Session Guitarist does not stop in spite of Latch?

Oliver Korpilla

Hi.

I'm using Session Guitarist: Strummed Acoustic 2 inside Ableton Live 11.

I have some MIDI chords playing in my Arrangement View and then I stop. Latch Mode is set to "Stop within 1/4". But what happens is bizarre: It keeps not only playing, it changes to the next chord in the pattern correctly (From Esus4 to Bm) as if the MIDI had continued but then keeps holding that chord forever. How would it even know what the next chord is?? The last chord I play is Esus4. Session Guitarist switches to Bm and then holds it as if Bm was put in continuously, ignoring the Latch altogether.

I have also tried Latch Mode "Keep Playing" and put either a G#1 or an A1 in addition to my chord to trigger an ending to no effect.

I disabled all external or cross-track MIDI input for the track, so only the MIDI for that track should play.

I deleted my Kontakt instance and loaded a new one. No effect.

I saved my Ableton project, closed Ableton, and opened it again. No effect.

Why does Session Guitarist keep playing and anticipating my chord?

I'm playing a fixed pattern ("Handmade A"), the Auto Chords mode if OFF.

Has anybody experienced this? I understand it might be an Ableton issue but it is bizarre.

Thank you for any feedback.

Blindeddie

OK, first thing (continuing to play) I found some truncated notes at the end of the last clips that was causing the continual play... see the screenshots.

First clip:

Second Clip:

I was able to see them by left dragging the whole clip, otherwise they were not visible in the clips pane. So I shortened the long notes of the chord, then deleted the extraneous notes that due to truncation, may have been missing a note off event and it plays as expected. (I also changed latch mode to end at 1/8th after shortening the notes 1/8th

on another note, take a look at the SA2 Manual, there is a section on "Tips and Tricks" the way you have the notes quantized and the full length of the "Bar" is not optimal for realistic playback. Shortening the notes and having some overlap works much better.

Hope that helps.

Blindeddie

can you upload a project with that midi clip producing that behavior so it can be tested here? Don 't need the "Full" project, just that track...you will probably need to "Zip" the files to post it here...

Oliver Korpilla

Strummed-Sample Project.zip

Hello, Blindeddie.

I'm including a simplified replication where I can still see the problem.

It has been saved with Ableton Live 11.0.10 for Windows.

One MIDI track with chords in the Arrangement view. First a clip with a chord progression. Then a second clip right after with a single chord. When splitting clips I made sure nothing else is contained in the second clip but a single chord. (When splitting clips Ableton can do a few weird things, I guess.)

I made some further observations. I took the original clip from the session, played part of it a second time. (Looped the clip by dragging it longer.) If I play a full bar chord it will not stop but magically anticipate the next chord and play it forever.

If I however shorten the clip by 1/8 and the Latch mode happens to be "Stop within 1/8" it does stop. That's so weird! It should always stop within 1/8 of the chords stopping, right? And how does it anticipate the next chord in all these scenarios?

No matter how much I lengthen or shorten the clip, the following happens:

The chords in the clip are the key!

If I drag the clip so that a chord plays exactly to finish before ending the clip, it will jump to the next chord (as if the clip were longer) and play that. (How it anticipates that if you shorten clips by cropping them is a big mystery.) By "playing to finish" I mean that the chord notes had a chance to play till note off, I guess.

If I shorten the clip to actually end in the middle of a chord being played, the Latch mode will work.

So if I play C for a bar and G for a bar, if that's my clip, it will:

If I drag the clip to a length of 1 full bar, play C, then it anticipates G and loops it forever.

If I drag the clip to a full length of 2 bars, it plays C, then G, then anticipates C and loop it forever.

If I drag the clip to a length of 7/8 and hence in the middle of C, it stops within 1/8 (so at exactly 1 bar).

If I drag the clip to a length of 1/8, it will stop at 1/4.

If I drag the clip to a length of 9/8, it will play C for a full bar and then G for a 1/4.

This even works if a chord is 1/2 bar long. So it does not depend so much on the length of the chord, but if the chord basically reaches its end in terms of MIDI notes. If the clip is shortened so that the note off is no longer in the clip, all works fine.

If I stop at 1/4, it will stop playing at 3/8. But if I stop at 1/2, it will not only continue but anticipate the next chord in the clip.

You can play around with it. All that is loaded is Strummed Acoustic 2 (6 string) in Kontakt 6.

Blindeddie

OK, first thing (continuing to play) I found some truncated notes at the end of the last clips that was causing the continual play... see the screenshots.

First clip:

Second Clip:

I was able to see them by left dragging the whole clip, otherwise they were not visible in the clips pane. So I shortened the long notes of the chord, then deleted the extraneous notes that due to truncation, may have been missing a note off event and it plays as expected. (I also changed latch mode to end at 1/8th after shortening the notes 1/8th

on another note, take a look at the SA2 Manual, there is a section on "Tips and Tricks" the way you have the notes quantized and the full length of the "Bar" is not optimal for realistic playback. Shortening the notes and having some overlap works much better.

Hope that helps.

Oliver Korpilla

Thank you, Blindeddie!!

I did read the manual (originally I couldn't get a beep out of any Session Guitarist), the problem in question resulted from recording the output of a MIDI generator/player into a clip. It's when I used the recorded clips that I stumbled over the problem. I shall review the Tips & Tricks for better results then, definitely.

I thought I had checked the clips for extra notes, zoomed out, used fold to make sure that I see all notes. Embarrassing! Thank you for your help, it was driving me nuts. Glad it works as advertised, too!