MIDI "chase" notes

[nevinson]

With my current MIDI setup, if playback starts after a note start, the note is not played.
Is there a way to change this, so the note would be played as though its start time were at the position at which playback started?

[coenplanetc]

I don’t understand this question.

@nevinson

With my current MIDI setup, if playback starts after a note start, the note is not played.

This is totally logical with any Midi setup. Why would you want to have a note played if it is placed in time before the playback start?

Could it be that because in piano-roll view the length/duration of a note is depicted as a rectangle you think that playback starting halfway this rectangle the note is still sounding? Note-activation is only at the beginning of the rectangle. Change the note-mode to percussive and you’ll see.

[songo (Krzysztof Gajdemski)]

@coenplanetc

I don’t understand this question.

@nevinson

With my current MIDI setup, if playback starts after a note start, the note is not played.

This is totally logical with any Midi setup. Why would you want to have a note played if it is placed in time before the playback start?

It is a common functionality i many DAWs/MIDI sequencers. See a brief description of this feature in Logic:

Use the Chase Events function in Logic Pro for Mac

And it’s not only for notes. It can chase CCs and even SYSEX messages which may come handy in many situations (but has its drawbacks too as described above).

Don’t think Ardour has this feature. And I miss it badly sometimes.

[coenplanetc]

@songo

It is a common functionality i many DAWs/MIDI sequencers. See a brief description of this feature in Logic:

Thanks for the info, didn’t know this existed at all

[atux]

Is technically feasible a function to make an automatically, temporary and reversibly “MIDI-Audio switch” of an entire MIDI track, or part of it, with a simple click?
So, for example while I’m making a MIDI track, I could temporarily see the Audio realization of some very long held notes, play them after their starting point, and then be able to easily return to MIDI.

a.

[songo (Krzysztof Gajdemski)]

Pretty sure it is already possible using some plugins or LUA scripting. See:

Freeze, an LV2 plugin for freezing audio or midi tracks in Ardour

Freeze Version 0.2.1 Freeze is an LV2 plugin for freezing tracks in a digital audio workstation—that is, temporarily rendering a track as audio to reduce CPU/DSP load, as tracks with large chains of CPU-heavy effects can make buffer underruns (xruns) quite common. Some DAWs like Ardour support track freezing to a certain extent, but Ardour, for example, cannot freeze MIDI tracks. [Screenshot of Freeze in Ardour] Freeze running in Ardour Usage To use Freeze, insert an instance of the plugin…

Never tried it, though. But it is not the same as “chase” feature which works in pure MIDI and makes working with external gear much easier (especially in complex arrangements with long chords or lots of CCs).

[paul (Paul Davis)]

We have the technology to do this inside Ardour (developed as we added clip launching), but it has not been added as a feature to regular timeline playback (yet).

[songo (Krzysztof Gajdemski)]

Do you mean MIDI event chasing? Does that mean there are plans to add this feature to Ardour?

[paul (Paul Davis)]

Yes, I mean MIDI event chasing. We will expose it in a future version of Ardour though I cannot say when at this point. It’s not particularly complicated but also not trivial (mostly figuring out all the details of precisely when to output/send/deliver MIDI data to “catch up”.

[paul (Paul Davis)]

We do not freeze MIDI to audio.

In Ardour, MIDI tracks are (for now) MIDI tracks, they cannot switch and become audio tracks. Ditto for audio tracks, they cannot switch and become MIDI tracks.

We do have the internal infrastructure to deal with tracks that contain both kinds of data, but handling this at the GUI level is extremely complex if it’s going to be done right.

[nevinson]

Thank you all for your kind answers.

It’s great news that there are plans of adding this feature, even if there is no certainty of when
For the meantime, I’ll keep bouncing my MIDI tracks and maybe I’ll try the plugin shared by @songo.

[edrickblade]

Hi, with Freeze plugin you can literally convert midi instrument to audio because it saves the audio data into the current project folder, something like Melodyne does, when you unfreeze the plugin deletes the temporary audio data.