DAW Midi CV only playing two notes out of piano roll

I was following the Omri Cohen VCV rack with Ableton tutorial. He was showing users how to connect the midi pitch settings to play the midi from the DAW in the channel where the VCV rack is nested.

My problem was when I pressed play, only two notes were played. In the tutorial, every note was played and I followed it to the specific step.

Example video:

Are your notes overlapping ?

Notice the “gap” between the notes.

No, because it was a midi file I uploaded.

It should be pretty straight-forward. Test it with a new midi clip and draw in some notes. Make sure there is enough space between the notes (if you draw a 16th note sequence, make the notes 1/32th long, if you draw 8th notes, make them 1/16th) and check what happens when a note is not played.

You could get rid of the delay and reverb (delete them or set both to completely dry - dry/wet control on the delay to zero, dry turned up and wet to zero on the reverb). Just use Plaits, gate from midi to cv goes to “Trig” and V/Oct goes to V/Oct. From Plaits “Out” to the left input of the Audio.

If you can’t get it to work, can you upload your Ableton Live project file so I can have a look?

1 Like

I shortened all notes and it worked. The midi notes were played by the synth module. Im not sure why though. When I used the midi clip on a synth vst, the notes were played.

I think it has to do with the midi clop, but I don’t know why. What if I am using a sub bass or synth lead that I want to play without gaps or micro gaps? It doesn’t seem to matter because I recorded in notes by playing them and it played back just fine.

I haven’t looked into what’s going on with overlapping notes in VCV Rack, but it´s something that happens. in reality it’s not an issue. I’m not even sure if it’s a bug, but it is something you have to pay attention to.

If you need longer notes, you just have to turn up the amp release. With Plaits, you would add a VCA and an envelope, connect gate to trigger the envelope and do not connect gate to Plaits trig input (That triggers the internal envelope/lopass gate. If you connect gate there, you´d have to turn up the decay - it´s in the right click menu of Plaits). Now tune your decay, sustain and release to get the effect you want. Release determines how long the note rings out at the end of a note, so you can easily compensate for the shoter notes.

This is how you would set up Plaits with VCA and envelope (Red cables are audio, green are gates/triggers, blue is note pitch and yellow is modulation): PlaitsVCAEnv

Edit; This is also how you´d set up any other oscillator in VCV Rack. If you want velocity, you use another VCA, connect audio and connect the “Vel” output from Midi to CV to the cv input on the VCA like here with Befacos Pony VCO:

PonyVCAEnvVel

I don’t have pro but you must be able to set the output to polyphonic, that way your notes will not be killed by the next and you can use longer gates, overlapping notes etc.

The cables will become thicker.P.S. the module has to be polyphonic too.

Also experiment wit the “retrigger” output on the midi to cv module.

2 Likes

This seems to happen even with setting polyphony on, but adding space between seems to resolve. Not sure why this is needed either.

This seems to be an issue between Ableton and VCV. I tested overlapping MIDI notes in Bitwig in mono mode and it worked fine.

You need to leave just a tiny gap, just enough the notes do not touch each other basically. This can then be easily compensated for by dialing in a bit more release and in most cases, you won’t even notice the gap.

When I wrote above to use 1/32th instead of 1/16th, it was just to rule out note lengths as the cause of your problem. Just to make that clear.

Some sequencers use velocity 0 instead of a note off message ( a Note On with 0 velocity is considered the same as a Note Off in the midi specification) and it can cause issues in some cases, even though it is a totally valid method of implementing note offs. Maybe this is the problem here…anyways, easy to work around so… :upside_down_face:

Edit; Quickly tested in Reaper and it’s the same problem. You hear only the first note when you press play, unless you leave a gap. With a midi monitor I can see there is indeed only one note, when I leave a gap, I get a series of notes. Makes me wonder why every other plugin has no problem interpreting these as new notes.

Btw, VCV Rack Standalone has no such problem when sequenced from my Octatrack. Even overlapping notes work.

Confusing…

Just a question: Do you use the VST2 plugin or the VST3 plugin or the Clap plugin?

What happens if you take the retrigger output in stead of the gate ?

1 Like

I want to link to this old thread. There was a vcv rack fork with an alternative handling of this - but it is not up-to-date with the vcv rack version:

In Ableton it is pulling it from the local folder. It says VST on the file. I am guessing it is a VST.

That works in Reaper and Ableton Live. Ha, perfect! Still odd that any other plugin (at least I’ve never seen one that needs a gap between notes) handles note length just fine.

The problem with this is that its a trigger and not a gate, so you can’t play sustaining notes …

1 Like

Oh, of course! That’s also the reason why it works… It will make life easier at least for sequences where gate length isn’t important and I’ll certainly use it.

Hmm, the whole thing is kinda strange and without any insight how midi is handled in DAWs, I give up. My Octatrack works fine when sequencing VCV Standalone, but with the plugin in Live I have to shorten notes coming from the Octatrack. Without a gap, same behaviour as internal midi from the DAW. I haven’t tested other harware sequencers, but the issue seems to be with how Live (and Reaper) handle midi. Fortunately in reality it’s really not an issue to leave a tiny gap between notes. You can zoom in really close and make it a few microseconds and/or let the envelope handle the gap. Still a bit annoying.

1 Like

I took a closer look and your screenshot in your first post reads VST2. Maybe try VST3 instead. The Ableton manual should tell you how to to so.

I made a quick test with Ableton Suite 11.2 and VCV Rack VST2 Version 2.6.0 on WIndows 10 and overlapping notes work fine:

Addendum: VST3 also works fine.

1 Like

This is how VCV Rack behaves in Live 12 on my machine, but I´ve always had this issue with notes needing a gap since Live 11 (and yesterday I tested with Reaper). Both VST2 and VST 3 behave the same.

You can see from the patch cable that gate is held high unless there is a gap between notes.

1 Like