Is there a way in VST Live Pro 2 to activate a part’s layers slightly before the part itself actually starts — for example, half a bar or a beat early?
The issue I’m facing is that when I place parts exactly on the correct musical bar according to the song structure, notes that are supposed to play right on the first beat are often missed — if they’re not played with perfect timing. This is problematic with pickup notes (anacrusis) as well.
Of course, I could shift the parts slightly earlier, but in my opinion, that would go against the logical structure of the song.
How do you handle this? Is there a function or a workaround to address this?
Thanks for the hint! As far as I understand, the preload function just loads the instruments of the song parts in advance, but doesn’t really affect the timing or triggering of layers, right?
Maybe I should explain a bit more clearly:
I have two song parts that follow each other — for example, Intro and Verse.
Let’s say the Intro goes from 0.1.1 to 16.1.1, and the Verse starts exactly at 16.1.1.
In the Intro, a pad is being played, and in the Verse, it switches to a piano sound. So the instrument switches right on the song structure at 16.1.1.
Now the problem: the first piano chord is played on — or even slightly before — 16.1.1. As it’s — at least for me — nearly impossible/unwanted to play the chord exactly on time , some MIDI notes are still being played by the pad, not the piano.
So unless the notes are played very precisely, it gets picked up by the wrong instrument. This also affects pickup notes, of course.
Suggested preload to exclude “non-preloaded-wakeup” related problem. Developers mentioned here already, VL starts preparing to next part somewhat 500msec beforehead. Meanwhile I have a piano that is loading from my nvme ssd for 10-15sec, so I think that wouldn’t miss a note only but a bounch of bars
Yeah, in my case, the instruments are already loaded and there’s no heavy loading delay I think. So I don’t think it’s a preload-related issue here.
It seems more about the exact timing of when the layer switch happens. Since VST Live prepares the next part around 500ms in advance, maybe there’s a way to “pre-switch” the layer slightly earlier?
Right now, if a note is played just a fraction early (even a natural feel in live playing), it’s still using the previous part’s layer — which causes wrong sounds to be triggered.
So I guess I’m still looking for a way to smooth out that transition timing between layers.
Thanks for replying — that’s exactly what I’m looking for! I don’t necessarily need to play multiple layers at the same time just shifting the beginning of the next layer a bit.
But how can I actually trigger the layer earlier without shifting the entire song part?
Until now, I thought parts and layers were strictly tied together — but it sounds like that’s not necessarily the case?
My (hopefully temporary) workaround is moving the whole part, but as mentioned, in my opinion, that’s messing with the proper song structure.
