Having earlier automation not continue to have an influence on later material in my DAW?

[Speldosa]

So, this is an issue that has infuriated me for the better part of today. I’m trying to use my Analog Four mkII via Overbridge in my DAW (specifically, Logic Pro X, but the same behavior that I’m about to describe can be found in Live and Reason as well). I don’t want automation data to linger and affect what’s happening after a region containing it has ended.

I’ll give you an example:

In the screenshot above, I’ve created three regions. Region 1 and Region 3 are identical to each other. In Region 2, I’ve automated the frequency of track 1. In each region, a single note is played. Now, if I set my filter on my A4 to an arbitrary value, x, and play region 1, it will play with the filter set to x. If I then play Region 2, the filter will go from 0.98 to 0.06. So far, so good. However, if I set the filter on my A4 to a new value, y, and play Region 3, it won’t play with the filter set to y. Instead, the automation from Region 2 influences what the value will be. And this has nothing to do with the region itself. If I move Region 1 to after Region 2, the filter value will again be influenced by Region 2.

As I said, the same type of behavior can be seen in both Ableton Live and Reason, and I really don’t see the logic behind it. My DAW is obviously capable of playing a note without sending any midi data, overriding whatever values I’ve put in on my device myself (which is the case when Region 1 is played before Region 2). I just want the same behavior no matter what has happened before.

The use cases for this is manyfold, most notably, I want to be able to go back to my kit sounds whenever I want (I know about the touch functionality in Logic, but what if I later decide to change the parameters of the kit sound?).

Does anyone know how to achieve what I’m trying to do? I’m about to give up

Note: I wasn’t sure exactly where to post this. It isn’t specifically tied to the Overbridge software, but it has to do with usage of it, so I’m posting it here. If a mod think there is a better place for this thread, please move it.

[Speldosa]

I’ve been investigating this issue a bit more, using the application Midi Monitor on MacOS. What’s happening is the following: During Region 2, cc messages are being sent, as they should. Then, if I just let everything continue to play, nothing new gets sent, not even when Region 3 starts to play. That’s also expected I guess (otherwise, Logic would have to know the internal state of my device before Region 2 started playing and then reset that value).

However, whenever I pause or start the sequence somewhere after Region 2, a single cc message is being sent corresponding to the last sent cc message of Region 2. This is the behavior that I don’t want, and which I frankly don’t understand why all DAWs implement.

[mirzafar]

Add automation points for region 1 and 3 as well. It’s not an odd behavior at all…this is how animation works.

[Speldosa]

Thanks, I’m aware that you can do this. It’s not what I’m trying to achieve though.

[tnussb]

What you want to achieve is simply not possible. CCs cannot be used like parameter locks on the device itself (which just temporary changes parameters).

When you send a CC which change a sound parameter then this value becomes the new default and you need to sent other CC values when you want the parameter to change to something else. There is no way to go back to the original value from the sound remotely (of course you can reload the sound on the device itself).

[Speldosa]

(of course you can reload the sound on the device itself)

The thing is, I really can’t. When I change kits in between my automation regions (I change to a new pattern with a new kit and then go back to the first pattern with the original kit again, making sure I have “Kit reload on cng” checked on my A4), the old sound is still affected by the last automation I did on it.

2020-03-31 update: Turns out what was missing here was that I also needed to play a note while in the new pattern/kit. If I do, things work as I want them to. See details further down.

[Speldosa]

Well, I now tried using my Novation PEAK instead of the Analog Four and the behavior was a bit different. More specifically, when changing the patch after I’ve drawn some automation points, the new patch isn’t affected by the old automation. However, if I start the playback from after the patch change, the new patch is affected, since the old cc message is being sent upon start of playback and even when stopping the playback (meaning, for example, that I hear the old automation applied to the new patch while editing the notes in the piano roll).

Surely, there must be a way around this. Otherwise, I don’t see how you could work with external synths at all. As an example: Let’s say that patch 1 has a filter cutoff of 50% and that patch 2 has a filter cutoff of 25%. When first doing a filter sweep through automation on patch 1, I will have to plan ahead, check what filter cutoff patch 2 has and then, at some point, for example when sending the program change, set the automation value of the filter cutoff to 25%.

Okay, maybe I could cope doing that if I only automated the value of the filter cutoff (although it would be kind of a hassle to have to go back and change the automation for the filter cutoff every time I changed the settings of patch 2). But what if I automated 50 different parameters on my first patch. Am I supposed to check all those 50 parameters for patch 2 and then put in each one of them in the automation lane? Surely there must be another way of doing it.

The only thing I want is for my DAW to not send out automation messages whenever I can’t see an automation curve (which I can’t see when I put it in Region mode rather than in Track mode).

[Speldosa]

I found a 10 year old thread where someone asked the same question that I am asking here. This doesn’t look good at all I’m going to start experimenting with multiple tracks and mute automation (if that’s even possible). This is really something that should be possible to do in modern DAWs.

[Speldosa]

So, I’ve tried a couple of things:

1. First, I tried creating several instances of Overbridge in Logic. My hope here was that I would be able to use a Overbridge track for a while and then, when the old automation created to much trouble for me, abandon that track through creating a mute automation on it and move on to the next. Problem is, when automating the mute of one of the tracks, all of them gets muted, so it’s a non-starter

2. Second, I tried creating one Overbridge track and then several midi tracks using the same channel. My goal here was to send automation through midi tracks (which means I lose the proper naming of them that I get when automating the Overbridge track). However, there is no option for automating mutes on midi tracks in Logic, so that’s a non-starter as well.

The more I think about this problem, the more infuriating, strange and broken it feels. When I write a text on my computer, I don’t want whatever I wrote before to text on my computer influence what I’m writing I wrote before now. I just want to control what is being sent as midi messages, and if I don’t specify something for a certain region, I don’t want my DAW to do I’m writing I wrote before now anything.

[Speldosa]

Ok, finally some success, but also some inconsistent behavior and some question marks (I might post a new thread later asking if one of these behaviors is a bug). Anyhow, let’s start with the Novation PEAK where I managed to solve the problem and where I feel that I’ve figured everything out:

So, what I did was that I, in Logic, navigated to Preferences > MIDI > Sync > MIDI Sync Project Settings > MIDI (in the top menu) > Chase. (Talk about menu diving.) There, I could turn of chase for Control Changes.

Then, I created a project looking like this:

What’s happening here is that I first load patch 5 of the peak with a program change. I then play a note and send a cc automation. I then load the same patch again and just play a note. Now, everything works as expected. If I don’t reload the patch, PEAK still lingers on the last cc message it received which makes total sense. However, when I reload the patch, I can skip directly to the second region without having the automation of the first region take over (which is what happens if I turn on the midi chase for cc messages in the settings above.)

So, moving to the Analog Four, things get a bit weird. Using the same settings as above, I created the following project:

Here, I send program changes on the last track in order to switch patterns (which in turn switch kits, and I’ve made sure to turn on the reload kit on pattern change function). However, simply sending the same program change, telling Analog Four to reload it did not work, so I had to switch pattern/kits back and forth.

So, here, I play the first note which has some automation to it. I then switch pattern/kit and play a note there, which isn’t affected by the previous automation. I then go back to the first pattern/kit again and play a note there which isn’t affected by the first automation either.

However, this works the same whether I turn the midi chase settings described above either on or off. What does change things is whether I play anything while having the other pattern/kit loaded. If I remove the middle region containing just a single note, I get the problematic behavior back that I’ve described before (old automation data influencing the new regions), unless I manually reload the kit using the NO+KIT command on the device itself. What is especially confusing here is that when looking at the screen, when the original pattern/kit is loaded, everything looks like it would do if I reloaded the kit manually (that is, the parameters that are affected by earlier automation are set to their default value again).

This feels like a bug to me (that is, the sound doesn’t correspond to what is shown on the screen), and I guess it has something to do with the reload kit on pattern change function, which might have an effect visually but not auditive when operating in Overbridge mode. I’m not going to speculate on this further here, but I’ll probably post a new thread inquiring whether this is the expected behavior.

It would be nice to not have to play other notes to get everything back to the default settings, but right now, I take it. I might revisit this thread with more information if I come up with something new. Now, I’m off to create the music I’ve been meaning to this whole weekend (instead of fine tuning my menu diving skills which I actually ended up doing)

[Speldosa]

I’ve now filed a possible bug report in the Overbridge Beta forum. I also created a ticket on the Elektron website. My work here is done I guess.