Noise while recording MIDI

[Hanan Cohen]

Hi,

When recording a MIDI track I get short notes that are noise. I don't know where they come from.

I am running Windows 11. I restarted my computer so and only opened Cakewalk.

I have the latest version of Cakewalk. It's a clean project. The instrument is SL-Electric-Piano by Cakewalk.

I am attaching a screenshot and a sound file so you can see and hear. You can see the noise in the middle

Any help towards troubleshooting the problem would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Hanan

[David Baay]

I was just in the process of writing the following when you posted:

My guess would be that your keyboard controller has a physical problem that's causing spurious Note events to be generated on that one key, possibly due to the slight vibraiton of the keybed when you release other keys.

Does it happen when playing other ranges of the keyboard?

[David Baay]

If you can't actually fix the bad switch or get a replacement,  you may be able to swap a strip of membrane switches with a good one from a less often used upper or lower octave, and cut out the bad switch so it doesn't generate events at the new location.

[Hanan Cohen]

I found the problem. I ran a MIDI-OX and saw that my keyboard is sending garbage from this key.

[Hanan Cohen]

Thanks. It does that even when I don't play. See a screenshot of the log. It's an old keyboard I bought second hand. Will need to find a way to fix it.

Edited October 31 by Hanan Cohen

[Amberwolf]

My experience has been that with used gear, sometimes liquids find their way under the rubber switch caps inside the keyboard mechanism, and either dry leaving slightly conductive sticky residue, or actively corrode partial shorts across them.   

Sometimes it's other less identifiable things on other electrical contacts for the specific keys/buttons/sliders with issues.

[msmcleod]

I've had this issue in the past a few times - in all but one of the cases, cleaning the contacts solved the issue.  The case where it didn't work needed both the contact replaced on the PCB (using conductive silver paint), and the rubber contact switch replaced (this is literally a matter of lifting the old one off and putting the new one in place).

Before opening it up,  first try (in this order):

1.  A vacuum cleaner across the keys
2.  Spraying under/between the keys with a can of compressed air.
3.  Try spraying some contact cleaner or WD40 in there while wiggling / playing the keys.  WD40 is usually better than contact cleaner as it won't damage the carbon on the PCB / rubber contacts.  Don't use switch cleaner - it's way too harsh.

If all those fail, it's time to open it up and clean the contacts with Q-tips.  If the contacts themselves are damaged, sometimes you can get away with using a pencil to replace the carbon, but that won't last forever...  you can buy a conductive carbon (or silver) pen for $10 - $20 which will do the job properly.  Obviously check everything with a multi-meter before you close up.

 

[Bass Guitar]

It depends on the keyboard manufacturer.   Korg, Yamaha and Roland and many Top brands will have the replacement silicon / carbon contact strips. I found Akai doesn't supply them. My Yamaha keyboard was straight forward to do but I counted 45 screws were involved!! 

[Promidi]

Until you fix this, you could use a CAL script to delete those notes.  Put the following (copy and paste to capture the required spaces) in a *.CAL file  You could even bind that CAL to a computer key to make the process even faster.

(do    (forEachEvent (if (&& (&& (== Event.Kind NOTE) (== Note.Key 60)) (<= Note.Dur 30)) (delete))))

In the above snippet, the 60 (after the Note.Key)  is the note number and the 30 (after the Note.Dur) is the maximum duration of the spurious note the keyboard generates.