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What is the best way to use sustain in Qtractor without having a sustain pedal?

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rncbc's picture

What is the best way to use sustain in Qtractor without having a sustain pedal?

although qtractor may be not the target here, as a MIDI sequencer it's supposed to be transparent on recording, transport and playback of MIDI data, and the standard controller MIDI CC#64 - Sustain/Damper/Hold Pedal (on/off) - is just like any other.

as in any other MIDI editor software, you can of course enter discrete MIDI CC#64 event values while on the MIDI clip editor aka. piano-roll, just set value-type to "Controller" and param-type to "64 - Hold Pedal (on/off)", make sure you have set Edit/Select Mode/Edit On (=pencil button) and start entering events on the time-line; just remembering what the standard says about values: 0-63=off; 64-127=on.

hth.
byee

Thank you for your response. That should work for prerecorded music, but how could this be done in real time? Would it be necessary to use other software in jack to put the sustain controller in the midi stream?

rncbc's picture

hey, for real-time live performance you really have to get a pedal that sends the MIDI CC#64 as standard; or you can have it assigned to some other button or knob in a physical MIDI controller.

in either case you must also reckon that it is actually the instrument or sound generator (eg. a synth) that must recognize and react to MIDI CC#64 properly--it actually depends on its own MIDI implementation and not quite dependant on qtractor which just conveys the MIDI event.

hth.
byee

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