In the attached piece, I have the half-sustain pedal (cc64: 0.5) indicated and it doesn’t change. I’ve made sure there is no automation drawn in, and there are a ton of extra blank measures at the end of the section (i’m still composing this work) to deal with the known issue/bug involving pedal markings and repeated measures. Yet, after three repetitions of measure 5, the pedal goes off (0). I have tried drawing in a line for 0.5 in the MIDI editor but that’s been a fool’s errand since there is no Select All (no, CMD-A doesn’t do it either), and no easy way to draw a straight line at 0.50 for cc64 that doesn’t create other changes to the amount of pedal. I have tried everything I am aware of, but the sustain pedal doesn’t sustain, or else changes levels, depending on what I try to do.
Any suggestions? Also, besides the aforementioned lack of a Select All in the MIDI editor, which would be super helpful right now, in some cases the selection arrow masks the actual value that I’m trying to set. I can’t show it in a screenshot since the arrow isn’t captured but it has been an issue.
Thanks. I also had other issues where for some reason, NotePerformer also got assigned the piano while I had mapped it to Pianoteq 9, but futzed around with the MIDI routing and that seems to have worked for now. Seems like a bunch of duplicate channels were created that triplicated the notes, so Pianoteq was getting bombarded with duplicate notes and alerted me with an error message, but this seems to be better now.
So the main issue: why isn’t the sustain pedal sustained when I don’t have a pedal off indication?
The MIDI stream shows an initial value of 64, and no change that I can see after that.
I changed the VST to the HALion Etudes Elements, and I got sustain all the way through to the end of bar 9. (Perhaps add some indication of pedal off?)
Thanks. No it’s not a custom symbol but what can be done by right-clicking on a Ped symbol and selecting half-pedal (or 1/4 or 3/4). Me using pianoteq and can see when the sustain comes off in the middle of a repeated measure (and it’s also an audible difference in sound of course). If you’re seeing it come off in bar 9, especially with repeats off, then it’s indeed not working appropriately. I had some luck after drawing in a cc64 line at 0.50 but that eventually stopped working reliably and it’s really hard and time consuming to draw a single MIDI value across a lot of measures. I sent it to support and hopefully they’ll figure it out.
I’ve not had similar issues in other works where the sustain pedal is held down throughout (either 100% or 50%), except for the known requirement of having to add a lot of empty measures at the end of a work with many repeats. So this is an odd one. Thanks.
You’re right (as always). But that was bc after having it extended throughout the work and then hiding it (no line), the sustain stopped working in the middle of some repeated measures so I turned it back on and extended it through the troublesome measures and it didn’t affect it. I’ll see if extending that line now works. Thanks! At least I’m making headway in this work; I wasn’t sure if it was worth completing but I think I’m now into it.
Nope-I extended the continuation line throughout the entire work and it conked out after a few repeats of measure 13. Adding several hundred empty bars at the end of the work didn’t make a difference, so it isn’t that (known) issue. Weird. Thanks, though!
Thanks. Will try that. I can see the pedal go up in Pianoteq in a separate window. It definitely has something to do with having repeat bars, since when I placed a courtesy 1/2 pedal mark later on in parentheses, the sustain pedal stays at 50% throughout, as it should. Adding extra bars at the end, which is the current solution for dealing with a sustain pedal during a lot of measures with repeat bars, isn’t helping here for some reason,
I have a solution of sorts: when there is a repeated measure (with repeat barlines) in which the sustain pedal will go to 0 during the repeats, I copied and pasted the 1/2 pedal marking and then changed it to a hook (so it disappears). That works!
Just as an update, after a lot of troubleshooting on my own and with Dorico support, it looks like it’s specific to some glitch between Dorico and Pianoteq 9. The issue doesn’t happen if I use NotePerformer’s piano, but NP only seems to support fully sustained pedaling, not half-pedaling, so it comes through as a fully depressed and sustained pedal. But there is then no issue with the sustain pedal coming off unexpectedly.
Modartt, which makes Pianoteq, thinks it’s an issue with Dorico, but did confirm the problem at least. Sigh…
