synthesizer. So far, it’s triggering the notes on cue from the .mid file, but it doesn’t seem to be playing them to their full duration, nor does it play the full chords, just the root note. Would something like this be on the BeatBuddy’s end, or the way the synthesizer receives it?
As far as sending notes goes, I know of no BB polyphony limit. I recall at some point seeing a playback limit that was relatively high, like 24 or 32 notes. It’s more likely that your synth has a polyphony limit. There are quite a few mono synths. I’d look into the synth settings first.
Do you know why the note duration would be cut off?
Try making the instrument in the drumkit “non-percussion”… that will cause it not to choke the note unless there is a note-off. There are poly settings in the instrument as well.
I thought that too, but the “instrument” needs a sample file for it to work properly. Right now there’s no sample assigned so I can’t change it to non-percussive, otherwise that might work. Maybe I could get around it by loading a sample of silence?
ah i think i misunderstood what you are doing… you aren’t even playing a drum kit just streaming out… there’s a setting you might play with called release time. when i was experimenting early on with the beatbuddy “playing” my roland spd-30, all the sounds were short and cut off sounding because of this setting… you can think of it as the default length of a note. in the beginning there were no note-on and note-offs, etc… it was just a note, and it triggered a sample. (btw, it was even more fun to play the roland spd-30, and have it trigger the drum sounds inside the beatbuddy!).
if none of this works, i’d try your idea of making a “silent” drumkit, so that you can tweak the instrument settings, which can have effects on how the midi is sent out.
so the ways to “stop” a note are: global release time, note-off after a note-on, instrument poly (where, say, you can only have 3 of a particular instrument note playing at a time), and choke group (which is like poly, only with multiple instruments instead of just one). choke group can be very powerful in controlling samples. However, you want to do the OPPOSITE of this… your problem is that notes are getting stopped when you don’t want them stopped, it seems.
let us know what you find!
Thanks for the suggestions! I looked at release time, changing it from 0ms to 250ms, but that didn’t seem to affect the note duration. I also programed a silent drumkit with silent “non-percussive” samples, and that seems to help a little with polyphony but not with sustaining the notes. They still sound super staccato, despite their length in the editor. I haven’t messed around with choke groups, but not sure it would be helpful in this case if I only have one sample/instrument?
put a computer in the midi chain and sniff what the beatbuddy is putting out… see if it’s putting out a note-on and shortly after a note-off
the choke group would only be in effect if it is set to non-zero, and other instruments also had that group… when those ARE set, it will choke any note in the group when any other note in the group is played… that is, only one note in the group can play at any particular time.
If it is release time, 250ms would be quite abrupt still. not sure how to disable the function entirely, except by setting non-percussion.