Roland TD50X Cymbal Chokes: Poly Aftertouch not being recorded by Ableton.

[Photona]

Greetings, all!

I've been recording my Roland TD50X with Ableton Live 11 for a long time. No issues, until now. And it's a weird one.

What I do is record a drums MIDI track in Ableton Live 11. I then do any editing that I feel necessary. I then route that MIDI track back into the drum module, and record the audio that results (I call this "retriggering").

However, the other day, I did my usual thing... But then noticed that the cymbal "chokes" are no longer working upon retriggering.

To be clear: Audio recording of cymbal chokes works fine when playing/recording in real time.

It is when I route the MIDI track to the drum module to retrigger the drums and record the resulting audio that the chokes no longer work.

I began to be suspicious that this problem was only happening in Ableton. I then recorded cymbals with chokes in the Reaper DAW, and then routed the resulting MIDI track back to the drum module to retrigger it... and it works. PERFECTLY. Chokes are recorded in the MIDI track when using REAPER. Chokes are NOT recorded when using ABLETON.

Please see the attached JPEG screen grabs with commentary. There is a TON of information that Ableton is not recording to the MIDI track.

Since Ableton does not have MIDI event history log capability, I exported the Ableton-recorded MIDI to Reaper.

I then recorded the exact same pattern of hit (ring) / hit (choke) / hit (ring) / hit (choke) in Reaper.

I then compared the two MIDI tracks side by side while viewing the MIDI events log. Here are the screen grabs with commentary:

ABLETON-RECORDED MIDI (AFTERTOUCH MISSING):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nc81KE ... sp=sharing


REAPER-RECORDED MIDI (AFTERTOUCH RECORDED PERFECTLY):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15mSzu- ... sp=sharing

As you can see in the side-by-side analysis of the MIDI events that are being recorded, Ableton is completely failing to record any Poly Aftertouch (or MPE, or whatever you'd like to call it) whatsoever. Reaper is recording Poly Aftertouch perfectly.

Can anyone tell me what is happening here? Why would the Ableton-recorded MIDI track fail to see everything that Reaper is seeing?

I do not want to use Reaper. I paid for and love Ableton. This should not be an issue... And from what I understand, I am not the only one who is experiencing this issue.

I have seen lots of super-complicated "workarounds" for this, but why should we have to perform complicated note-assignment fixes when it works flawlessly in Reaper without a single adjustment of any kind?

Thanks so much for your consideration... This has been driving me nuts for like a week now, lol!

[[jur]]

Did you enable MPE for your Roland in Live's Midi preferences?

[Photona]

I did have MPE activated in Preferences.

However, here is an interesting development.... I was so focused on cymbal choke that I didn't try playing the whole kit with MPE activated. And here's what happened.

When I have MPE activated, the hi-hat expression no longer works upon sending the MIDI track back to the module. If I have the hi-hat pedal closed, the hi-hat still sounds like it's being played wide-open, with no foot on the pedal.

When I turn off MPE in Ableton Preferences, and then send the recorded MIDI track to the module, the hi-hat expression is back. It works great. Hats close and open as they are supposed to.

However, no matter what, the cymbal chokes are still not being retriggered through Ableton.

This is all getting so bizarre.

Anyone have any ideas? I sure do hope someone has encountered and fixed this issue.

Thanks!

[ToBe]

Ableton Live (11) only accepts PolyAfter Touch for 'ringing' note / before the Note OffAll explained here: https://blog.abletondrummer.com/cymbal- ... eton-live/

[ToBe]

Did you enable MPE for your Roland in Live's Midi preferences?

Got nothing to do with MPE - actually should b de-activated. Problem is: Ableton Live only applies PolyKey Pressure after Note Ons and before Note Offs.
For future reference it is all explained here: https://abletonkurse.gumroad.com/l/Cymb ... bletonLive

[Photona]

Hi, and thank you for the reply!

Is that you, Tobi? I just emailed you, so I guess you followed that link to this page, lol... I'm just dying to fix this. Thank you so much for replying!

I downloaded and read that entire PDF. The thing is, I just can't find where the Gate Time setting is located in the TD50X.

And I just keep wondering why it used to work, but doesn't anymore...

Does anyone here know how to change Gate Time for individual pads on the TD50X?

[ToBe]

Yes it is me

So there is this thing called "Manual" -

Page 39 - mid-left

https://static.roland.com/assets/media/ ... ng01_W.pdf

[Photona]

Yes it is me

So there is this thing called "Manual" -

Page 39 - mid-left

https://static.roland.com/assets/media/ ... ng01_W.pdf

Oh. My. God. I don't even know what to say.... LOL! I'm thoroughly embarrassed at this point, lol!

Thanks, Tobi!!!! I will give this a shot and see what happens.

[Photona]

Well, I'd like to firstly thank Tobi for trying.

In my humble opinion, the fact that Roland cymbal chokes work flawlessly with every other DAW on the planet points me in the direction that Ableton needs to address this themselves. I did get in contact with Ableton Support staff, and they were great.

The only issue that I really have is that after putting hours and hours of time and many screenshots and testing of equipment and cables on my end (even though, as I said earlier, the Roland cymbal chokes were working fine in all other DAWs I tried), I finally realized that I am not a part of the dev team, and that all that really needed to happen was for Ableton to believe what I was saying, and to fix the problem. And that's exactly what it is. A problem. With Ableton. I'm not getting paid to spend hours and hours troubleshooting and bughunting a program. A program that I actually bought multiple licenses for (???).

Please note that this isn't me ranting, or screaming and yelling and blaming. There are no all-caps entries here. This has been my experience.

The main bummer about this whole situation is that Ableton is the very best DAW that I have ever worked with... Except it doesn't work with the one instrument that I need it to (Roland TD-50X).

Sure, I'm out the money. Whatever. This is the factual end-result, folks. If you want your Roland cymbal chokes to work properly with Ableton Live 11, you are going to have to deep-dive fiddle around with settings that you really shouldn't have to. And before you do that, remember... Do you reeeeeeally think that there's something wrong with your drum module? Or maybe it's the DAW.... Try recording cymbal chokes on another DAW. Any other DAW. I'll bet things will be working just fine.

And take this into consideration.... There are people out there actually selling patches and tutorials to fix this issue. Does that tell you all that there might be an exclusive problem with AL11 and Roland cymbal chokes?

Sigh. Gotta go, opening up another DAW (trolls, please note that I have not mentioned the name of any other DAW) and recording my stuff. So sad.

Happy New Year to everyone!

[MatrixV01]

Hi Photona. I went through this exact same dilemma. After trying everything I had to switch to a DAW with Polyphonic Aftertouch support. I use PreSonus Studio One 6 and had zero issues with cymbal chokes since.

[ToBe]

Yep its a BUGger. They way Ableton implemented PolyAftertouch is not useful for eDrummers and is pushing eDrummers away from using Ableton Live (as you guys are a proven example.) Even if you can fix it with some edrum moduls/brains it is far from being user friendly.

Again IF peeps want to dive into changing the gate time / note length and having cymbal choke being recognised for 'ringing' notes - here is the info to understand what's happening: https://blog.abletondrummer.com/cymbal- ... eton-live/

[reveurmort]

Dealing with the exact same issue on my TD-17 trying to use it in live 11 with ezdrummer 3. Everything works fine in stand alone ezdrummer, and in a few other daws I tried. This is absolutely an ableton issue, and it sucks because like Photona, I've also loved live as my main daw and have sunk a lot of money into licenses.

But this is a deal breaker. Guess I'll finally be putting my Reaper license to use.

Mostly wanted to post to thank you, Photona, because I've been dealing with weeks of frustration in figuring this out until I saw your post that sums up the issue amazingly. May not have a fix but I feel validated lol.