Sustain Pedal Issues

Trouble with Synthesia, your keyboard, or adapter? Think you found a bug?
When describing problems, always mention your OS and game version (shown at the bottom of the title screen).

If your keyboard has USB or MIDI ports, there is a tremendously high chance (>99%) it will work with Synthesia. See what you'll need on the keyboards page.
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eganmike26
Posts: 1

Post by eganmike26 »

Version 9.0.2495
Windows 10

Whenever I have the sustain key held (which I like to do for the entire song), any note that I press will remain pressed down on the Keyboard UI even when I let it go. So, this eventually adds up to 50% of the keys on the on-screen keyboard being shown as pressed down, when in reality I am pressing zero keys. If I let go of the sustain, it resets, but I don't like having to release the sustain. Is there any way to have the sustain held, but have the keys on the screen reflect my actual keyboard presses (and not have them remain pressed on-screen until I release sustain)?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Your version of Synthesia is from 2013 and is five releases old. If you try the latest version (10.4), does the problem still happen?
iKELL
Posts: 1

Post by iKELL »

Nicholas wrote:Your version of Synthesia is from 2013 and is five releases old. If you try the latest version (10.4), does the problem still happen?
yes it does, i'm having that problem
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Synthesia 10.0 removed the "pedal holds notes visually on screen" behavior in December 2014. If you check your version at the lower-right of Synthesia's title screen, what do you see?
wacher
Posts: 30

Post by wacher »

Hello Nicholas

Is there any chance to show Synthesia pedal usage/events again?
I have some midi files which contain pedal events, it would be great visualize it somehow (e.g. colored framed notes).
There are millions of tutorial videos on YouTube made by Synthesia which were better If they pedal events shown.

I have a related question as well
Config 1)
Yamaha P45 + Addictive Keys VST (there are connected together via LoopBe)
My midi contains pedal events. Synthesia send this events to VST therefore I don't have to use pedal. OK.
I want use pedal, I want hear my pedal but If I set Synthesia to filter out pedal events (not to hear via VST) then there is no pedal effect at all (VST don't get, don't play and don't show pedal effect).
How can I setup Synthesia in order to filter out events from file but not mine?

Config 2)
Yamaha P45 + headphone
Pedal events in file are not sent to Yamaha.
Filtering has no effect at all.
I think this acceptable (just visualization of pedal events is missing)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Sorry for the wait on this!

I've seen at least one Synthesia clone show the pedal as an extra column of falling note block, right at the edge of the screen. I suppose that might work. Although, I have some reservations. I've seen lots (hundreds?) of MIDI files at this point where there is a single "pedal down" message at the beginning of the song and it's held the whole time. I'm not sure how useful that is to show. The idea that the pedal is really just a personal flourish means there is a little less pedagogical reasoning for showing it to new players. Hmm. That, and there are technically sixteen different pedals! One for each MIDI channel. If there were only a single column, it could get a little messy if various background instruments were using their sustain pedals... but I suppose those falling pedal blocks could just obey the same visibility rules as the part they belong to.

Config 1: This is not a great situation. Maybe the Settings screen option should be more fine-grained than just on/off. (Or, maybe user input should always be allowed -- you're the one generating it after all). Right now the only workaround I can think of is leaving the pedal option enabled and using a separate MIDI editor to strip the pedal events out of the song file... but that isn't a very good solution. Sorry!

Config 2: Hmm. I would say this is a bug (I've had to fix various "pedal isn't being sent" bugs like a half-dozen times over the years), but that it's working in config 1 makes me wonder. Have you checked the "MIDI Implementation Chart" in your P45's manual to see if it "Accepts" pedal events? I can't imagine a world where that wouldn't be the case, but I suppose it's always a possibility.
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