GarageBand ios dropping midi notes - ie recording triads into MIDI become two-note chords.

Ok, thanks if anyone spent brain time on this, but I did get some suggestions elsewhere. At the risk of this being me giving myself a monologue, here’s what I figured out about this problem:

Short version - the ‘missing midi’ or dropped notes of GarageBand replaying a MIDI track wrongly, although it sounded fine when inputting (ie playing a keyboard into the GB track recorder), is a dirty lightning connector. This sounds incredibly stupid, but it was hard to track down.

At the same time as having these MIDI issues, I was trying to back up some songs to SD cards, and this involved some mucking about with powered USB hubs and pukka Apple USB to lightning adapters (the ‘camera adapter’) etc. What resulted, was that I plugged in an alternative much larger keyboard (midi controller) which required an external USB or power supply.

What I have decided makes sens, the only logical conclusion, is that the higher-powered setup, plus unplugging and re-plugging, meant the MIDI signal got more clear. The 1’s were 1’s and the zeroes were zeroes, I assume. It’s 5 Volts it works on I believe, so from my electronics long ago, above 3.5 Volts counts as one state, and probably below 1.5 Volts counts as the other. Anyway, the problem went away with both keyboards - but of course I had begun to plug in even the little irig keyboard, with the powered USB in-between the keyboard and the ipad.

I was amazed the issue seemed gone, and went back to check a video I made - no, it definitely happened.

It was a ‘borderline’ MIDI transmission issue then. all cables were short and seem shielded to me, thick things as they are. Proper Apple adapters.

Bringing us to the other issue, which being noticed at the same time, was unfortunate - the ‘wonky’ arpeggiation of the Model 15 from Moog, software Audio Unit synth. It’s a great synth. But now I have certainty that the Apple baby DAW ‘dropped MIDI notes’ thing was the borderline connectivity issue, and it is fixed, I realise with my other arping synths being fine, it’s actually a Moog characteristic.

It may transpire it’s not termed a ‘fault’. But, the fact is, the Moog Model 15 on both my other DAW, and GB iOS, plays sounding one way when you use two handed arpeggio operation, but the replay of that from the midi track, sounds entirely different.

SUMMARY

The powered USB hub, blew the cobwebs away, and then I cleaned the lightning connectors having figured out what was wrong with the missing midi notes on playback - the note being dropped from my triad. What confounded this incidentally, is that GB has the habit of NOT putting up all three notes for ALL the chords I played, as the MIDI recording happens, but does for MOST of them! So, there is a ‘missing midi note’ visually even if everything works, until you go into ‘edit’ an individual midi block. Then, all the midi notes are clearly visible! That was an unhelpful characteristic.

The Moog, I will press on with, with Moog, it’s not life or death, any of this, but it’s time, all the same, spent on tech stuff, not music stuff!

Thanks anyway, it may help someone else.

Pic of my setup now - it’s grown a bit, and the USB hub means I can have my qwerty keyboard always there, at the same time as my music keyboard(s). Excuse the mess of cables, memory chips etc behind, and the block of wood pushing the ipad up and forward onto the large Novation keyboard - I couldn’t see the screen. This was and won’t be a problem if I use the little irig again on it’s own! Don’t be too impressed - up until this week, it was just the ipad with the tiny irig keys 37 directly plugged in via Apple’s ‘camera’ USB/lightning adaptor.

Fact is, it’s much more comfortable to play than full-size keys, which always were a design giving mechanical advantage to drop a hammer on piano wires. Now that doesn’t happen inside our keyboards, full-size is only needed if you need to stay in shape for that kind of instrument. I don’t expect to be playing a Lounge baby grand in a five star hotel, anytime soon!

PS if you see the screen, my background is Chesil Bank/Chesil Beach, the roadway to Portland Bill on the south coast of England. I just took a closeup pic of a square metre or so of pebbles I flattened out.

Take care, keep safe and well.

irm/rg

Just to add one more thing, or two…First, I did another identical test just now on Garageband, using the internal ‘deep drive piano’ electric piano instrument. The same missing midi notes issue happened! I was surprised, thought it most likely be an Audio Unit issue - it’s not.

Second other thing…’stuck notes’ also occasionally happens, but I can’t prove it’s connected to the main issue of missing midi notes in midi track recordings, plus that does happen occasionally in Cub3 as well, so it’s not a GB issue, although I have NEVER had it happen with Apple’s internal instruments, so that issue, is pretty definitely an AU quirk I think - but this is not important, nothing to do with the issue of concern, forget I mentioned it.

The only reason I mention it, is it does happen when you have quite a few instruments on a GB song. As it occurred to me that 12 tracks might be called ‘busy’ I deleted 5 of them, and with a drummer track and 7 tracks (3 of them GB internal instruments) left, the self-same issue of missing midi notes afflicted the GB electric piano I mentioned. Incidentally there were only a few bars of midi on each track, it being a ‘test song’ for this problem.

Keep well all.

irm/rg