Held MIDI Data

[Kanthos]

Being a somewhat competent pianist, I prefer to play my MIDI data into FL Studio as opposed to create it by clicking. My setup is a M-Audio Axiom 61 MIDI controller keyboard with some generic footpedal I bought with the keyboard (one of the nicer pedals with the metal bar for your foot that looks like a piano pedal instead of one of the rectangular box pedals). When I record MIDI in FL Studio, almost all the MIDI data extends to where I cut off recording. By the end of a track, I'll likely have MIDI data for nearly every note. For example, the first chord I play doesn't register as a MIDI Off event, so the MIDI data looks like I held that chord through the entire pattern. Everything *sounds* fine, probably because FL Studio is picking up the velocity changes properly, but it makes recorded tracks essentially uneditable, and since I'm far from being a perfect pianist, putting tracks together is a major pain. I'm pretty sure that it's got something to do with the pedal, as I don't think this happens if I don't use the pedal for a track (I can't recall for sure though; I'll check at home tonight).

Has anyone seen something like this before? Are there any settings, either for the keyboard or FL Studio, that I could change?

[Yoozer]

I'm guessing that the polarity of the sustain pedal isn't correctly switched - e.g. that it sees the "pedal off" as a "pedal on" and vice-versa. Be assured that it's not unique to the Axiom itself - some synths have this issue, too.

You should be able to change this on either the Axiom itself or the software that came with it. "pedal polarity" are your keywords to search for .

[Kanthos]

I'll take a look for that before I do anything else, but I'm not sure it's the cause of the problem. I've played on a keyboard before where I knew there was a polarity problem (in Footloose, we had a Roland and a Korg keyboard with two Yahama pedals, and the guy from the music store who rented them to us told us that we'd likely have to open one pedal and switch polarity to get proper results on the Korg, which we did), and it doesn't seem like the same thing. If the polarity of the pedal is opposite to that of the keyboard, I'd expect that when the pedal is up and I play a note, the note will be held, and pushing the pedal down would stop the note from playing, and that's not happening. As far as I can tell, it plays normally and just messes up the MIDI Offs. I'll try polarity first though; there's probably something on the keyboard that flips polarity.

[Kanthos]

I tried it out last night. Apparantly on my keyboard, the polarity is reversed if you hold the pedal down while you turn on the keyboard. Polarity being reversed acted as expected: notes sounded until I pressed the pedal down.

I tried a bit of recording last night, and the problem was gone. I'm not sure whether it was a concious or subconcious difference in my pedal technique, a difference in my configuration, or a difference/bug fix in FL 7, but I'm happy either way. Thanks for the help!