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Velocity Curves: Draw Velocity as you would Automation


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This templates, inspired by the one that lets you Control your Samples' Velocity with your Mod Wheel, goes one step further. It lets you, once your MIDI Region has been recorded, redraw the velocity of your samples using Hyperdraw.

You can now access all the S curves and concave, convex curves available to you when drawing Automation, except you are now automating the Velocity of your MIDI notes.

Once again, useful for orchestral composers who like to draw complex curvy crescendos and decrescendos... Enjoy!

VelocityCurves.lso.zip

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  • 2 years later...
  • 5 years later...

This is great! Thank you!

Now I'm a complete noob in midi and just started using Logic. How con add this into a project I'm currently working on? If you can give me a quick explenation on this, I will appreciate it very much.

I'm using Logic x 10.0.5.

Again, this is awesome.

Cheers.

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Open the project I attached in the original post of this thread, select the three objects you can see in the environment, press Command-C (Copy) and close the project.

Open your project, choose Window > Open MIDI Environment, go to an empty layer, and press Command-P (Paste). Drag and drop the object "Inst 1+Velo Curves" onto a track header, and cable "Set Velocity" into the desired channel strip by option-clicking its output triangle and choosing the channel strip.

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  • 1 year later...
Hi David, I've been trying to follow your instructions (Velocity Curves: Draw Velocity as you would Automation) without success - I've got as far as cabling the "set velocity" part of the created object to the instrument I want to automate but I don't see velocity (or anything that corresponds to it) on the created object's parameters in the automation page. What am I missing?
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  • 1 month later...
Blue Breakfast said:
Hi David, I've been trying to follow your instructions (Velocity Curves: Draw Velocity as you would Automation) without success - I've got as far as cabling the "set velocity" part of the created object to the instrument I want to automate but I don't see velocity (or anything that corresponds to it) on the created object's parameters in the automation page. What am I missing?

You don't use Track Automation, you use MIDI Draw (a lot of Logic users used to refer to it as "region based automation" back when I wrote this template) to draw your velocity curves. The region is already in MIDI Draw view for MIDI CC#15 which is the one I"m using, so just zoom out and edit the automation.

You can also open the region in any MIDI editor and use that to edit the MIDI CC#15 automation. 

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Hm, I'm also looking at this and not quite getting it working in another project. 

Do you want to upload a copy of your project so I could have a look?

Also is it possible to effectively 'render' the modulation data back to MIDI velocity data somehow? Would be great to get all this working as drawing velocity curves can be quite useful :-)

Yes, you need to cable the output of the Set Velocity transformer into the sequencer input (in the MIDI Click and Ports layer). Then record enable a new track and press record, the MIDI notes will be "rendered" with the new velocity in real time. 

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  • 2 years later...

Hey David. This is great!!

Version 10.4.2 here. Pre-story context: What I've noticed about Logic's automation: There is a significant delay - several milliseconds between an automation node (track or region, CCs etc) and an event. You cannot reliably put a node at the same time as an event and expect Logic to apply that parameter to the event. The delay is too significant and Logic doesn't know how to account for it. It only works OK for gradual changes. But if the automation is square shaped with the front of the square on top of an event, Logic will not see it in time. So as fantastic as the MIDI plugins are, especially the Velocity plugin - for controlling velocities via automation, the delay is just too significant for them to be useful, especially for drums.

However, David has engineered this to somehow work unlike those MIDI plugins. So there is no delay! Brilliant!

However (again), with this "hack" some of the UI and features change for some reason. And track automation now disappears, so becomes unusable. And No plugin parameters are available in the dropdown on the track header. So, no audio plugins can be automated. So this would require outputting the signal to an aux and mixing there. Pain in A to have multiple tracks for something so simple. But it's nice to know Logic is at least capable of reliably automating velocity curves!

Mr. Nahmani, why doesn't Apple just hire you to engineer every part of their software? You figured this out 13 years ago. Yet, today Logic still cannot write velocity curves in any useful way. Thanks for these awesome and useful tools!

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  • 2 years later...

To reproduce this setup, you just need to create:

In the MIDI environment:

  1. An external MIDI instrument track with the environment settings in the first screenshot (with the keyboard icon).
  2. A knob with the settings in the second screenshot (with the strings icon).
  3. A transformer with the settings in the third screenshot.

Cable #1 to #2 and #2 to #3.

And cable #3 to your main software instrument.

In the arrange window, you will hide your software instrument track but show the external midi track, and this is where you will compose. Use controller 15 to automate the velocity.

In the mixer, hide the external MIDi track and show the software instrument track. This is where you'll, of course, mix.

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this and I'll edit it!

406446979_ScreenShot2021-11-14at8_13_30PM.thumb.png.0181a9b3d7439c9eb48a1dbb329f3cd6.png

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2046901491_ScreenShot2021-11-14at8_13_46PM.thumb.png.228380d86ef3f82c9866124ecea3c93a.png

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Here is a modified version of the Environment settings to achieve what this topic is about:

real time note velocity modwheel control.

This has been tested in current Logic version (v.10.7.1).

I changed the Velocity conditions setting (in the Transformer object) to avoid the doubling of notes occurring otherwise (in previously posted setup).

Using the Transformer's "Filter Duplicate Events" option for same doesn't reliably work and has the side effect of unduly muting intentional repeated notes.

The screen capture below also features an enlarged Fader object to ease finer adjustment via a mouse, as it otherwise tends to be jumpy and coarse. That issue isn't present when using the intended modwheel control.

107294867_VelocitycontrolledviamodwheelinLogicPro10.7.1.thumb.png.3154bf87c4bd0715eb17e8c4a6659588.png

With slight modification, I think that Environment setup could eventually be used for other types of control as well.

Belated but warm shout-out at David for his very useful Environment setup! :D

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