Adjusting midi volume after a note has started

A

aljordan

New member
Hello,

When writing midi tracks in Cakewalk, is it possible to adjust the volume (velocity) of a note after the note has started? I am writing a violin track and it seems that I can only adjust volume at the start of the note. I would like to be able to increase or decrease volume as the note is held.

I could record the track to a wav file and then use volume envelopes, but I would imagine there must be a way to do it inside the midi file itself.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Alan
 
hey al,
i am sorry to say i do not know the answer to your question, but it is a good one- so i replied to link myself to any answers you may get.
again, sorry
happy recording :)

you might try the tutorials or get the book cakewalk power- i just got it and it looks very helpful so far
 
I started to say "no, the MIDI volume message only comes with the Note On," but then I realized that I'm not so sure about that...

I will look it up in my references when I get home tonight...

If in fact you can't (that is, the Volume message is part of the Note On and can't be changed during the duration), the only control you would have would be to program the sustain and decay envelopes of the triggered synth's patch.
 
I believe there is a way to put a "swell" on a MIDI note, however, I haven't got a clue as to how to do it. I too will check out the manual to see if I can be of more help, because it's something I've wondered about, but never had any incentive or motivation to look into it until now.
 
My newest trick

Automation data is the key to sound control, you can control anything midi or audio by editing the automation data.

In console view, right click on the slider for the track you want to edit.

Select edit automation data, now you have a screen where vertical lines represent automation data in db, there are ALLOT of choices in the drop down menus which allow you to control any aspect of the track you can think of.

Now on your view toolbar, select piano view, your piano view has a split window now. the bottom window is console automation.

Select the parameter you want to control from the dropdown menus, probabaly control in the left, volume in the right.

With the pencil tool, draw in the lines or just drag a shape across and the changes will turn into lines.

Remember to return (draw a line) to the original db setting, I think the track stays in the position of the last drawn line.


I hope this helps you out, It's kind of hard to explain how to use that feature, the down side is that this affects the whole track, not individual notes in a track, you'll have to copy individual notes to a track of there own to control them individually, the up side, it's actually better than tring to control the console by recording slider movements, and you can remove pesky track automation that you can't find the source of by erasing the lines.

TX
 
Yep, Torpid-x is right -- it's MIDI controller message #7 - volume. The drawing thing he describes puts in multiple Volume controller messages that follow the contour of what you draw. You could also drop them in at manually one-by-one at particular places, but the envelope tool is so easy it's almost silly to do it any other way. One caveat, though -- sometimes this method causes a gazillion MIDI controller #7 messages to be sent when only a few would suffice to give you exxentially the same effect. A good example is where a portion of the envelope is basically flat for a short while. One Volume message sent at the beginning of this period would give you the same sonic result as five hundred volume messages of the same value sent every couple of milliseconds. If you have lots of MIDI events going on and lots of these dense automation messages flying around, you can actually bog down the MIDI data stream. Cakewalk has a handy Cal routine that goes over complex, dense automation envelopes and replaces the gazillion messages with the miniumum amount necesssary to describe practically the same curve.
 
Thanks to those who replied. I figured out how to do what I needed to do. I noticed that the effect doesn't sound as realistic as changing velocity for soundfonts that are sampled at multiple velocities, but I think it will be useful nonetheless.

Alan
 
also try midi controller 11 (expression)

if you don't want to change the actual volume of the track, you can make adjustments to the expression pedal (controller #11). the expression controller gives you a degree of control over the track without changing the actual volume. this way, if you decide to change the track's volume relative to the rest of the mix, you can stil just adjust the volume (controller #7) slider in the console view and the expression changes (controller #11) will still be there relative to the volume.
 
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