Sustain pedal while using Rev 2 as controller

[Agustin77]

Hi, Ive just got a New prophet rev 2 and I am very happy.
After exploring it, I tried to use it as a midi controller for softsynths ( in fact, just for playing some rhodes patchs, as its keybed is awesome).
Turning local control off disables me of using its sustain pedal... is there a way to achieve this?
Thanks in advance.

Agustin

[jackwhitman]

I have this problem too. Anyone know a solve to this?

[timboréale]

Er, that's what "local control OFF" means - any controls do NOT locally affect the synth... what did you expect?

This is really MIDI 101, but you should only turn off local control when your remote MIDI controller is sending BACK to the synth ALL control message. If it doesn't echo them back to the synth, the synth is uncontrollable - the point of this option, again, is to disable the synth's own response to it's own controls so that the echo doesn't cause double messages. You have two choices:

1. Make sure your DAW is echoing back ALL MIDI to the synth, not just notes but also CC, NRPN, everything (you may need to use a MIDI monitor to confirm this, learn how to use one, it's essential to good MIDI studio technique) and turn local control OFF, OR
2. Make sure your DAW echoes NOTHING back to the synth and keep local control ON.

Those are your two options, anything in between will lead to problems or unusual behaviour and is not an intended use case in the MIDI world.

To clarify, when using the synth as a MIDI controller only you're running into this problem:

1. You press a key. The note is sent by MIDI to the DAW. The DAW goes "blerp".
2. You press the sustain pedal. A CC# is sent to the DAW. The DAW does nothing with it since it's meaningless to the DAW. Nothing happens.
3. You release the key. The synth has local OFF so the sustain pedal does nothing locally (it sent the CC, that's the point of local OFF). The synth sends a note OFF to the DAW. The DAW stops going "blerp".

Your complaint is that the DAW stops going blerp when it gets a note off, but that's the definition of a note off.

This is HOW SYNTHS WORK with local off.

MIDI controllers are different - they behave as if local control was always ON - so when a pedal is pressed it affects when the note off message is sent. That is the normal behaviour of the hold function - decoupling the note off from the key release.

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Workarounds:

1. Do what normal synth people do and keep local control ON and just turn the volume of the synth down or mute the outputs when using it as a MIDI controller.
2. Make sure your DAW echoes everything back to the synth properly and do the same thing with the audio output.

Notice that these are the same as the above two local control options and neither disables the synth from producing audio because what you want is for the MIDI engine of the synth to actually process the control messages for you since your DAW and VSTs are too dumb to know what to do with a sustain CC message. It has nothing to do with the Rev2.