arturia; MPE and poly after

[grrrz]

I'm trying to see the "MPE" possibilites with my microfreak and arturia synths. I though poly aftertouch was part of MPE (and indeed it shows as "pressure" under the MPE tab in ableton) but I tried different synths and I have very mix results:

-the Jup 8 and Juno DON'T have a specific pressure affectation. they have channel aftertouch which is useless for me. Under MPE there is only slide and bend. If I activate MPE and try to affect aftertouch it will not do anything (so channel aftertouch only).
-The CS 80 has built-in support for poly aftertouch (I have the version 3 which has no MPE support) so that's cool
-The pigments works in a different way; there is no mention of pressure in the midi panel, but the aftertouch affectation is mono when MPE is disabled and becomes poly when it is enabled.
Am I missing something? I'm wondering if I could convert pressure to slide somehow but it seems weird that the support is so sketchy accross the lineup. Haven't tried the new cs 80 and prophet which support it.

[WasteLand]

I'm trying to see the "MPE" possibilites with my microfreak and arturia synths. I though poly aftertouch was part of MPE (and indeed it shows as "pressure" under the MPE tab in ableton) but I tried different synths and I have very mix results:

-the Jup 8 and Juno DON'T have a specific pressure affectation. they have channel aftertouch which is useless for me. Under MPE there is only slide and bend. If I activate MPE and try to affect aftertouch it will not do anything (so channel aftertouch only).
-The CS 80 has built-in support for poly aftertouch (I have the version 3 which has no MPE support) so that's cool
-The pigments works in a different way; there is no mention of pressure in the midi panel, but the aftertouch affectation is mono when MPE is disabled and becomes poly when it is enabled.
Am I missing something? I'm wondering if I could convert pressure to slide somehow but it seems weird that the support is so sketchy accross the lineup. Haven't tried the new cs 80 and prophet which support it.

MPE uses channel aftertouch because it works via 16 midi channels, so pressure is per channel. standard the first midi channel is a global channel for modwheel, global (instead of per channel) pitchbend etc. midi channels 2-15 are used as MPE channels, to call it that way.

poly aftertouch is transmitted via one midi channel, more is a bit...

the microfreak uses poly aftertouch, and no MPE. it uses one channel.

it can be confusing, but MPE is not the sane as poly aftertouch, although it seems to work that way.

EDIT the latest jup 8 v and juno are fully MPE, by the way, as others in the collection or pigments. aftertouch is in MPE mode per channel.

[zerocrossing]

I'm trying to see the "MPE" possibilites with my microfreak and arturia synths. I though poly aftertouch was part of MPE (and indeed it shows as "pressure" under the MPE tab in ableton) but I tried different synths and I have very mix results:

-the Jup 8 and Juno DON'T have a specific pressure affectation. they have channel aftertouch which is useless for me. Under MPE there is only slide and bend. If I activate MPE and try to affect aftertouch it will not do anything (so channel aftertouch only).
-The CS 80 has built-in support for poly aftertouch (I have the version 3 which has no MPE support) so that's cool
-The pigments works in a different way; there is no mention of pressure in the midi panel, but the aftertouch affectation is mono when MPE is disabled and becomes poly when it is enabled.
Am I missing something? I'm wondering if I could convert pressure to slide somehow but it seems weird that the support is so sketchy accross the lineup. Haven't tried the new cs 80 and prophet which support it.

MPE uses channel aftertouch because it works via 16 midi channels, so pressure is per channel. standard the first midi channel is a global channel for modwheel, global (instead of per channel) pitchbend etc. midi channels 2-15 are used as MPE channels, to call it that way.

poly aftertouch is transmitted via one midi channel, more is a bit...

the microfreak uses poly aftertouch, and no MPE. it uses one channel.

it can be confusing, but MPE is not the sane as poly aftertouch, although it seems to work that way.

EDIT the latest jup 8 v and juno are fully MPE, by the way, as others in the collection or pigments. aftertouch is in MPE mode per channel.

This is correct. Odd that MiniFreak isn’t MPE, though. For some reason I just assumed it would be, as their newer stuff seems to mostly support it. Shame they left it out. At least it does support polyphonic aftertouch.

[grrrz]

I'm trying to see the "MPE" possibilites with my microfreak and arturia synths. I though poly aftertouch was part of MPE (and indeed it shows as "pressure" under the MPE tab in ableton) but I tried different synths and I have very mix results:

-the Jup 8 and Juno DON'T have a specific pressure affectation. they have channel aftertouch which is useless for me. Under MPE there is only slide and bend. If I activate MPE and try to affect aftertouch it will not do anything (so channel aftertouch only).
-The CS 80 has built-in support for poly aftertouch (I have the version 3 which has no MPE support) so that's cool
-The pigments works in a different way; there is no mention of pressure in the midi panel, but the aftertouch affectation is mono when MPE is disabled and becomes poly when it is enabled.
Am I missing something? I'm wondering if I could convert pressure to slide somehow but it seems weird that the support is so sketchy accross the lineup. Haven't tried the new cs 80 and prophet which support it.

MPE uses channel aftertouch because it works via 16 midi channels, so pressure is per channel. standard the first midi channel is a global channel for modwheel, global (instead of per channel) pitchbend etc. midi channels 2-15 are used as MPE channels, to call it that way.

poly aftertouch is transmitted via one midi channel, more is a bit...

the microfreak uses poly aftertouch, and no MPE. it uses one channel.

it can be confusing, but MPE is not the sane as poly aftertouch, although it seems to work that way.

EDIT the latest jup 8 v and juno are fully MPE, by the way, as others in the collection or pigments. aftertouch is in MPE mode per channel.

ok but I know how MPE works but what I though was that poly aftertouch was compatible with MPE; that would make sense since functionnaly MPE channel pressure and poly aftertouch do the same thing. Also; in Ableton live they appear as one and the same; if you record a track with polyAT it will appear as "pressure" in the midi clip; yet it won't transmit as such to the synth, and yet it works perfectly fine with wavetable for exemple (if I activate MPE pressure in wavetable it will read pressure as poly AT).

After fiddling a bit more MPE doesn't seem to be received at all by the plugin (I tried manually moving all the parameter in the clip, slide; pitch, nothing). But if I disable MPE then poly aftertouch is recognised (tried it) which kind of solves my problem but doesn't explain why MPE doesn't work at all on those plug ins inside live.

edit:
MPE works fine with pigments; pressure is aftertouch; slide is macro 1 (not sure how you supposed to figure that out but here it is). So that lives mostly all the MPE instrument from the V collection that have a problem. And I'm almost certain that pressure from MPE is supposed to be activated with aftertouch in the advanced panel.

[zerocrossing]

ok but I know how MPE works

Do you?

but what I though was that poly aftertouch was compatible with MPE

You don’t. It might be confusing, but think of it this way. Polyphonic Aftertouch in non-MPE synths/controllers is similar to velocity, where each note gets its own value, but it’s all coming from the same stream (channel) of data.

Some things like polyphonic pitch bend can’t work with basic MIDI, so MPE is a sort of hack to make up for that lack of function. It treats all modulation as monophonic (channel) but operates over multiple channels. Each note is getting its own channel for everything, so Polyphonic aftertouch, as a data type, is meaningless and shouldn’t work.

That said, my Rise 49 does have different modes, including one that behaves more like my GEM S2 (an old ROMpler workstation keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch). If I’m trying to use a non MPE synth I can easily switch to it.

[grrrz]

ok but I know how MPE works

Do you?

but what I though was that poly aftertouch was compatible with MPE

You don’t. It might be confusing, but think of it this way. Polyphonic Aftertouch in non-MPE synths/controllers is similar to velocity, where each note gets its own value, but it’s all coming from the same stream (channel) of data.

Some things like polyphonic pitch bend can’t work with basic MIDI, so MPE is a sort of hack to make up for that lack of function. It treats all modulation as monophonic (channel) but operates over multiple channels. Each note is getting its own channel for everything, so Polyphonic aftertouch, as a data type, is meaningless and shouldn’t work.

That said, my Rise 49 does have different modes, including one that behaves more like my GEM S2 (an old ROMpler workstation keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch). If I’m trying to use a non MPE synth I can easily switch to it.

ok that's nice of you but again really I assure you I understand how MPE works (in fact at some point I red the specs) and no I'm not confused; and I was absolutely right; inside at least ableton polyAT and MPE pressure (so yes channel aftertouch in MPE) are 100% transparently interchangeable; because the problem was in fact there is a hidden switch you have to activate by right clicking on the plug in and "activate MPE". It is on by default in pigments and off in the others which was all the more confusing. So as far as ableton goes and every kind of software or hardware you use with it; poly aftertouch is recognised as MPE pressure.

The MPE specs indeed specify (p14):
Polyphonic Key Pressure may be recognized on the Master
Channel for compatibility with existing MIDI modes
so yeah it's not mandatory to implement it 100% of the times but you'll find in practice that some developers or manufacturers deal with it as if it was part of MPE. and that 100% makes sense.
In fact at first I tought like you and didn't understand why there was no polyAT support in live; turns out MPE support brings polyAT support.

[grrrz]

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[Tj Shredder]

Isn't it a question of the controller and not the synth? My LinnStrument can be set to send poly aftertouch, but why should I? All my MPE synths do well with channel pressure... And playing those who only listen to poly aftertouch is a simple switch in the controller...
What do you want to achieve with what controller, which synth in which DAW (a DAW usually has some translation tools...)
Only talking about a synth for such scenarios is too little information to find best the solution...

[grrrz]

thanks but I solved my issue

[felis]

Can you guys school me on release (note off) velocity and mpe.

If you use a keyboard that can send it, will an mpe softsynth respond to it?

Edit: for anyone curious, that's a big 'nope'. Should have tried it before making the post, I guess.

[Tj Shredder]

Can you guys school me on release (note off) velocity and mpe.

If you use a keyboard that can send it, will an mpe softsynth respond to it?

Edit: for anyone curious, that's a big 'nope'. Should have tried it before making the post, I guess.

Tell me why not. The midi channel might be redundant information, but it would still send the relevant note-off command. Channel pressure and Aftertouch are different commands, which makes it a bit more complicated.
If it doesn‘t work in a case, your DAW or instrument might have a bug.
Before claiming a ‚big nope‘ you should first analyze with a Midi monitor and then send a bug report…
Of course not all MPE synths respond to release velocity or have it as a modulation source… Then send in a feature request…

[felis]

Yes - I phrased it wrong. I tried it with Pigments. Maybe the data gets to the synth, but there's nothing to assign it to - or rather, no place to do that.
You don't need MPE anyways for release velocity to work. I have several softsynths that do it right.