things not to do...

[Glenn Stanton]

so, i'm in the process of working out the instrumentation on a new song, i have my VI guitars (Ample SJ and SC) and their basic MIDI. then decide, i'll make a copy of those tracks and tweak the MIDI. turns out i'm not sure i like the newer tracks, so i turn the MIDI level on those all the way down (leaving the original tracks on their normal level - 101 in this case).

i export a rough mix. my guitars are missing!!!! arrrrgggh!

i go back and now everytime i hit play, the volume on the SJ and SC drop to 0! check - cc7? ok i'm not injecting any change there, automation? nope not at that stage. mute the MIDI clip? nope nothing mysterious there still getting the volume turned down to 0. a few more minutes (and coffee), i realize:

if one of the MIDI tracks which is using the same VI as another MIDI track is set to 0,
then the VI master volume gets set to 0 and the other track with the volume set correctly is essentially ignored.

note to self - mute the MIDI clip and/or turn off AUDIO track volume NOT the MIDI volume...
when playing with options for different MIDI played by the same VI
- LEAVE THE MIDI VOLUME ALONE!

ok, all good now.

Edited September 5 by Glenn Stanton

[Starship Krupa]

On 9/5/2025 at 8:03 AM, Glenn Stanton said:

LEAVE THE MIDI VOLUME ALONE!

I find this to be a good policy in general and apply it to all situations.

[mettelus]

Sort of reminds me of the VSTIs that have volume linked to the Mod wheel... since the A-PROs are all spring-loaded, as soon as you move the Mod wheel you better not let it go or the volume dives to nothing

[Glenn Stanton]

yeah some use the mod wheel, and on my S49, there is a touch-slider pad below the pitch and mod wheels, which is a volume control in many cases, so one of the first things i check, is did i touch the slide? lol. 

i'm not sure if the active MIDI track should ignore the inactive tracks or not. this would also provide the option for multiple tracks feeding MIDI to a VI to have different levels being sent, rather than overriding the other tracks levels. e.g. i have a drum track @ 101, and a percussion track using the tambourine and shakers only set @ 75. in this scenario, i'd want all the drums fed @ 101 and all the percussion @ 75 so i could start to set the blends. now it would simply set all of the tracks to 75... 

probably not possible as the level is sent in the MIDI so the VI is reacting to that, vs having the track volume affecting the MIDI velocity levels uniformly...

Edited Saturday at 04:01 PM by Glenn Stanton

[Amberwolf]

4 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

i'm not sure if the active MIDI track should ignore the inactive tracks or not. this would also provide the option for multiple tracks feeding MIDI to a VI to have different levels being sent, rather than overriding the other tracks levels. e.g. i have a drum track @ 101, and a percussion track using the tambourine and shakers only set @ 75. in this scenario, i'd want all the drums fed @ 101 and all the percussion @ 75 so i could start to set the blends. now it would simply set all of the tracks to 75... 

This would not generally be a good thing, if by "inactive" you mean the tracks that are not 'in focus", such as for live-input control, playing new notes in, etc.  That would mean that none of your tracks anywhere in the project would feed their controls (volume at minimum) to their VIs, unless you have that track active, so none of your projects would playback correctly.  

If by "inactive" you mean tracks you are no longer using anything from, or have no MIDI clips in them, then you can either disable their volume / etc controls (rightclick-disable control), or more appropriately, mute them or archive them.  Then there are no MIDI controls feeding VIs from these tracks, and there's nothing to worry about.  

 

I personally never set the volume controls on any MIDI track at all, or use any MIDI CC volume data in clips or tracks, so the VI will be at it's normal default (often max) volume, and then I will simply control the audio output track's volume instead, almost always via automation in that audio track, or even in individual audio clips once rendered (wherever such clips stack over each other in the same track and must have different gain controls).    

For any multitimbral VI that has multiple audio outs, I'll assign the MIDI tracks and outputs such that I get each sound I need individual volume control over in a separate audio track. 

For those MT VIs with only a single audio out, I'll use multiple instances of the VI so I get multiple audio outs, each instance fed by just the MIDI track(s) that all need the same volume control. 

Using MIDI volume to control VIs requires mapping out your project, tracks, and VIs so that no VI will be getting more than one volume control per controllable instrument within it. 

Also, at least some VIs don't even respond to MIDI volume controls, or require "user intervention" in their settings to various degrees to cause this to happen.  

So it is "easier" to not use MIDI volume at all, in many cases, which is why I do things the way I do.

 

Back in the days of only hardware synths, they typically didn't have automatable hardware audio outputs, only the MIDI volume controls, and so it made sense to do it with those; it was really the only option.  

Initially, VIs were done this same way, but nowadays implementations vary signficantly, and it is easier to just use audio-side controls and ignore the existence of the MIDI ones entirely, for many VIs.   

 

4 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

probably not possible as the level is sent in the MIDI so the VI is reacting to that, vs having the track volume affecting the MIDI velocity levels uniformly...

Velocity is a completely different thing than volume.  You normally don't want any control to override your velocity wholesale, because velocity controls (or should) the performance of the instrument; which sample is being used, how oscillators or ADSRs react, etc., so the actual sound being created is (should be) different based on the velocity, for many instruments. 

If you set the velocity to be the same on all notes from all tracks feeding a VI, this will "deaden" a performance, making it "lifeless" and uninteresting in many (most?) cases.    (there are certain cases where doing this is actually useful but it's not common, and I would be using the Velocity MFX to narrow to a range instead of setting them all the same). 

Edited Saturday at 08:23 PM by Amberwolf

[Glenn Stanton]

agreed, i would not necessarily wan the velocity overwritten by the volume change, merely scaled (like it does on a single track where i lower the volume but leave the velocity on notes the same as before).

on the multiple MIDI into a single VI, things like Kontakt use (or can use) separate channels so effectively a different instrument (per a normal MIDI behaviour), but 2 or more tracks into a single VI on a single channel - it seems like the track with the lowest volume setting wins 🙂

and the reason i set the volume off on the second track was i didn't want it sending the MIDI notes, and i didn't want to mute the clip either. but lo and behold, even when i did mute the clip, and remove the clip (while troubleshooting),  it had no effect. just the  track volume causing the VI to turn off it's volume.

anyways as noted, all good for me now. 

[Amberwolf]

4 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

agreed, i would not necessarily wan the velocity overwritten by the volume change, merely scaled (like it does on a single track where i lower the volume but leave the velocity on notes the same as before).

FWIW, if you did want to scale the actual velocity, MIDI tracks each have the Vel+ control that is center-zero-offset, that you can use to do this, if your instruments work the right way to do this. If your trackview is setup not to display this control, you can manually show it (don't know how in the newer Sonar, but I can't imagine they took that away). 

Lowering the volume on the track via MIDI *or* audio shouldn't scale or otherwise alter the velocity in any way.,

 

Just to expand, for future readers of this thread that don't know the details of MIDI and instrument functions:

As long as the instrument you use doesn't create any difference at all in the sound produced by one velocity vs another, then that technique works fine.  

But anything that uses velocity to control the actual sound (whcih is common) won't give the result of just changing the volume if you scale or alter the velocity--it may change the volume, but it also changes which sound is played.  A simple example is piano, where touching a note lightly makes a significantly different sound than striking it harder does, in a well-made piano synth. 

 

Most of the multitibral rompler synths I've used over the years don't have multiple samples to use the velocity this way, so they respond fine to using velocity as a volume control, but stuff like even just TruePianos that came with some SONAR versions uses velocity like the real instrument would, with different samples being used for different velocity levels (at least for different ranges of velocity), so this technique does not work on those in the expected/desired manner--they do get quieter or louder, but they sound different as well. 

 

There are also some instruments that don't respond to velocity at all, though that's rare and I can't remember the couple I had that were like this as I haven't used them in a very long time.  (one was hardware, and it didn't have a velocity-sensitive keyboard either, the other was a VI; there might've been two or three of those). 

For these rare instances, then like those VIs that don't respond to MIDI CC7 (or other CCs) for volume control, you have to use their audio track's volume instead. 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Amberwolf

[Glenn Stanton]

36 minutes ago, Amberwolf said:

Lowering the volume on the track via MIDI *or* audio shouldn't scale or otherwise alter the velocity in any way.,

fair enough. and good points on instrument samples being triggered due to volume or velocity.

in my case, i don't typically touch the volume or use CC7 etc. and yes, changing velocity (which is my normal approach) can impact the samples selected from the VI. most times i would use a velocity change would be (in my usual work) to get a percussion instrument (like a shaker or tambourine) to use a "softer" set of samples to cut some harshness without having to eq it.