Hi folks, I recently changed my workflow from sending Dorico midi to VST instruments (VEP 7) to MIDI instruments. Everything works perfectly except for the built-in chords track. Inspecting the midi in my receiving DAW there are dropped notes in some chords and other chords play a note initially for it to immediately trigger a note off event. The result is disjointed, half-baked chords.
I do not experience this with any of the notation I have written myself, only the chords midi generated by Dorcio. As a result, I have converted my templates to send all midi out to MIDI instruments except the chord track which I am still sending directly to the VST instrument (VEP 7).
I would like to eliminate the VST instrument entirely from my template but can’t do that until the chord track midi is fixed. Hope this bug report helps, let me know if you need any additional information.
Is the problem, I wonder, for successive chords that have common tones? I expect the problem may well be that Dorico is sending the note off message for the previous chord and the note on message for the new one at precisely the same MIDI tick, which will have an undefined behaviour (or at least a behaviour that will be entirely down to whatever the target MIDI device decides to do with such situations).
I have encountered this issue, and it occurs when Playback Options > Timing > Note Durations > Default Notes (or other suboption) is set to 100%. This does indeed cause note-off events to occur at precisely the same MIDI tick as note-on events.
In some programs, such as Reaper, same-tick events are received by VST instruments with note-offs before note-ons, so they work correctly. In Dorico however, VST instruments do not appear to receive same-tick MIDI events in a deterministic order, so you must change the above setting to the next highest value, 99%.
If you export MIDI from Dorico with this set to 100%, and use it in Reaper, it works as expected.
But that might be because of the way Reaper handles MIDI events, so other programs might still have issues.
I previously brought up this issue here.
EDIT: I just realized you’re talking about chord symbols. I’m not sure if there’s a way to reduce the default duration of a chord symbol’s notes…
EDIT 2: It looks like if the above mentioned option is set below 100%, an extremely small duration is removed from the first of two successive chord notes with the same pitch, but it does not do this at 100%. It also looks like the chords respond to the Humanize option under Note Start Positions, so you may want to check that option, too.
1 Like
Is the problem, I wonder, for successive chords that have common tones?
This does appear to be the case.
I have encountered this issue, and it occurs when Playback Options > Timing > Note Durations > Default Notes (or other suboption) is set to 100%.
It also looks like the chords respond to the Humanize option under Note Start Positions, so you may want to check that option, too.
I’ve got both of these cases covered already when I noticed the behavior. Default notes are at 85% duration (and all others are less than 100% except legato, which I temporarily changed to no effect) and humanize is at 100%.
Daniel is probably onto the technical issue. Is this something I can correct on my side? The target is Pianoteq 7 inside VEP 7 and it works perfectly when Dorico uses VEP7 VST. When I output to a MIDI instrument and route to Reaper that is where things break down. Reaper midi inspection does show inconsistent on/off messages arriving and I assume it processes in the order received. Any help is greatly appreciated!
No, I don’t think you can do anything on your side. I will take it to the team and we’ll see if we can make chord symbol playback follow the standard note duration option on the Timing page of Playback Options.
1 Like