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Topic: Note velocity, accents, and external MIDI keyboards (Read 2206 times) previous topic - next topic

Note velocity, accents, and external MIDI keyboards

A couple subjects all smashed into one post.
I'm using my keyboard (Yamaha DGX-660) as my playback device for some music during my choir rehearsals. I've entered all of the piano music as the sheet music calls for, using dynamics, accents, etc.

My issue is that accented notes are played WAY too loudly across my keyboard's speakers, while the volume of the actual dynamics seems fine. The accented notes are loud enough to make my speakers rattle while the non-accented notes sound fine.

I see controls on the staff properties for setting the velocity for each written dynamic, and I've read that NWC uses a multiplier of 1.4 for accented notes.

Is there a way to change this multiplier to 1.2? 40% is far too much accent.

I do not notice the accented notes nearly as badly when played through my laptop's speakers. So I'm not sure if this is partially an issue with how my keyboard is translating the MIDI instructions, of if this is an issue with NWC's MIDI code. Perhaps there is a setting I should be looking for on my keyboard for equalization?

Any recommendations that don't involve a lot of manual dynamic adjustment will be very welcome here. In the meantime, I'm debating on removing all accents, but it would be nice to have them as the music intends.

Re: Note velocity, accents, and external MIDI keyboards

Reply #1 –
Quote from: schnautza –
Is there a way to change this multiplier to 1.2? 40% is far too much accent.
No.
I agree. %40 is often too much. Even worse, note velocity is limited to 127 so some notes don't get accented at all.

There are ways around this by manipulating the Default Dynamic Velocities and using the Expression Controller rather than note velocities for dynamics. Depending on the instrument and your synth, this may cause more problems than it solves :(

Tomorrow, I could expand this with an example if you are interested.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Note velocity, accents, and external MIDI keyboards

Reply #2 –
For the time being, I removed all the accents and set my default volumes on the staff properties to 30-40-50-60-70-80-90-100. It gives a good balanced range but doesn't solve the accent problem.