VST not holding whole notes

[António Brites]

Hey What's up?

So I exported a midi file from a music notation software. I went to Cakewalk, opened Spitfire's Soft Piano VST and imported that same midi file to it. When I started listening to it I noticed that whole notes were always cut earlier than they were supposed to... I also noticed that when I had chords the different notes would end in a sequence and not together... Ex: I've a chord with 3 notes that is supposed to last for 4 measures. The first note ends in half a measure the other one in 1 measure and the other one in 1 measure and a half... Can someone Help Me?

It's happening with other vsts to I think It's something with the DAW itself...

I checked again and in the end there is a part where there is a whole note and it played correctly... I 'm starting to get confused here...

Edited April 13, 2020 by António Brites

[rsinger]

I'm not familiar with Spitfire's Soft Piano VST, but from my experience pianos don't necessarily sustain notes. They have a sustain pedal that you need to hold down. EPs may not sustain notes. The fact that you have a whole note doesn't mean that a particular instrument will sound that long. What happens depends both on the real instrument and how it's implemented in a given vst. If you have a MIDI controller what happens when you hold down a key?

[Nigel Mackay]

Maybe the BPM is not being imported. Make sure that Cakewalk shows the same BPM as your notation software. If written at say 120BPM and Cakewalk is set to 30BPM then a chord would end up as an arpeggio.

Also check time signature. If Cakewalk is expecting more beats per measure then a whole note will end before the end of the measure.

 

[António Brites]

13 hours ago, rsinger said:

I'm not familiar with Spitfire's Soft Piano VST, but from my experience pianos don't necessarily sustain notes. They have a sustain pedal that you need to hold down. EPs may not sustain notes. The fact that you have a whole note doesn't mean that a particular instrument will sound that long. What happens depends both on the real instrument and how it's implemented in a given vst. If you have a MIDI controller what happens when you hold down a key?

Yes I did think about that possibility... but in previous project it sustained the note, and it works when I press the midi controler.

[António Brites]

3 hours ago, Nigel Mackay said:

Maybe the BPM is not being imported. Make sure that Cakewalk shows the same BPM as your notation software. If written at say 120BPM and Cakewalk is set to 30BPM then a chord would end up as an arpeggio.

Also check time signature. If Cakewalk is expecting more beats per measure then a whole note will end before the end of the measure.

 

Is this what you mean by bpm? If so it's the same they'r both 150... 

Also in the image it shows what I mean. they were supposed to go all the way since the 3 notes are whole yet they  end soon and with different timings...

[Nigel Mackay]

So that's not the problem. Just as a cross-check, can you import the exported midi back into the notation software? And save your Cakewalk project as a midi file and import it into the notation software.

And just to satisfy yourself that it is not VSTi related, right-click on the track pane, insert a midi track, and then import your midi file into the midi track. Doesn't need to be associated with any instrument. Can't play it, but you can see if everything looks right.

[António Brites]

12 minutes ago, Nigel Mackay said:

So that's not the problem. Just as a cross-check, can you import the exported midi back into the notation software? And save your Cakewalk project as a midi file and import it into the notation software.

And just to satisfy yourself that it is not VSTi related, right-click on the track pane, insert a midi track, and then import your midi file into the midi track. Doesn't need to be associated with any instrument. Can't play it, but you can see if everything looks right.

yeah I think you're right the imported file looked different from the original... take a look, the original is the one that says Sidon.

and also in the midi track it was the same...

[António Brites]

2 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

i can't read notation but those score screenshots are definitely different - is something getting changed or ignored on import?

I'm not sure... where can i check that?

 

[António Brites]

41 minutes ago, pwalpwal said:

there are several points in that chain where any change might take place - exporting (might exclude certain data), importing (might ignore certain data), rendering to screen (does it look right in the track view)

first step is export using the same settings, then open the exported file again in musescore - is it the same there, does it look right?

if it does, how about in some other scoring software?

does opening it in cakewalk in the various different ways available make any difference? (file-open vs. double-click in explorer vs. import into project vs. drag from browser, etc)

/good luck!

Yeah when I imported it again to musescore it was different... but I don't know where the change happened...

[Nigel Mackay]

Export from MuseScore, import into MuseScore. If it has changed then the problem is MuseScore. To me it it doesn't look like a setting, it is getting mangled. Try a repair install of MuseScore.

If it has to go through Cakewalk, try uninstalling and reinstalling Cakewalk. You don't lose any settings or data.

[scook]

It is pretty hard to compare binary files like MIDI files by simple inspection.

Text files are much easier to read and compare.

Here is a website containing  a couple of utilities to convert MIDI files to csv text files and back to MIDI.

Here is the direct download link to the Windows binaries buried in the middle of the page.

 

 

[António Brites]

alright thank you all it must be musescore I'll try to fix it.

 

[Frederik Coelst]

Hello, fellow MuseScore user here.

Has there ever been an answer to this problem?

I've been trying to use Cakewalk since my Ableton free trial gave out and am stumped that I can't use my exported MIDIs like Ableton did without problems.

Besides the problem with the arpeggioted notes presented above, I also experience the first note not playing. If I redraw the note in the piano roll view, it does play.

It seems like there's some things encoded in the MIDI that Ableton understands and Cakewalk doesn't...

I saw this: 

which talks about importing the instruments/tracks one-by-one. This does seem to, however tedious,  fix the whole note problem but not others.

I'm about to give up on this DAW as a rendering device for compositions. Which is a shame seeing that there's no real low-cost alternative.

grts

Edited July 31, 2021 by Frederik Coelst
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