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HI all,

I'm having trouble with piano in the EW program or with some midi function. The part is a stomping regular piano, three note chords. Everything is lined up and quantized with each note in the chord starting at exactly the same point yet some of the chords, you can hear a flam effect or you can hear the different notes in the chord not hitting tightly together and it makes the part sloppy. I've looked and looked through all the midi controls, I've played with the controls on the EW sequencer, I'm looked through an midi randomization and can't find any command for this. I'm at a loss. Any ideas what this might be?

Thanks all,

Jon

I guess.... Have you tried the regular troubleshooting?

I.e. tried to play the same part triggering a different piano patch from a different VI?

If the part still sounds messed up, then it's probably midi part, which is probably related to your controller having a glitch or a sticky key or switch.

What DAW do you use? Could be related to that too.

If the part plays normal, then it's likely the EW Steinway. If that is the case, have you tried a recent update of Play? Have you downloaded any fixes / patches for the Gold or full version?

HTH.

I would mute two of the notes and listen to each one individually. I'm not sure what stomping means, hard velocity? I suppose it's possible that on one note it may be playing a couple of velocity layers, maybe you are close to the split point and it is playing 2 notes, each side of the split point in the velocity?? If that is the case maybe adjust the velocity on that particular note if just one of the notes and see if that cures it. Release samples? That might "add" an extra sound. I'm thinking it's probably the sample used or a pedal effect, or some adjustment in the program itself that effects the sample or which sample is played??

Try doing the part w/out quantize turned on. Piano attacks esp. loud attacks can get weird when they are quantized. There may an issue with another instrument if it has a hard percussive attack as well.
Hope that helps!

EW Pianos may have some quirks but I haven't run into that one.

Just some ideas you could check ... are any notes accidentally doubled, could you be at some memory limit, where some notes are being delayed because there's not enough RAM for them, or latency reading from the hard drive, is there some effect or controller that is causing a note to play delayed ,,,,

I have the same issue with EW pianos. The timing is often sloppy, chords come out flammed, and the overall performance is unpredictable. That's why I'm looking for an alternative.

Richard

Thanks all. Some stuff I hadn't tried yet. I'll give it another go and get back to you. Again, thank you for the great suggestions.

Best,
Jon

I'm using Cubase 5.5

I pasted the part into a different VI and it played it perfectly (tight, no flams) so it's definitely how E/W is executing the midi commands. There must be some randomization command in there somewhere. I haven't found it yet. I'm downloading a Play update as we speak (type)

JS

I updated play. No change. This may be an idiosyncrasy of EW and I guess isn't solvable. Bummer. I'm mixing it with a piano from a different VI to tighten it up. EW has a nice quality of sound on the Steinway but those sloppy flams really change the energy of the part.

Thanks for the suggestions all,

Jon

It's strange, if it was an EW problem it should be happening with mine too ... I suspect its the combination of EW with something else going on in your system. On my system I know that EW and Kontakt player can be an issue, sometimes but not always. So I usually make sure they're not both loaded at once, or at least that Kontakt is loaded first. I have other plug-ins that conflict with each other as well.

I'm still using an old version of Play, I think it's 2.2. It's been 99% solid for me so I never bothered to update, and now version 4.0 is on the way soon.