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Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

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Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Whitemusic » Thu Aug 01, 2013 6:54 am

I have been using the live record function to generate music scores using a midi keyboard - but I have not been able to get the following rhythm to appear correctly:

quarter note
dotted eighth rest
sixteenth note
quarter note

The sixteenth note is appearing with the quarter note that follows - as if they are being played at the same time. It plays back correct in Notion - but justs looks wrong.

I have tried setting the metronome mark to eighth note tempo to slow down the speed I am playing - to leave more time between the notes - but they still appear as if I have played them at the same time.

To get around this problem I have tried step recording in the passage - but then I can't seem to use the computer keyboard to generate a dotted eighth rest (EED) - Notion gives me an eighth rest as soon as I have typed the EE.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Frieda » Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:28 am

Hi,
Try experimenting with the "Chord Looseness" in the Record settings. Try 1 (single notes) instead of 5(average). Maybe this helps.

Kind regards,

Frieda
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Whitemusic » Fri Aug 02, 2013 1:04 pm

Hi - thanks for the idea - I did try that.

I attach a copy of the file - just in case that helps anybody to understand my predicament. It sounds correct - but looks all wrong. Record settings are - Min velocity 10, Min duration 0, chord looseness 1.

As you can see - I have resorted to recording in sixteenths - so I could try and be really precise with the placement of the notes - but they still appear together.

Thanks again if you are reading this.
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Surfwhammy » Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:56 pm

Whitemusic wrote:Hi - thanks for the idea - I did try that.

I attach a copy of the file - just in case that helps anybody to understand my predicament. It sounds correct - but looks all wrong. Record settings are - Min velocity 10, Min duration 0, chord looseness 1.

As you can see - I have resorted to recording in sixteenths - so I could try and be really precise with the placement of the notes - but they still appear together.

Thanks again if you are reading this.


It might have something to do with the way the MIDI keyboard is configured, which is something I noticed when I first started experimenting with a Behringer mini-MIDI keyboard and the keys were set to have variable velocity, which made the keys a bit like marshmallows in terms of crisp notes . . .

I did a bit of reading and found that there is a way to configure the keyboard response so that it is fixed and has no velocity at all, hence notes are either ON or OFF instantly . . .

This might help, but all I can do is guess . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

P. S. I downloaded the sample NOTION 4 score that you provided, and it played very slowly, which was odd, so I did an experiment and changed the tempo, where I noticed that instead of the value being in the form of "q=<integer beats per minute>" it was "s=<integer value>", so I got a new tempo from the palette and used it to replace the existing tempo indicator, where the one I used for replacement had the standard "q=<integer beats per minute>" format, and when I set it to "q=120" the notes played at what I think is the correct tempo, which was quite a bit faster than the way the notes are played in the original NOTION 4 score you posted . . .

Hence, I think this is the problem--using "s=n" rather then "a=n", where "n" is an integer value, which now that I think about it, I suppose "s" maps to "sixteenth note" while "q" maps to "quaver or quarter note" . . .

In other words, when you use "s" to set the tempo, it maps to being four times slower than when "q" is used with the same integer value, but if you set the "s" value to "480", then it should work correctly and will be the same as "q=120" . . .

Code: Select all
"s=120" equals "q=30"
"s=480" equals "q=120"


As best as I can determine based on this experiment, I think this is the problem, and the solution is to use the correct value for the beats per minute based on the specific type of note duration you want to use, noting that using "s" will map to being four times slower at the same integer value than when you use "q" . . .

This does not correct the problem with the stacked notes which should be separate and distinct, but if you set the tempo correctly when recording the MIDI keyboard, it might solve the stacked notes problem . . .

The stacked notes aspect is pretty strange . . .

Lot of FUN! :ugeek:

P. P. S. It might be helpful to know the following bits of information, for sure . . .

(1) Windows or Mac OS X?

(2) MIDI keyboard brand and model?

(3) MIDI interface (external MIDI interface and if so then brand and model; USB;or something else)?

(4) NOTION 3, 32-bit NOTION 4, or 64-bit NOTION 4?

For sure1
:)
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Whitemusic » Sat Aug 03, 2013 12:22 pm

I am running Windows 8, play a Roland Juno Stage, use a USB midi interface and run Notion 4 64 Bit.

I tried adjusting the settings on the Juno (found some settings I had never played with before!) - and did get a 'crisper' sound coming through the computer in Notion - but it made no difference to the notation output - I still got the stacked notes.

I then tried playing a set of sixteenth notes instead of the dotted eighth and one sixteenth note - and got a near perfect set of notes. So I can get proper sixteenth notation if I have a set of them - but seem to struggle with single sixteenth notes. This was done with my original keyboard settings - so I'm not sure it is related to the keyboard settings.

Any ideas? I attach the file showing the multiple sixteenth notes. (Again I played in at a really slow speed for accuracy E=45 - of course you can amend this speed to hear the music at a proper speed - say q=90)

Thanks for looking.
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Surfwhammy » Sat Aug 03, 2013 8:29 pm

Whitemusic wrote:I am running Windows 8, play a Roland Juno Stage, use a USB midi interface and run Notion 4 64 Bit.

I tried adjusting the settings on the Juno (found some settings I had never played with before!) - and did get a 'crisper' sound coming through the computer in Notion - but it made no difference to the notation output - I still got the stacked notes.

I then tried playing a set of sixteenth notes instead of the dotted eighth and one sixteenth note - and got a near perfect set of notes. So I can get proper sixteenth notation if I have a set of them - but seem to struggle with single sixteenth notes. This was done with my original keyboard settings - so I'm not sure it is related to the keyboard settings.

Any ideas? I attach the file showing the multiple sixteenth notes. (Again I played in at a really slow speed for accuracy E=45 - of course you can amend this speed to hear the music at a proper speed - say q=90)

Thanks for looking.


The additional information is helpful, and on first inspection I am a bit curious about the USB MIDI interface and whether it is a separate device or is one of the direct output options for the Roland Juno-Stage, which after a bit of research looks to be one of the direct output options, which suggests that the Roland Juno-Stage is connected to your Windows 8 computer via a USB cable running to one of the USB ports on the Windows 8 computer . . .

Image
Roland JUNO-STAGE

This is a professional quality MIDI keyboard, which tends strongly to exclude problems that one might expect in a low-end MIDI keyboard . . .

These are a few ideas for experiments, some of which I can do here in the sound isolation studio, since I have a range of MIDI keyboards (Behringer UMA25S U-Control 25-Key USB Midi Controller Keyboard, Alesis ION Analog Modeling Synthesizer, and KORG Triton Music Workstation [88-Keys]), noting that I do everything on the Mac here in the sound isolation studio, hence I cannot provide any help if it is a problem with Windows 8:

(1) As I recall, some MIDI keyboards have a setting which determines whether the keyboard is monophonic (one voice) or polyphonic (many voices), which basically determines whether you can play (a) only single notes or (b) some combination of single notes and chords; and this might be interesting to explore . . .

(2) Generally, I am a bit skeptical of using 12USB ports for MIDI, since doing MIDI via USB requires (a) converting the original MIDI signal to USB and then (b) converting the USB signal to MIDI, which involves two conversions; so another experiment involves determining what happens when an external MIDI interface is used and the MIDI keyboard is connected to the external MIDI interface via standard MIDI cables, which also involves conversions but perhaps in a different way--noting that I can do this because I have a MOTU 838mk3 Hybrid external digital audio and MIDI interface . . .

EXPERIMENT #1

I did one of the experiments, and in this one I used the Behringer UMA25S U-Control 25-Key USB Midi Controller Keyboard with its velocity option set to "FIXED", which maps to no velocity and essentially is ON or OFF for notes, where the Behringer MIDI keyboard was connected to the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) with 20GB of memory via a USB cable, since I was using the USB output port of the Behringer MIDI keyboard . . .

I set the MIDI recording options in NOTION 4 (64-bit) as follows:

Code: Select all
Metronome: unchecked
Count-in:  None
Min velocity:   0
Min duration:  0 ms
Chord looseness:  1
Split point: Middle C
Tuplets: checked
Multi-voice:  checked
Multi-channel guitar:  unchecked
Preset:  Keyboard


I used one of the first piano parts I learned years ago, which is a phrase from one a Beatles song, and this is the way the music notation looks in NOTION 4 after I copied the MIDI sequencer notation and pasted it to a VSTi virtual instrument staff which has Addictive Keys (XLN Audio) as its VSTi virtual instrument:

[NOTE: The piano part is my interpretation of the electric piano Intro for "You LIke Me Too Much" (Beatles), and the tempo is based on somewhat fuzzy historical data that tends to indicate whichever Beatle played this part on the recording (most likely Paul McCartney, because John Lennon was playing a HohnerPianet that had tremolo) probably was pretty buzzed on amphetamines at the time, which I usually can emulate by consuming huge quantities of vastly strong coffee, which is something I can do because I have the full array of what I call the "South American Coffee Achiever Gene Matrix", where having this particular set of genes is very important with respect to enjoying strong coffee, because for someone who does not have this particular set of genes, one cup of coffee at the strength I brew it could be deadly, literally . . . :shock: ]

"You Like Me Too Much" (Beatles) -- YouTube vinyl record

[NOTE: If you are using Firefox, then right-click on the image and select "View image" (or whatever is relevant depending on your web browser), and you can see the all the music notation . . . ]

Image

This is the resulting audio file for the Addictive Keys staff exported as a WAVE audio file:

Intro piano phrase from"You Like Me Too Much" (Beatles) -- MIDI converted to music notation and played via VSTi Addictive Keys -- WAVE (2.4MB, approximately 13 seconds)

EXPERIMENT #1: EXPECTED RESULT

In Utopia, one might expect that the music notation would be correct . . .

EXPERIMENT #1: ACTUAL RESULT

This apparently is not Utopia, but the playback either (a) is accurate based on the way I played the notes or (b) is pretty close, since while (c) I am a stellar pianist so long as I tap into my inner piano idiot savant and play without any immediately conscious thought or concern for what I am playing, (d) otherwise piano is not one of my primary, secondary, tertiary, or quaternary instruments, which basically maps to discovering how to tap into Pretend John Lennon when he was hyper and doing patently silly but vastly cool piano "chickin' pickin'", hence while Paul McCartney probably was playing the specific piano part, I play it more like Lennon would have played it . . .

EXPERIMENT #1: CONCLUSION

This looks to be quite similar to the results you have, and it might be the way this works in NOTION 4 for very rapid phrases . . .

It plays correctly, but it does not look right, which is a problem when you need the resulting music notation to look right . . .

THOUGHTS

I plan to do a few more experiments, one of which will use the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys); standard MIDI cables; and the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid external digital and MIDI interface, which should be interesting, since if it does the same thing when played on the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys) via standard MIDI cable using the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid external digital and MIDI interface, then I think this will be sufficient to declare it to be a problem with the way MIDI input is recorded in NOTION 4 in real-time, which basically will be a matter of insufficient detail or granularity in recording the otherwise distinct MIDI notes and commands, because even with the Behringer MIDI keyboard, the distinct notes are being sent correctly, which I verified by using the Behringer MIDI keyboard to play the standalone version of MachFive 3 (MOTU) by setting the MIDI input for MachFive 3 to the Behringer keyboard, where I can watch the notes alternate on the MachFive 3 mini-keyboard in real-time . . .

Lots of FUN! :ugeek:
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Surfwhammy » Sat Aug 03, 2013 9:46 pm

As a bit of follow-up, the strategy I am using is something I call "scouting around", which is colloquialism for the scientific method, where the general strategy is to have a few ideas, which are called "hypotheses", and then to devise a set of experiments toward the goal of testing how well the hypotheses fit what happens in the real world . . .

The fascinating aspect of this is that once you do some experiments and ponder the results for a while, you are quite likely to have more ideas, regardless of whether the results of the experiments are expected or unexpected, unless as an example one of the experiments involves discovering whether it is a good idea to ignite a case of dynamite in a closet when one is sitting in the closet, where the general rule in this regard is that using a bit of common sense tends to be the best strategy nearly all the time, really . . .

Really! :idea:

THOUGHTS

The following two ideas are intriguing:

(1) The time signature might make a difference, and perhaps 4/4 is not the ideal time signature . . .

(2) If the test with the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys) using a standard MIDI cable connected to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid external digital and MIDI interface produces that same results as the experiment with the Behringer keyboard connected directly to the Mac Pro via a USB cable, then it should be interesting to determine what happens when a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application like Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) is used to record the real-time MIDI notes and commands, since if it works correctly with a DAW application doing the real-time MIDI recording, then perhaps it will work correctly when the resulting MIDI file (*.mid) is exported from the DAW application and is used to import the MIDI notes and commands to NOTION 4, which although being a bit roundabout will qualify as a solution . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Surfwhammy » Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:55 am

EXPERIMENT # 2

I did the initial test with the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys) connected to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid external digital audio and MIDI interface, and using the same settings as in the Behringer MIDI keyboard test there was a tiny difference, so I did a bit of experimenting with pleasantly surprising results, where I use the term "surprising" because this is the first time I have connected the KORG Triton to a MIDI interface, really . . .

Really! :ugeek:

It took a few minutes to connect the KORG Triton to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid and to do the NOTION 4 Preferences MIDI configuration to set the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid as the MIDI input source, all of which was very easy to do, but to put this into perspective the "easy" aspect comes after taking several video courses from Groove 3 and macProAudio on MIDI; doing a lot of reading about MIDI; and doing some experiments to discover how to connect everything and make it work, hence "easy" is relative . . .

This is the Intro to "You Like Me Too Much" (Beatles), and it is reasonably accurate to 32nd note granularity, where it is entirely possible that the non-distinct individual notes are the consequence of my piano playing skills (or more precisely, the lack thereof), since my general strategy for increasing my proficiency as a pianist basically is to stop playing piano and focus instead on imagining I am playing piano, which is the way I enhance the neural pathways in my brain that I developed during the time I rewired the frontal eye fields (FEF) region of my brain to increase the neural pathways to my auditory cortex, which in the grand scheme of everything is the only way one can play notes as rapidly as one note every 20 to 25 milliseconds or approximately 40 to 50 notes per second, which can be increased for playing kick drums if you use a pair of Duallist D4 Dual Pedals and can be increased for playing piano if you do something similar with your fingers, where the general idea is that each finger is like a drumstick and the keys on the piano are individual drums, cymbals, cowbells, and other Latin percussion instruments, all of which might sound pretty nutty, except that it works once you discover intentionally how to avoid nearly all immediately conscious mentation, since everything needs to happen so rapidly that there literally is no time to think about it in an immediately conscious way, hence you need to shift the thinking to your subconscious mind, hence rewiring the frontal eye fields to the auditory cortex, where for reference it is no coincidence that the frontal eye fields region of the brain is bounded by Brodmann areas #4, #6, and #8, which literally are located at the top center of the brain and is the anatomically and neurologically correct source of the colloquialism used by a musician when saying that they played something "off the top of my head", which is the case because the frontal eye fields region of the brain is the only part of the brain which is fast enough to do all the required computing in real-time on the fly:

[NOTE: The following instrumental version of "Starlight" is an example of composing and playing a grand piano part on the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys) using the aforementioned strategy where I suspend all immediate conscious thought and play the notes as if the keyboard was a drumkit, noting that this is one piano part but is run through cascading echo units, since I like the spatial stuff that cascading echo units do, where it also is useful to understand that while I can compose music using music notation, I cannot play anything by sight-reading music notation, although I can sight-sing just about anything so long as it is soprano treble staff and I have heard it at least one time on a record or whatever, which works better if I practice vocal sight-singing every once in a while. And for reference the Electric Bass also was a real instrument, so the only virtual instruments were the Kick Drum and the FOG, where the Grand Piano was done last, hence I knew the pattern of the song, which makes it considerably easier . . . ]

"Starlight" (The Surf Whammys) -- Kick Drum, Electric Bass, Grand Piano, FOG -- MP3 (approximately 7 minutes)

Image
Brodmann Areas of the Human Brain

Image

These are the settings I used for recording:

Code: Select all
    Metronome: checked
    Count-in:  1 bar
    Min velocity:   0
    Min duration:  0 ms
    Chord looseness:  1
    Split point: Middle C
    Tuplets: checked
    Multi-voice:  checked
    Multi-channel guitar:  unchecked
    Preset:  Keyboard


I tried several time signatures and tempos, with the following working best:

Code: Select all
Time signature:  6/8
Tempo:  s = 400


And after trying this with an External MIDI staff, which was not working so well, I tried it with the Addictive Keys virtual instrument staff, where the notes are recorded as music notation, and this worked nicely, where I set the MIDI input in NOTION 4 Preferences to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, and NOTION 4 was able to connect the dots with respect to what I played on the KORG Triton being recorded to the selected staff, which was the Addictive Keys virtual instrument staff that for reference did not have the "Sequence Staff" option checked, as shown in the following screen captures:

Image
NOTION 4 ~ Addictive Keys VSTi virtual instrument staff options

Image
NOTION 4 ~ Preferences ~ MIDI Input device

This is the music notation in PDF format:

Beatles Song Intro -- KORG Triton, Standard MIDI Cable, MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, VSTi virtual instrument staff -- PDF (41KB, 2 pages)

And this is the resulting WAVE audio file:

Beatles Song Intro -- KORG Triton, Standard MIDI Cable, MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, VSTi virtual instrument staff -- WAVE audio file (3.1MB, approximately 17 seconds)

THOUGHTS

Considering that this is the first time I have done MIDI recording with keyboards, I am pleased with the results after discovering a set of parameters and options that works nicely, even though I do not understand all the logic and mostly made what one might call "educated guesses", where for example since the Beatles song Intro is a bit frantic, I thought it was logical to use a frantic tempo, which based on earlier experiments appears to increase the fine granularity, as does essentially setting all the recording parameters to minimum values (velocity, duration, and so forth) . . .

I expected the KORG Triton to work better than the Behringer 25-Keys MIDI keyboard, and I expected the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid to work better than a USB interface, but I was not certain of this, so it is nice to know that it was a good guess . . .

Keyboard players who work professionally for top musical artists like Miley Cyrus need to have equipment that works, and I think they use stuff like the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid and standard MIDI cables, because it is professional equipment and it works . . .

USB stuff might be fine, but it requires conversions from something that is well-defined (MIDI) to something which is not so well defined and then back to what ideally should be well-defined (MIDI), and the source of this perspective is the various MIDI video courses I watched and studied, where the MIDI experts presenting the video courses were not so enthusiastic about using USB because it required converting out of the well-defined MIDI universe and then converting back into the well-defined MIDI universe, which in their view was not the ideal way to do MIDI . . .

I think this works, but I plan to do the DAW application test, since I am curious to know whether Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) does a better job, as well as what happens when a MIDI file (*.mid) exported from Digital Performer 8 is imported to NOTION 4 . . .

Basically, if you set all the various NOTION 4 parameters required to focus NOTION 4 on recording MIDI at the highest resolution or finest granularity, then I think it works nicely, with the caveat that instead of using a MIDI sequencer staff, it appears to work best when you use a regular staff and set its input device to a MIDI keyboard, which apparently on the Mac occurs automagically when you specify the external digital audio and MIDI interface to which the MIDI keyboard is connected as the MIDI Input source and specifically select the regular staff, which is assigned to a VSTi virtual instrument . . .

Since I do everything on the Mac here in the sound isolation studio, I cannot tell you how to do this on a Windows 8 machine, since I know that some of the MIDI configuration stuff will be different, but this is one of the reasons I do everything on the Mac, since through no fault of mine everything tends to work very nicely on the Mac, even though I have no idea precisely why, which is fine with me, since while I enjoy having a bit of FUN being a computer geek every so often, I prefer to focus on making music rather than on messing with computers, hardware, and software, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :)

P. S. Depending on the song, you might want to change the "Split-Point", but Middle C appears to be an industry standard "Split-Point" . . .
Last edited by Surfwhammy on Tue Aug 06, 2013 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Admin » Tue Aug 06, 2013 12:03 pm

Set the Min Duration to a lesser value until you get 16ths.

-Admin
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Re: Not getting sixteenth notes when recording

Postby Whitemusic » Tue Aug 20, 2013 4:09 pm

Thanks Admin - but the minimum duration was already set at ZERO - so that is not the solution.
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