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Today I talk about how to fix hung MIDI notes in Ableton and share my thoughts on a friend leaving the music industry.

You’ll Learn

• Some of the causes of sounds continuing past the end of a MIDI clip and one way to fix it

Resources

• PLP 011: Wade Sutton from the Six Minute Music Business Podcast
• PLP 010: The Perfect 10 Hack for Reducing CPU Usage in Ableton plus Affiliate Marketing for Musicians
• Last Hurrah

Transcript

What’s up Heroes, welcome to episode 39 of the Producer Life Podcast. Today I’m gonna talk about how to fix hung MIDI notes in Ableton and share my thoughts on a friend leaving the music business. 

But first, cue the intro music.

I’m going to start off with something I learned in Ableton this week that had been driving me a little crazy.

I was working on this melody in a MIDI clip…..

Which sounds great until you get to the end….

Stop….. STOP STOP!

I’ve had this happen before multiple times in Ableton, and it’s really frustrating.

So I turned to Google.  As you probably know, MIDI, short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and it’s a communication protocol for electronic music instruments that’s been around since the mid-1980’s. 

Sometimes these hung notes are caused because you have a MIDI note running over the edge of a loop so Ableton isn’t receiving an “off” MIDI message.  Other times when I couldn’t figure out the culprit  I’ve fixed it with brute force by bouncing the MIDI to audio and just fading out the sound manually….

But notes aren’t the only information MIDI provides. MIDI also sends details such as pitch, velocity, vibrato, panning, etc.. There are a total of 128 MIDI Control Change Messages, ranging from 0 to 127. It turns out MIDI CC message #64 is… you guessed it…. A sustain command. 

So, if you’re having trouble with MIDI notes hanging, open up the clip, then open the envelopes and go to the MIDI Ctrl dropdown.  Scroll down until you see 64 – Hold. Mine was on throughout the clip…so Ableton was just doing what the clip was telling it to do.

I created new automation to simulate piano sustain pedal going up at the end of each bar,, and here’s what it sounded like after. 

Much better!

I was behind on my podcast episodes this week and was catching up one afternoon when I came to one my my favorite podcasts, the Six Minute Music Business podcast with Wade Sutton. Many of you may remember Wade from episodes 11 and 12.   Wade’s been in the music business for many years, first in radio and then later running Rocket to the Stars Artist Services. 

He’s written a book, and has an amazing podcast which is short, entertaining, and informative. It was really influential on this podcast and one of the main reasons I’ve kept my episodes short too… I appreciate having useful information in short-format without having to listen to an hour of talk. And he released new episodes five days a week. I struggle to keep up with just this one.

I was a little confused because Stitcher showed the last episode of the Six Minute Music Business Podcast being September 14th, over 10 days ago.  I assumed something was wrong with the app until I read the title: The Last Hurrah.  I sat in the parking lot and listened to the episode and discovered that Wade is moving on. He’s pursuing some job certifications in other fields and dropping the podcast and his music consulting business after nearly a decade. 

I’m still struggling to process this. 

I don’t know Wade well, we spent a couple hours together recording the podcast episode and have corresponded a few times over email… but felt like I did because I was used to listening to him five days a week. He clearly loves the music business and has years of experience… but his business is built on working with musicians and that business just dried up in April following COVID. 

I’m pretty good about staying on top of the news and have certainly seen all the dire headlines about how hard-hit the music industry is… but this suddenly felt personal, with someone I know directly affected. Someone who really loves the music business and was really good at what he did. 

I mean… and he was doing all the right things.    Podcasts are huge right now… and he had a great one that was running five days a week with thousands of listeners. He was doing affiliate marketing through Amazon to help support the podcast, something I covered back in episode 10. Most importantly he offered some great services that musicians need…. but at the end of the day it wasn’t enough to support him and his family. 

So where’s the leave the rest of us? How many other musicians and people who earn a living in the music industry will be forced out? Here in the United States another round of stimulus checks seems totally stalled in Congress…. And as much as I enjoy live streaming it isn’t making any money. It’s just good practice for a time when…. Hopefully… we can get back to live performances.

It’s not all bleak. We’ve got four COVID vaccine candidates in phase three trials. Treatment protocols are dramatically better than they were six months ago, and social distancing and masks have helped slow the spread.

I’m hopeful we can get back to live performances late next year, if we have at least one effective vaccine and enough people opt to take it. Both big ifs. There certainly seems to be an appetite for returning to live music…. EDC Las Vegas is already sold out for 2021, so the musicians that do manage to hold on through the pandemic may be in big demand.

So…. I guess my message is to hang in there. Do what you have to to stay safe and healthy during the pandemic and take care of your family and friends. COVID can have long lasting health implications even if you recover, so staying healthy is the most important thing. If that means sidelining your music business for a while, so be it… but things will get better.  If you can, use this time to keep building your skills and your music catalog.   

This is not the first global pandemic, nor will it be the last.  But it will pass… and the music industry will come back. We just need to do our best to hold onto our dreams, take care of the people we love until we can all play together again.

And to Wade: thank you for all you did for so many musicians and for such an amazing podcast. I wish you the best of luck in your next field and hope you bring all of that passion, intelligence and humor to your next career.

Until next week, this is the House Ninja reminding you to be someone’s Hero.