Certain MIDI Notes Unresponsive

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Zelda123
Posts: 41
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 11:14 am

Certain MIDI Notes Unresponsive

Post by Zelda123 » Sat Jun 21, 2025 10:19 am

Hi,

I'm making a layered trance melody using Serum 2 in piano roll (Ableton 11). No external midi controller.

It's difficult to explain, but there are some instances where the notes don't seem to play, or have no effect on the overall sound when changing key.

When I play the full midi clip certain key changes don't play, but other times they do. It makes no sense and it really confusing me.

Could someone please help me understand this?

Look forward to your reply,

Many thanks,

pottering
Posts: 1956
Joined: Sat Dec 06, 2014 4:41 am

Re: Certain MIDI Notes Unresponsive

Post by pottering » Wed Jun 25, 2025 6:57 pm

Could be the synth's voice limit settings, for example, if set to 3 voices max and you play 4 concurrent notes, one of the 4 notes won't be played.

Could be how most computer keyboards have rollover limits which limits how many keys you can press at the same time, and also some key combinations.

Could be an arpeggiator, that causes keys to only trigger in a certain subdivision.

Could be a LFO/modulation in something like a filter, filtering out sounds.

Could be the synth is fully set to an internal sequencer and actually not accepting MIDI input at all, but somehow sequencer is close enough to your MIDI input that confuses you.

OR THE CLASSIC ABLETON ONE:

Could be you are looking at Clips in Arrangement, but what is playing is actually a Clip in Session View (or vice versa.)
♥♥♥

Rivanni
Posts: 905
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: Certain MIDI Notes Unresponsive

Post by Rivanni » Thu Jun 26, 2025 12:52 am

Also check note probability in Live's MIDI editor.

Does it happen with every preset?
Does it happen with another device or plugin?

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