When using Play to sequence an external MIDI device (Moog Grandmother), if a “note on” is sent for a note that is already “on”, there is only one “note off” sent from the Play when both of the note cease to be triggered. A discussion of the issue (not related to the Play) is discussed here along with an excerpt of the MIDI specifications: midi - Synthesizer: why playing a second time the same note shut down the first one? - Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange Based on the excerpt from the MIDI specifications, it seems that the Play, as the transmitter, should be sending two "note off’ signals.
I used Midi-OX to see the midi information being sent over USB. The behavior occurs over USB and over the TRS midi, but I don’t have a way to see the MIDI information being sent over the TRS midi.
Reproduction Steps
Assign a note to a track
Hit Play to start the track
Play the same note (either sequenced or manually on the chromatic keys in the 4x8 portion of the pad layout)
When both the sequenced note (1 above) and the second note (3 above) are both “released” the note continues to play
Occurrence
always
Found in
Version: 1.2.0
Build: 849
Attachments
simply drag and drop to upload or paste links to: photos, short videos, and project folder (.zip format only)
Hi @curtisti, thanks for reporting the issue. First of all, can you please fill in the Build info. You can find it in Menu > Settings > Firmware > Build
Secondly, I cannot reproduce the issue. And need further info. Could you copy the MIDI-OX log that you’ve been using? Also a video reproduction would be helpful. As I understand you get a hanging note?
Thanks for the quick response. Below is a link to two videos, the first showing the setup on the Play and the MIDI-OX log when the same note overlaps and the second with audio to demonstrate how the synth gets stuck playing the note. Also included is a text file of the MIDI-OX output.
This makes me wonder, when a track is muted, should all the notes triggered on that track also be turned off? That’s not the case now and if a track is muted when a note is on, there will be no corresponding note off sent.
@curtisti thank you so much for very detailed and exact reproduction!
Interestingly, when I try the same in Ableton, it behaves correctly, meaning the Note Off event kills both notes. So possibly is something related to how your synth processes MIDI events. We’ll look into this, thank you.
I also see that if I route the Play through Ableton, it behaves correctly as well, but this appears to be because the midi information being transmitted is different. Looking at the midi logs when Ableton is included in the chain, it appears that Ableton is adding an extra “Note Off”. Maybe when Ableton is included in the chain, it “cleans up” midi issues like this that may not conform to the specifications. Attached is an image of the midi log (the properties window is shown just to make sure that Midi-Ox events are not being sent to the synth – and that only what’s coming from Ableton is being sent to the synth). The log in the screenshot is showing the midi for the same sequence played in the video links I sent.
Again, this hanging note issue would also be present when a track is muted before a “Note Off” signal is transmitted. That’s a different issue, but if you all determine this to be something that needs to be fixed, you may want to consider sending a midi message that turns off all notes that have been triggered by that track. If this isn’t clear, let me know and I can send an example video of that.
