Hello,

Thanks for turning off the 'lock' - I assume that this was applied by accident?

Not sure that there's any VST that will do what you want, I'll try a search. You're looking for some sort of 'filter', that will midify the midi data on the basis of certain parameters, i.e. the Velocity, but this could be applied to other things as well. I certainly have some software that will do things like this, but it's fairly old DOS stuff from way back, but I'll dig it out in case it offers hints as to what you might be looking for..

I'll do some checking and get back.

Geoff

Hello, yep, it was an accident - my password manager got overzealous and filled in the field without me even knowing it existed : )

I really appreciate you taking the time to look into it. I've looked at a bunch of filter plugins but I know I haven't found all of them, there are so many scattered across the web! Nice to have all these things to discover.

Curious about DOS tools, can they talk to a modern DAW?

Thanks again!

GM

Hello Geoff,

I've seen your direct message now. Hm, I'd never trust anything that did something 'automatic' like that, but I accept that some folks might.

I'll get looking re VSTs, but the problem might be that it's one thing to find the Note On item, which will have the Velocity (Volume) setting, but to complete the adjustment you'll also need to change the matching Note Off item, which might come later (usually soon later, but maybe not) and this item will NOT have the Velocity to select by, but it will need changing too. This is quite possible to do, but it makes things more complicated.

I've looked at the DOS Filter utility that I have, and this allows items to be removed from the file based on a velocity range, but does not seem to allow for a Channel to be altered (again, the Note Off will need the same change). The prog I'm looking at will NOT interface with any DAW I'm sure, it's designed to read data from one midi file and output it to one or more other midi files, usually retaining the original file unaltered, just in case it all goes wrong.

I don't at all understand what you're trying to achieve with this, I have to confess. It rather goes against the usual use of midi facilities where the channels control varying volume, pan, everything regarding the instrument selected. I'll have to re-read your original item to try to 'get my head around it'??

Oh, I think I take it that you'r plans relate more to live/real time performance rather than playing midi files - being sure about this may be a help to understanding what your planning.

Geoff B

Hey Geoff B,

You're right, I don't trust the password manager anymore. It also steadfastly refuses to autofill the actual login and password fields on most sites, so I've disabled that feature. Good thinking.

I think I understand you on the note off, there are VSTs that do this, for example the Piz plugin midiProbability allows me to trigger channels randomly per note played and still respects note off for the correct channel even if another channel has had note on and note off information sent by the same plugin in the meantime. I know absolutely nothing about VST development so how hard it was for Piz to do this I have no idea : )

Sorry for not being more clear about my purpose. You're absolutely correct about the real time performance element, I'm basically leveraging MIDI tools to give me new ways to compose with (for example) Kontakt instruments. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but Kontakt is a sampler that can contain large complex libraries with multisamples of instruments mapped across the keyboard. Broadly there are two types of instruments; ones that trigger each sample with the velocity you hit the key with, and ones that ignore key velocity and instead use the mod wheel to crossfade between louder and quieter samples for all notes being played (wonderful when you want to play a string chord swell, for example, but useless if you want to play steady loud low notes and soft high notes at the same time, for example). The plugin would allow me to 'fake' playing the second type of instrument like the first (by creating multiple copies of the same patch with their mod wheel values set appropriately in advance, receiving on their respective midi channels from our hypothetical VST). Furthermore if I wanted to I could then go into each channel after recording in a performance and tweak mod values for each note individually, rather than all notes at once. Effectively I'd have a really clunky Roli Seaboard!! Amazing bit of kit there.

Let me know if this makes any more sense, sorry if I've just made it worse. The above is one use-case example. The short answer is this will let me create all kinds of interesting set-ups for real-time performance and greater musicality than if I tried to program them : )

By the way it looks like a company called Audionic did this in an iPhone app (I don't have an iPhone so no good to me). From their features list: Split the MIDI velocity range into upper/lower splits and assign each split to a separate MIDI channel. Unclear whether they allowed for more than two ranges.

Thanks again!
GM

I was looking earlier regarding VSTs and Plug Ins, there are masses, and the info provided for each is not always helpful. There's a bit more detail now that might help refine a search.

Geoff

Thanks Geoff, I really appreciate your efforts. The maze of barely documented tools is a gift and a curse : )

GM

Hello Geoff,

Well, I've found one system that might be getting close to what you're looking for.

Have you seen something called Gig Performer 'Midi in Blocks'? It's not free ($149 ?) but if this is close it could again help further search efforts?

This system does seem to allow the right sort of filter, based on Velocity, and allows IN on Ch A to be Output on Ch B. It appears to allow one 'filter' which isn't a help, but it's talking of overlays, and multiple overlays of filter, which could be interpreted as allowing (I assume) 16 overlays each set to a different range of Velocity and each set to output to a different channel, which I think is what you want to achieve? There's scripting facilities too, which could make setting things up easier?

$149 doesn't seem like too much IF it does what you're looking for? Oh, there's a 'free' trial period. Sounds like you can get and use the software, and then you pay or it's disabled!

Any thoughts?

Geoff B

Hey Geoff,

That looks like a really decent plugin that could likely handle this and most of the other things I've been cobbling together various free plugins to do, and probably a lot more. And if it were the only option I'd say $150 would be fairly well spent...

However! Your posts got me thinking about a tool I had lying around called MIDI Polysher (free from plugin boutique) which has a velocity pass setting to allow an allowed range of velocities. So by using a bunch of these hooked up to various samplers on different midi ports I can achieve the same thing. This isn't as tidy a solution as the hypothetical VST 'velocity zone channel splitter' (which would allow a 16-layer split to be achieved a single instance of the vst and one of Kontakt rather than 16 Polyshers and 16 Kontakts, which is what I'm about to set up haha), and 'MIDI in Blocks' might be a cleaner solution too, but this gives the same end result.

For anyone else trying to do this: In FL Studio I think the best way to achieve this is through Patcher, though it would also be possible (but more messy and inflexible) to do it using a Layer controlling a bunch of Polyshers loaded as generators feeding to a bunch of Kontakt instances on different midi ports. I've attached a screenshot of a Patcher setup with four 'velocity splits'. This should be doable one way or another in any host that allows MIDI routing.

If anyone does know of a VST to handle this task by design, that would of course be better, but this works well for me after a bit of setup and early results are exciting.

Thanks so much again for your help Geoff, we got there! I'll be back next week when I get another ridiculous idea : )
GM

Thanks for mentioning Gig Performer (I'm one of its developers). I just wanted to mention that among other things, Gig Performer has a built-in scripting language (it's actually a compiler but we're stuck with the name now ) that allows all sorts of MIDI manipulation to be carried out very easily and in real-time. If you have any questions about it or want to know more about whether it can address your needs. please feel free to visit our community forums (https://community.gigperformer.com) and ask your questions there.

Note however, that GP is not a plugin, it is a host.