Mixcraft 8 Keyboard Sounds.... too much sustain...not enough release!

[shrimper14]

New Forum User here,

I'm a novice keyboard player, recently started, and I'm currently using mainly right hand chords plus one finger left hand for bass. In order to get a half decent sound,I find that I need the keyboards sustain pedal on/down continuously but having recently acquired Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio I am finding that nearly all the keyboard sounds I try (from say piano to Rhodes EP) all have way too much sustain on them with really long release/decay times which results in a mud-like sound building up after just a couple of chords have been played.

Wondered if there are others out there who have had the same issue and whether someone's hit on a good solution (possibly a strong decay vst?) which sorts this problem out?

Shrimper14

[mick]

Don't get anything like you explain with my keyboard and pedal but one thing comes to mind before exploring further and that is some sustain pedals have a switch - usually on the underside that reverses the action of the pedal. It sounds like you have constant sustain working and this is exactly what this switch does, check it out and let us know if it is the problem. Another thing regarding sustain is if the pedal is pressed when starting Mixcraft, some pedals reverse the action this way rather than the switch.
You can also try starting Mixcraft with the pedal unpluged then plug it in when Mixcraft is ready.
What pedal is it?

[shrimper14]

Re Mick reply,

I do deliberately have the sustain pedal pretty much constantly "on" when I'm playing and I do this by choice because I find the sustain "off" chord sounds are just too short/brutal for me and so I definitely do need some sustain on all my chords...its just that I'm finding the length of that sustain/decay far too long when using the Mixcraft instrument sounds...in some cases, the sustain just goes on a on with hardly any decay at all which leads to this mud-like "mush" sound building up.

Re hardware - I actually have one Roland sustain pedal and then sometimes I take that out and switch to a standard non branded on/off switch pedal...that's when I want to use continual sustain. This works beautifully with my Roland sound module I have but when I switch my sounds over to Mixcraft..these "over sustain" problems start occurring.

By the way, I did try your suggestion of starting up Mixcraft before I plugged the sustain pedal in but unfortunately it didn't have any effect.

[JonInc]

Could it be that you have switched from a sustain pedal (with your HW module) to an expression pedal with Mixcraft -- or vice versa? That would explain the different effect.

http://musicgearzone.com/expression-ped ... ain-pedal/

[mick]

The sustain decay length is designed to copy that of an acoustic piano that has a very long decay so I'm stuck for giving another suggestion at this time. The CC 64 sustain in the piano roll is also on/off and not variable.
If you have the sustain permanently on try setting the pedal in reverse mode so that you control the cutoff instead of the length. Adjusting the decay length is not possible because an acoustic piano deosn't have variable decay either. I use the pedal to control the length but appreciate this isn't what you are looking for.

[totong547]

hello im totong i just want to ask if i can assign virtual instruments on the one i encircle i have m-audio 49 ?

KS49_hero_web_00.jpg (27.21 KiB) Viewed 6838 times

im new here and also new in mixcraft plsss help me ....
thank you

[Acoustica Greg]

hello im totong i just want to ask if i can assign virtual instruments on the one i encircle i have m-audio 49 ?

Hi,

I was looking at the manual for the Keystation 49es and I don't see any info about assigning those controls. You could turn on MIDI Learn in Mixcraft and try pressing them to see if they are sending MIDI data. If they are, you could map them.


Greg