Logic - Phantom Control Change Entry, CC getting inserted from our of nowhere. Options

[X4fer]

Hey folks, I'm a frequent lurker, not usually confident enough to contribute much. Hopefully before too long....

I'm working on a song that uses several tracks for Logic's various internal synths (great fun!) and am about to add some Yamaha S80 voices to the mix.

I'm getting a mysterious control change entry that takes the volume on channel 1 down to "9" when I either press play or set the song position pointer. (I'm seeing this in the midi out monitor in my S80 environment). I'm chasing program changes and control changes, and if I remove chasing, this stops, so it must be finding the entry somewhere earlier in the song. But I've checked the events lists for ALL my tracks, and even changed all the tracks so that NOTHING is using channel 1, and when I press play or set that song position pointer, it still finds and sends this CC 1 7 9 msg.... Very spooky (and annoying!).

Any ideas where this could be coming from? Seems like Logic sends these control changes automatically, but I can't imagine why it would send a cc for a channel that isn't being used in the sequence. I even changed the default transmit channel on the S80 to 2, but nope....

btw, there are other cc msgs (all either volume or pan msgs) that get sent at the same time, but I've tracked (so to speak) the others down.

The REALLY annoying part is that I can't seem to override this volume "9" setting either. I've got the volume set in the track to 110 and upwards, and if I click on the channel/voice name in the left column, that volume setting takes over and I can hear the voice, but if I try to play or record, we're back to 9.

TIA for any ideas on this!

Best,

Daniel

[X4fer]

Hey folks.

I eventually deleted all tracks except the ONE track that was giving the problems, and deleted all the regions and the automation data in that track, including the "orphan" automation data. It STILL sent control change msgs (volume and pan msgs) to channels that were no longer assigned to any existing tracks. Weird.

Only when I selected "delete all automation data in the song" did they go away. Pretty drastic measure, esp if there's some complicated automation data across a bunch of tracks in a song.

Oh well, I'm moving on now... Would be nice, though, to know where those CC msgs were being stored w/in Logic if anybody has any ideas on it.

Best,
Daniel

[joehosefat]

Are you filtering the MIDI events that you examined? This sounds like a SysEx message that lost its way. I had similar problems with some standard MIDI files I downloaded - the GM effects would turn on and patches would change unexpectedly. Once I found the SysEx that was causing this, the problems ceased.

[X4fer]

Hey, thanks for responding..

Not sure what you mean by filtering. You mean to search for them or to actually filter them out of the data stream? If the former, I never could find them in the event lists, even when screening for sysex or pgm change or control change events, with catch and window linking enabled. If the latter, I don't know how one would do that.

Daniel

[joehosefat]

I do my MIDI sequencing in Pro Tools, and you can select specific controllers to view in either the Event List or in the individual tracks. I'd instruct the program to show me only the SysEx messages, and after looking through each track, I would usually find the culprit and delete it. I had been downloading and then modifying a bunch of GM songs to use in piano bar performances, and I was not interested in using the GM patches or effects; instead I configured my own program changes. I also do not appreciate files with minds of their own, so I know where your'e coming from. The SysEx message often contained changes for volume, programs, panning and effects settings, which were bogus on my keyboard (Fantom-S88).

[X4fer]

Okay, I see what you mean. Yea, definitely frustrating to have these controllers doing stuff out of the blue! I learned that the problem was that there were subchannels of my S80 that were still "holding" their controller msgs, even though the tracks assigned to those channels had been deleted. I had been thinking that once you deleted or muted a track, that all the automation that it had would no longer get sent. Not so....! And if you later change a channel in another track to one of those old ones, the old CC msgs can reach up to bite!

Thanks for all the responses!

On to the music making...

Daniel