Inputting some notes via MIDI keyboard, I noticed that the left-hand staff is always inputting at higher velocity than the right-hand when notes are at the same rhythmic position. In playback, the top voice is drowned out by the bass.
The independent voice playback is not used, the dynamics were entered during note input in the topmost staff. Copy-pasting the dynamic to bottom staff doesn’t seem to change anything.
Higher velocity at lower staff strikes me as completely incorrect. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks.
Step-time. I’ve added some more notes and voices and now I’m even more confused. Strange that the bass at this position would be the highest velocity note:
I see the p marking, so I have to suspect it isn’t acting on the lower staff. If you chose a Piano instrument in Setup, such dynamics should apply to both, but if you got two staves some other way, they probably won’t.
I’m not sure why, but - when I turn off the Pitch Contour Emphasis, the issue disappears. I’m trying to find some kind of Pitch Contour setting that would preserve a bit of its impact on dynamics, but no luck so far.
I’m almost certain now the issue is indeed Pitch Contour Emphasis that’s enabled in my piano expression map.
The upper melody is moving down, while the left-hand figuration is moving up, and the PCE is simultaneously and independently emphasizing each of these patterns even more, making descending line softer and ascending line louder. That’s my best guess at what’s creating the problem with the left hand overpowering the right hand.
I don’t want to turn PCE off completely, so I turned it down quite a bit (30%) and my main workaround here is to select the problematic portions on the upper staff and to re-scale the average velocity using Histogram tool, which is a great tool. Hope this might help someone in the future.
