Expression Maps: press stop and it switches back to 1st art.

Cubase
1

The behaviour of Expression Maps, in my opinion, is odd.

I want long-term latching.

If you press stop the articulation switches back to the first articulation in the Map, unless the playback position happens to be within a part which contains articulation changes, in which case it works sensibly and will stick on the current articulation.

Picture this: You are happily playing along with your track, busking a spic part for example, and when you press stop it will switch back to legatos and you have to remember to press the spic keyswitch again. This happens time and time again, it’s very annoying and in my opinion ruins the whole point of expression maps.

Someone suggested to me a workaround whereby you add a dummy articulation as the first articulation Sound Slot in the Expression Map, that has no keyswitch and no articulations assigned. It’s a clever trick/workaround. However, this only works for program change not channel change. Program change doesn’t work with something like EastWest Play. In any case I’d prefer to keep my articulations on different channels anyway (even when using Kontakt).

Is anyone else bothered by this insistence to go back to the 1st articulation? Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

2

Hello, I am in the exact same situation. Did you find a solution for this?

I am using incoming midi from Max to control vst instruments in Cubase and as soon as I move the play bar or stop the audio all the sound slots in the expression maps go back to the first ones.
This is really annoying especially when working with large amount of instruments and expression maps…

I understand the logic of working with expression maps on recorded midi material, but for a live situation of playing midi instruments, this behavior is a little weird.

Is there a way to change this behavior, or are we not using this feature the way we should?
Thanks

3

Yes, I upload 3 jpg, the only thing you have to do is to create an Empty slot for the 1st articulation (with no midi messages) so when you push the bar and stop the project the E.M. goes directly to the 1st slot (but this is empty so It stay in the last one)
I hope you understand it.

Good Luck

Pablo
expression maps.zip (62.4 KB)

4

Thanks a lot Pablo for your answer!
It looks like a nice workaround but in my case it doesn’t work…
I am using EastWest Play vst instruments and each expression map is set to a different midi note.
As soon as I stop the project, it goes back to the first empty slot, and it sounds like the second one.

It seems I am in the exact situation as the first post by adg21 who said this trick only works when using program changes.

Any other ideas?

5

Operation Manual from Cubase says (p. 426):
‘‘When Latch Mode is activated,the key you press is valid until the next key is pressed.’’

this is a wrong information since it should states ‘’…until the next key is pressed and the project cursor position is changed’’

6

I agree this behavior is not good. The midi inserts also behave like this that they reset on stop. Not good behavior…there should be a preference to turn this off.

7

Yep something like adg21 called ‘‘long-time latching’’ would be awesome

Never experienced something like this with midi inserts - do you have examples?

Is there a way to get in touch with the Cubase crew? Or fill a feature request or something?

8

Pablo,

thanks for your hints and the images.
For me, it is the way I was searching for.

Thanks so much :slight_smile: