In long sequences, I routinely get an extra note around bar 11 out of nowhere.
You can see that a G#1 is getting sent in this video. It’s coming through at velocity 1, but my patch isn’t using velocity for volume, so it just blasts out. I disconnected all my midi controllers and can see that it’s not coming from an external source through the Pyramid,
In the past I’ve papered over it by setting the synth to mono, and just playing over things at that point but in this case I’m trying to sequence a poly organ part.
Has anyone else run into this issue?
I haven’t ever noticed this issue myself. It seems a bit of a weird one. How long is the pattern (sequence)? I often have Pattern lengths of 16 bars and the like.
Are there more tracks in the Project than the one we are seeing/hearing in the video or is this happening with just a single Track/Pattern in the Project?
I presume that G#1 note doesn’t show up in Step mode in any Patterns on that Channel. How did you input the notes, was it Live mode, or Step mode? Have you done any ‘big’ edits like copying and pasting or rotating large portions of the pattern?
I ask these questions because I feel that when I have run into unexplained odd behaviours on my Pyramid it seems like it might be down to it’s amount of available RAM. Usually you only notice you haven’t enough available at the point when Pyramid locks up. But I wonder if sometimes you can be a bit ‘too close’ to the limit (enough to get weird results), but still not quite over. You only seem to be able to clear the cache (as much as is possible within a given Project) by powering down.
Do you have any MIDI FX enabled on that Track?
The project itself has 9 tracks, only 8 ever play at the same time. Most of them have multiple patterns, but of course I can only play one of those per tracka t ones. The output/sound from the video are from when I soloed the one giving me trouble. The only effect on it is swing.
I’m not a very good keyboardist, so I was playing a note or chord on my keyboard, and then punching in the step I wanted it to appear in step mode, then adjusting note volumes and lengths. I didn’t do any big sweeping changes, like rotating the whole track, or copy/pastes. The only way I can reliably freeze up my Pyramid is by trying to nudge several notes forward or back too quickly after holding them down, so I don’t often to that kind of thing.
When I got to the information tab in settings, it only shows that it’s using about a quarter of the memory. Since It’s just labeled as “memory” I’m assuming this is the RAM.
I was trying to do some troubleshooting, and couldn’t make it happen in a brand new track in a new song (although iirc I’ve run into the before and was able to.) If I run into the issue again, and figure out a reliable way to reproduce it, I’ll post the details
One strange thing, in the offending track, if I delete ALL the notes after the 11th measure, 2nd beat, the sound will reappear on that beat, but if I put in any notes after the 11th measure 2nd beat, the sound disappears completely, even if they’re much later in the sequence. I just didn’t notice because I was building this pattern from start to finish and tried to figured out what was causing the noise before continuing on.
From what you say it seems that maybe it’s a MIDI ‘choking’ issue. I think that perhaps Pyramid is trying to read/process too much data simultaneously. From what I gather, even though other tracks may be muted, Pyramid still reads/processes that data. If Pyramid tries to process many events at the same time it may make an error like produce an incomplete or incorrect MIDI message, or something.
Even though your Project doesn’t seem that full on and busy, if there are multiple note ons, note offs, CCs, clocks, etc all placed on the same beat (or even same PPQN?) Pyramid could potentially get choked up, leading to strange behaviours, possibly like those you are experiencing.
Unfortunately, there’s probably all sorts of potential reasons why you might occasionally get odd behaviours when transmitting, receiving and processing MIDI. It may be difficult to narrowing down the cause. You’d think USB MIDI would be less susceptible due to it’s faster baud rate but it brings with it it’s own potential problems due to stuff like ‘packetisation’ of data, or it’s potential for creating ‘ground loops’.
I think as a general rule, if you can reduce the chances of lots of data occuring at the same time it’s probably a good. idea. Doing stuff like not sending clock unless you have to, don’t have all notes coming on/off at the same time (use slight offsets or alter note lengths here and there), etc, may help. I think with Pyramid it’s also worth ensuring events are deleted if they are no longer in use.