Logic8 and VE3 as multitimbral instrument

[jstaczek]

Hello, this is really a Logic8 question, but someone must have run into it here. I have VE3 set up doing in Logic with 4 multitimbral tracks for a string quartet arrangement. What I've discovered is the mute button on each track mutes ALL tracks, and it doesn't seem to mute the MIDI out, but the audio return. Seems crazy. Am I doing something wrong, or is there a way to actually mute a single MIDI track in Logic that's feeding the VE3 plugin?

Thanks,

Jason Staczek

www.chromasound.net 

[timkiel]

Jason
Welcome to the strange world of Logic! The only way I've found round this is to use the Solo feature (S on the keyboard) and select which midi parts you want to play with the mouse by making them yellow. It's not ideal nor intuitive and I'm sure I never had this problem in Cubase, but this approach does work.

Regards

Tm

[edhendersonmusic]

The way that I work around this problem is to highlight areas on the arrange page you want to mute and press the 'M' key - this mutes that area only and all the VE part continue to sound - same goes for automation: each automation move you make in Logic affects all channels of your V ensemble.  To make automation moves I use a keyboard that has assignable controller sliders and assign them to Velocity crossfade, expression, attack, release, cell crossfade and then you can make some music.

I am using 14 channels of midi with VE for all strings, brass and percussion on a project at the moment and keep running into stupid issues between VE and Logic (posted this yesterday and will do an update in a moment)

Suffice it to say there are tremendous frustrations integrating Logic 8 and VE - when it works it is wonderful - just happens to be very changeable for unknown reasons, all the best, Ed 

[jstaczek]

Thanks for the quick replies. Unintuitive, to say the least. But those are good workarounds.

I did run into another issue altogether and I'm wondering if anyone has also seen it.

I can record MIDI on to an instrument track fine the first time. But if I overdub MIDI on that track and create an overlapping region, it effectively kills the track. Nothing will play back from that track after that, regardless of undo, deleting the overlapping region, etc. I have to "add new with next MIDI channel" again and drag all regions to the new track.

That's either a bug or the king of counter-intuitive features. Have tried all combinations of "create take folder", "merge", etc. with no luck. MIDI tracks just go dead in Logic 8.02.

I'd go back to Digital Performer, but VE3 just doesn't work in 5.13. Regardless of buffer settings, I get audio dropouts that also cause MIDI playback to go out of sync with video.

I'm beginning to think that with the arrival of technology like VE3 it's time to see a new sequencer on the market, dedicated to MIDI sequencing for picture and not audio mixing. A small, fast MIDI recorder and editor that had some revolutionary way to handle keyswitching (a pain in every sequencer) would really let you get some music written. 

Too much futzing....

Thanks,

Jason Staczek

www.chromasound.net 

[stevesong]

In my experience, the one controller that affects all instruments in any multi-timbral plugin instantiated in Logic is MIDI Volume (CC7). To avoid this, use Expression (CC11) for changing dynamics with sustaining instruments. CC11 affects each channel independently of the others. You can also set CC11 to affect Expression and Velocity Xfade simultaneously - - but create individual response curves in the Perform window for each, in accordance with your needs.