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  • Minimum Pedal Lift Time for Sustain Pedal

    P
    P

    Hi all,

    I'm putting together a piece using Vienna Imperial and the VI Harpsichord. I've written it out in Sibelius and imported it into Cubase as MIDI. My piano playing isn't amazing, so I'm planning to keep the MIDI performance where possible, perhaps just replacing some chords and adjusting note lengths where it sounds artificial.

    I've noticed that sometimes the chords tend to blur together, like the sustain pedal is still holding the last chord down when the next one plays. The MIDI file has an almost instant up-down movement to reset the pedal, with a length of 1/120th of a demi-semiquaver, which is obviously very short. When I set the up-down break to last a full demi-semiquaver note, I can hear a big gap in the playing where all the sustain drops out. Maybe one or the other of these is inevitable, but is there any specific time length that the sustain pedal has to be released for to 'reset' the sustain sound and stop the previous chord from hanging?

    Many thanks!

    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 3.59Mhz Processor, 64 GB RAM, Windows 10.0.19045, Cubase 10.5.20, Sibelius 7, VEP 5.4.16181, VIP 2.4.16399, Symphonic Cube, MIR Rooms 1-5, Suite, Choir, Organ, Imperial, Solo Voices, Dimension Strings, Historic Winds, World Winds
  • M
    M

    Hi Pyre,

    Do I get it right by thinking your main complain is actually: The sustain pedal is either on or off. What causes the chords to "overlap" creating the blur or a gap between them. I'm not sure but I think the only way to avoid this is by getting a so called continues pedal which allows you to perform "Half pedaling". I got a Studio Logic pedal unit with three pedals. Soft, sostenuto and sustain with the half pedal function. And it's this half pedal possibility that will solve your problem. Be sure your Keyboard has the half pedal feature. I cant imaging playing the piano (plugin) without this pedal anymore. Feels like a real piano. They're not cheap. You could  get the two pedal version. As long as its got the half pedaling feature you're good. 

     

    Regards:

    Willem 
  • P
    P

    Hi Willem,

    You're absolutely right, the pedal does only on or off. It sounds like half-pedalling would be a great solution. Unfortunately I don't think my keyboard can support it, even if I bought a pedal that could. For now I am trying to make sure notes don't last into the last 1/6th of the last sub-beat of the bar, and that is working ok.

    Many thanks for your suggestion :-)

    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 3.59Mhz Processor, 64 GB RAM, Windows 10.0.19045, Cubase 10.5.20, Sibelius 7, VEP 5.4.16181, VIP 2.4.16399, Symphonic Cube, MIR Rooms 1-5, Suite, Choir, Organ, Imperial, Solo Voices, Dimension Strings, Historic Winds, World Winds
  • Z
    Z

    I don't know if your are having the same issue I was having years ago, as I'm seeing you have your content on a hard drive and not an SSD.

    I was experiencing with Vienna Imperial cutted off notes while playing, kind of like if a new sample on the same note were muting the previous one. It didn't happen for all notes, and it didn't happen all of the time. But it was annoying and an inspiration crusher.

    The problem went away when I installed my library content on a fast SSD. I also increased my RAM memory a lot.

    In my current computer, I never have that issue anymore, but my content is now in an even faster SSD (NVMe M.2 Samsung 980 Pro 2TB, which in my PC hits almost 7000 Mbps read/write).

    If I'm right and you have your content in a HDD, try an SSD that is connected directly to the motherboard, not via USB. SATA should be fast enough with a modern SSD. But NVMe is way better, of course.

    Hope this helps.

    Francisco