Sustain pedal only works in the preferecnce menu?

[Sofa]

I'm very new to cakewalk but i think it has a lot of potential so i want to get to use it. I have a midi keyboard with a brand new sustain pedal however, when i push down the pedal it stops new midi notes from sounding, after looking in the forums a but i saw a post telling me to untick a box that says zero instrument something or other. it worked for a solid 20 minutes and then it stopped. the only time the sustain pedal functions properly with no problems is when the preference menu is open, other wise its for all intents and purposes unusable.

[David Baay]

That's a pretty unusual set of symptoms. What keyboard, and is the keyboard also the sound source? If not, which soft synth? And did the pedal come with the keyboard and/or is from the same manufacturer? If it's a keyboard synth, does it behave normally when played under local control with direct-monitoring and Cakewalk out of the picture?

[RBH]

You might want to read up on the  " echo " ( or monitor )feature in a midi track. This essentially forwards incoming midi commands to the midi hardware outputs and / or software VST midi inputs.

[user 905133]

To diagnose what CC number and the value Cakewalk is getting from the pedal, while recording a midi track: hold down a note, press the pedal, let go of the note, then release the pedal.  Look at the event list.

[Sofa]

On 1/9/2020 at 6:57 PM, David Baay said:

That's a pretty unusual set of symptoms. What keyboard, and is the keyboard also the sound source? If not, which soft synth? And did the pedal come with the keyboard and/or is from the same manufacturer? If it's a keyboard synth, does it behave normally when played under local control with direct-monitoring and Cakewalk out of the picture?

M-audio Oxygen 61, the problem occurs with every soft synth I have, from Mini Grand to Velvet, even Cakewalk's own electric piano. The pedal didn't come with the keyboard, but it is also made by M-audio, the M-audio SP2.  And The sustain pedal works in Ableton live 10, the other daw i have.

[Sofa]

On 1/9/2020 at 7:19 PM, User 905133 said:

To diagnose what CC number and the value Cakewalk is getting from the pedal, while recording a midi track: hold down a note, press the pedal, let go of the note, then release the pedal.  Look at the event list.

For clarification I should state the pedal works for this but while it's down I cant play anything else, coming from a piano player this is very frustrating.

[Robert Bone]

Is the pedal plugged into an Expression pedal port, instead of a Sustain pedal port? 

Bob Bone

[Sofa]

12 hours ago, Robert Bone said:

Is the pedal plugged into an Expression pedal port, instead of a Sustain pedal port? 

Bob Bone

No, its in the port labeled sustain in, i think its a problem with one of the settings in cakewalk?

[Robert Bone]

3 hours ago, Sofa said:

No, its in the port labeled sustain in, i think its a problem with one of the settings in cakewalk?

Kewl - just wondering.  Strange symptoms.  I have 4 of the M-Audio sustain pedals, and 4 different brands of midi controllers, and some of the pedals work 'backwards' than intended - because in the industry, there are two different polarities used between Yamaha pedals and Roland pedals, and for years and years, it would piss people off, because we would plug a pedal in, only to find the notes getting sustained when the pedal was not pressed, and the notes would release when the pedals would be pressed.

The keyboard manufacturers eventually programmed their products to hold some combo of keys down when turning on the keyboard, to flip its idea of when the sustain pedal would sustain or release, and the pedal manufacturers generally also provide a little switch on the side or more often, on the bottom of the sustain pedals, that also flip the polarity - to switch the sustain/release to the other way - and this has allowed life to continue for keyboard players, the world over.

On my M-Audio sustain pedals, there is such a switch on the bottom - have you tried switching that and plugging the pedal back into your keyboard?

Bob Bone

[Sofa]

20 hours ago, Robert Bone said:

Kewl - just wondering.  Strange symptoms.  I have 4 of the M-Audio sustain pedals, and 4 different brands of midi controllers, and some of the pedals work 'backwards' than intended - because in the industry, there are two different polarities used between Yamaha pedals and Roland pedals, and for years and years, it would piss people off, because we would plug a pedal in, only to find the notes getting sustained when the pedal was not pressed, and the notes would release when the pedals would be pressed.

The keyboard manufacturers eventually programmed their products to hold some combo of keys down when turning on the keyboard, to flip its idea of when the sustain pedal would sustain or release, and the pedal manufacturers generally also provide a little switch on the side or more often, on the bottom of the sustain pedals, that also flip the polarity - to switch the sustain/release to the other way - and this has allowed life to continue for keyboard players, the world over.

On my M-Audio sustain pedals, there is such a switch on the bottom - have you tried switching that and plugging the pedal back into your keyboard?

Bob Bone

Yes my Pedal does have a polarity switch and I have tried to flip it because i have experienced this problem before. The keys don't trigger notes when the pedal is down. if I trigger a note and the pedal at the exact same time, the note will sustain, however if the note triggers after the pedal no sound will occur.

[msmcleod]

Have you accidentally enabled a MIDI key-switch in Keyboard Shortcuts?

If it looks like this, that could be your problem:

The above sets the sustain pedal to be your SHIFT key.

Make sure the "Enabled" checkbox is unchecked. For good measure, set the controller to something you'll never use (I've set mine to "breath"). This will stop this happening again if you do decide to enabled MIDI shortcuts e.g.:

 

[Sofa]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

Have you accidentally enabled a MIDI key-switch in Keyboard Shortcuts?

If it looks like this, that could be your problem:

The above sets the sustain pedal to be your SHIFT key.

Make sure the "Enabled" checkbox is unchecked. For good measure, set the controller to something you'll never use (I've set mine to "breath"). This will stop this happening again if you do decide to enabled MIDI shortcuts e.g.:

 

YOU'RE AMAZING  that fixed it, thank you so much

 

[user 905133]

 

On 1/9/2020 at 7:19 PM, User 905133 said:

To diagnose what CC number and the value Cakewalk is getting from the pedal, while recording a midi track: hold down a note, press the pedal, let go of the note, then release the pedal.  Look at the event list.

On 1/17/2020 at 9:09 PM, Sofa said:

For clarification I should state the pedal works for this but while it's down I cant play anything else, coming from a piano player this is very frustrating.

When you replied to my suggestion that you look at the event list, I assumed that you had done that; but, now I am not sure.  I raise this because when I tried Mark's suggestion with this:

no CC 64 events (On or Off) were recorded. However, without redirecting the sustain pedal, they were. 

(1) Had you looked? 

(2) If you had, were there CC 64 events recorded?

I ask because I have been trying to diagnose what might be a bug related to MIDI Remote Control and the Inspector-based Arpeggiator and this issue seems to be related.** 

**Briefly (without rehashing the whole issue), although the Shift-key interception per Mark's comment did not produce a midi event,*** it did allow me to latch an Arpeggiator with the foot pedal! (It doesn't solve the problem I have been working on, but it points to something that might be related to a possible bug.)

***Clarification, CC 64 on/off (1) did not place sustain events into the event list for the designated arp track, (2) did not trigger changes in the arp's latch state as displayed, but quite surprising (3) did latch the the arp!!!!!   

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by User 905133
to add a clarification of why and how the seemingly trivial questions I asked might be helpful in diagnosing what might be a bug.

[Sofa]

On 1/19/2020 at 6:45 PM, User 905133 said:

 

When you replied to my suggestion that you look at the event list, I assumed that you had done that; but, now I am not sure.  I raise this because when I tried Mark's suggestion with this:

no CC 64 events (On or Off) were recorded. However, without redirecting the sustain pedal, they were. 

(1) Had you looked? 

(2) If you had, were there CC 64 events recorded?

I ask because I have been trying to diagnose what might be a bug related to MIDI Remote Control and the Inspector-based Arpeggiator and this issue seems to be related.** 

**Briefly (without rehashing the whole issue), although the Shift-key interception per Mark's comment did not produce a midi event,*** it did allow me to latch an Arpeggiator with the foot pedal! (It doesn't solve the problem I have been working on, but it points to something that might be related to a possible bug.)

***Clarification, CC 64 on/off (1) did not place sustain events into the event list for the designated arp track, (2) did not trigger changes in the arp's latch state as displayed, but quite surprising (3) did latch the the arp!!!!!   

 

Sorry for clarification, 1. I did look, 2. The events were not shown. I was informing that that set of commands did produce the sound and sustain the note however i failed to say that the events were not recorded

[user 905133]

2 hours ago, Sofa said:

Sorry for clarification, 1. I did look, 2. The events were not shown. I was informing that that set of commands did produce the sound and sustain the note however i failed to say that the events were not recorded

Thank you for the reply!! For me, your issue seems to be related to the kind of issue I have seen--namely, that in some very definite instances, midi data does not seem to be going where it is supposed to go (and therefore doesn't do what it is supposed to do).

Coupled with the fact that Mark's suggestion points to a way that midi data can be intentionally intercepted from going where it normally goes, it seems to me possible that something in the software could also be intercepting midi data unintentionally** so that it doesn't do go where it should (and therefore doesn't do what its supposed to do).

**or quasi-intentionally, that is intended for some functionality, and coincidentally preventing it from going to other functionality

[buildanax]

THANK YOU for posting the solution to this issue!!  I just started encountering this same issue with my sustain pedal.  After an hour or so of trying to diagnose the problem, I was just about to uninstall and re-install Cakewalk-Bandlab because the issue was not showing up on any plugins when ran in Stand-Alone mode, nor was it happening in an older version of Sonar X2 that I happened to still have installed.  After seeing the post about checking to see if the "Enabled" button was ticked on the Preferences-Keybinding page, I remembered that I had ticked the "Enable" box a couple of days ago when creating some key bindings.   There needs to be a little "Information Note" on the "Help" page that notifies you that ticking the "Enable" button will cause this issue if "Controller" is turned on in the "MIDI 'Shift' Options" column.   I've been a Cakewalk user for over 25 years and had never encountered this.  I felt like there had to be a simple solution to this but I totally missed it on this one.   Thanks again for the helpful answer!

[Nic]

On 1/19/2020 at 11:02 PM, msmcleod said:

Have you accidentally enabled a MIDI key-switch in Keyboard Shortcuts?

If it looks like this, that could be your problem:

The above sets the sustain pedal to be your SHIFT key.

Make sure the "Enabled" checkbox is unchecked. For good measure, set the controller to something you'll never use (I've set mine to "breath"). This will stop this happening again if you do decide to enabled MIDI shortcuts e.g.:

 

In the photo you see this is how far I get ..... (if it's even the right place to be for changing midi settings)

[msmcleod]

This is how to add sustain in the PRV: