Methods to fade out Volume on a Midi Track with Diva?

[Ursollin]

Hey everyone,

I'm using a midi track with the Diva vst in Reaper.
I'm a big fan of the bellowing synths with really gradual decay (think "dream synths" presets).

Things sometimes get too noisy and I'd like to be able to artificially fade out the volume on a single note so it doesn't "clash" with the next if it hasn't had time to sufficiently decay naturally. I don't want to change the decay of ALL notes via the ADSR panel in Diva because I like the way it decays naturally on the notes that aren't "clashing."

What didn't work:
1) Reaper's built-in Fade feature influences midi velocity, not volume - sad, because this would be the most workflow-friendly option for me.
2) Sending the output from the Diva track to play as audio on another with the hopes of using Reaper's built-in Fade feature, but I couldn't get it to work (not to say it is or isn't possible).
3) Manipulating cc7 within the midi editor seemed to have no effect (not to say it is or isn't possible).

What did work but was painfully tedious:
1) Putting the clashing notes on a separate but identical Diva track and editing the volume envelopes. Problem is that the notes are close enough together that I would often need to have THREE copies of the same Diva track to juggle all of the different noise envelopes being generated. Also, the volume envelopes have to be drawn by hand...
2) Rendering the midi output as a .wav file and manipulating it via Reaper's built-in Fade feature. I find this irritating because I frequently tweak my Diva synths and must then tweak the fade envelopes accordingly (lots of iteration involved). I'm not a fan of re-rendering the track after every iteration.
3) Having two instances of a similar Diva track; one with slow decay and the other with fast decay. I hated this option the most - couldn't get anything to sound natural and it was 2x the editing.

Is there any method where I can readily tweak my Diva synths and the fade envelopes of the clashing notes without the tedium? If the answer is "no," do you have any vst (last-ditch effort) or DAW recommendations (definitive last-ditch effort) that may offer more robust fade solutions? *Also* I'm still new to this forum and Diva, so please forgive me if I'm misusing terminology or overlooking a conspicuous remedy already here in the forum/manual.


Thanks,
Ursollin

[RedChameau]

Maybe you could assign Reaper enveloppes to individual controls of Diva ADSR - especially sustain - (or arbitrary CCs via midi learn coupled with ReaControlMidi) and then draw those new Reaper enveloppes/CC lanes to your convenience ?

[EvilDragon]

You should MIDI learn Diva's volume knob to CC7 first, then it will do something when you actually draw it in the MIDI editor.

[Ursollin]

Maybe you could assign Reaper enveloppes to individual controls of Diva ADSR - especially sustain - (or arbitrary CCs via midi learn coupled with ReaControlMidi) and then draw those new Reaper enveloppes/CC lanes to your convenience ?

Thanks for the response, friend.

I've had great success with using envelopes to control Diva ADSR as per your suggestion. However, I need to use two instances of Diva because I want to change the envelope of the first note in say, a series of three, without the ADSR envelope changes impacting the other two notes (i.e. ideally I want some of the noise of note 1 to overlap with notes 2 and 3, just not the full amplitude.)

So... I'm putting the first note on the second Diva track and only manipulating ADSR on that track.

My followup question: is there a way to run these two instances of Diva such that I can tweak the original instance (to change reverb, delay, chorus, etc.) and it will update the second instance automatically?

Alternatively, is there some sort of low-resource routing method I'm overlooking in the manual that can have me accomplishing the same thing without running two distinct instances?

[Ursollin]

You should MIDI learn Diva's volume knob to CC7 first, then it will do something when you actually draw it in the MIDI editor.

Ah, I'm not surprised I overlooked the obvious

Would it be possible to use the CC7 to edit a single midi item on a Diva track without other midi items being affected, even if I want them to have overlapping volume envelopes? My hunch is that I'll need separate tracks for this, unless I want to go the render-to-.wav approach.

If not, it sounds like this is about the same option as assigning various envelopes (which is preferable because the envelope editor's a little smoother than the CC7 one), or am I overlooking something?

[Howard]

Would it be possible to use the CC7 to edit a single midi item on a Diva track without other midi items being affected, even if I want them to have overlapping volume envelopes? My hunch is that I'll need separate tracks for this, unless I want to go the render-to-.wav approach.

You could use polyphonic aftertouch.

[EvilDragon]

Ah, Poly AT is a great solution.


Too bad we can't edit it visually in Reaper.

[Ursollin]

Ah, Poly AT is a great solution.


Too bad we can't edit it visually in Reaper.

Darn, just found an old Poly AT thread you've commented in:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=36610&page=3

This certainly would be a solution, though the event editor hardly seems like a less tedious approach

As I get deeper into Reaper, I keep finding these irritating little aspects to midi editing, the other big one being that changing timebase doesn't impact midi items I generated in Reaper the way it handles .wave files.

I guess I'll just stick to having two Diva tracks and putting the clashing notes on the second track and then manipulating the release. Would anyone be so kind as to direct me to a guide for making tweaks to one Diva Track automatically updated in the other? Surely this can be done, right?

[EvilDragon]

As I get deeper into Reaper, I keep finding these irritating little aspects to midi editing, the other big one being that changing timebase doesn't impact midi items I generated in Reaper the way it handles .wave files.

Yeah that one is annoying, but there's an item property to ignore project tempo (Item properties->Properties). A bit workaroundish, but... yeah. Reaper giveth some and Reaper taketh some.

SWS has some actions that help you enable this for all selected items, though, so it's faster to do.

[Ursollin]

Yeah that one is annoying, but there's an item property to ignore project tempo (Item properties->Properties). A bit workaroundish, but... yeah. Reaper giveth some and Reaper taketh some.

SWS has some actions that help you enable this for all selected items, though, so it's faster to do.

I suspect I would find a unique slew of editing inconveniences if I dove into a different DAW anyway, and I don't think ANYTHING could surpass the inconvenience of having to learn a new one at this point, at least for what I'm using a DAW for.

Thanks for mentioning SWS I'll have to give that a thorough inspection.

[EvilDragon]

SWS extensions are a must! They add so many useful things.

[Ursollin]

SWS extensions are a must! They add so many useful things.

Wow... Your SWS comment could not have had better timing.
The best solution I've implemented involves a custom action set that uses two of the SWS actions XD
I didn't even realize I was using SWS-specific features until after the action set was perfected!

[Erkenfresh]

Can you modulate the decay with velocity? Then notes with faster decays could have higher (or lower) velocities. I know for sure this could be done in Zebra2.