Missing Notes? Problem(s) SOLVED!

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Missing Notes? Problem(s) SOLVED!

Postby Majumafoo » Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:02 pm

Solution Update
6 April, 2020
MidiEditor has been updated and no longer has the issues mentioned in this post.

Please update files I've created in your collection. They run as intended now.
Follow the link to the latest update.
Majumafoo MIDI Dump




tl;dr
The problem was in the MIDI files.
1. Quantizing notes causes them to overlap and not sound. Make sure that off ticks end before on ticks.
2. Keep several ticks between similar notes to stop them from blending together and sounding like one note. The space needed varies based on tempo and pitch.



Preface you probably don't care about
I have been using MidiEditor to create and edit midi files since I got my coil and noticed, as many of you have, that notes would play fine in the midi file, play fine when running in "live" mode from my computer, but once being converted to OMD, notes would go missing and not sound.

The Problem
Notes go missing because of how the quantize function works in the software.
(Quantizing is the way software puts notes into mathematically correct spots for rhythmic timing, often referred to as a "grid").
When quantizing, notes are programmed to sound from the beginning of their beat, INTO the first tick of the next. Even though, visually, it looks like there are only two notes sounding at a time, there can be more. This causes the OMD converter to believe that there are excess notes sounding (regardless of how short a time that is) and (seemingly random) notes are dropped in the OMD conversion.
Even one tick of overlap can cause this to happen.

Checking Your Work
You can check if this is your issue by looking at the on and off tick of individual notes in your midi files. If more than two notes share a tick, then you've found your problem.
This is tricky because on and off ticks aren't particularly intuitive to compare.
Make sure that off ticks end before on ticks.

The Solution
To solve this problem, you need to manually adjust each note to be shorter.
(I'm removing one tick from every note -because I'm meticulous to a fault- to preserve the sound as much as possible, but adjusting only affected notes works fine).
I'm not aware of a non-tedious way to do this, and I've been going through my files -one note at a time- to remove this quirk.
-Though you can adjust multiple notes of the same length at once (several 1/4 notes, or several 1/8 notes, etc.), this is not possible for a combination of different lengthed notes.

I have sent an email to MidiEditor in the hope that they could change how quantizing functions in their software to remedy this issue. Who knows if they'll see it though.
edit: he did.

Also...
A less exciting bit of information, is that notes played on the Tesla coil require space between them to ensure they sound rhythmically. If there is not enough space between similar notes, those sounds will blend together to sound like one held note. Both tempo and pitch affect the correct spacing, but 16 ticks seems to be safe where possible.
Last edited by Majumafoo on Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:43 pm, edited 9 times in total.
Majumafoo
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Re: Missing Notes? Problem(s) SOLVED!

Postby Bayley » Thu Dec 13, 2018 6:43 am

Stickied. Thanks for the good debugging work!
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Bayley
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