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Sustain pedal in Mainstage 3

When I play one patch and hold down the sustain pedal and switch patch with the "top right" key on the keyboard (have assigned them to switch up and down patches) the tone (chords) holds without holding down the foot pedal. I have to press "Spacebar" to stop the sound (patch).

What I´m I doing wrong?

MainStage, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jul 24, 2013 4:26 AM

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Posted on Aug 7, 2013 10:38 AM

I've also run into this problem with MainStage 3 and I'm unable to find a fix. I don't think it has anything to do with how you switch patches (arrow keys, screen control mapped to a MIDI message, etc). The problem simply seems to be that if you switch patches with the sustain pedal down, once you release the pedal the sustain off message gets routed to the current patch instead of the previous one where the notes were sustained. The notes that were sustained from the previous patch are now stuck until you switch back to it and tap the sustain pedal (resulting in a sustain off message to that patch) or until you use MIDI PANIC to stop it.


A bit of history... this worked fine in MainStage 1.x but was partially broken in MainStage 2 prior to version 2.1.2. In that instance it was only a problem if you didn't have a sustain pedal control in your layout mapped to sustain. Most of the default concerts were already set up this way so unless you started with a blank one (as I did) or removed it you probably never ran into this problem. At the time I posted this question to the MainStage forum and got a response explaining the workaround. Even so, MainStage 2.1.2 fixed the problem -- it was specifically noted in the release notes.


I regularly play in musical theatre pits and it's pretty common for there to be at least a few spots where the keyboard book is written such that it's a necessity to do this. The situation is usually that you're holding a chord and you need to switch patches in the middle of holding it so you can be ready to play a new patch at the beginning of the next measure. You don't always have enough fingers or hands available to hold the chord manually without dropping out notes, especially when there's also a page turn thrown in too!


(Aside: If you use MainStage in live performance one thing I would suggest is mapping a button or key to PANIC -- I use the highest C on my keyboard. That way if you inadvertently trigger this problem you can quickly and reliably get it to stop.)


Has anyone found a workaround to get this to work correctly in MainStage 3? In any case I will be filing a bug report.

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Question marked as Best reply

Aug 7, 2013 10:38 AM in response to oj777

I've also run into this problem with MainStage 3 and I'm unable to find a fix. I don't think it has anything to do with how you switch patches (arrow keys, screen control mapped to a MIDI message, etc). The problem simply seems to be that if you switch patches with the sustain pedal down, once you release the pedal the sustain off message gets routed to the current patch instead of the previous one where the notes were sustained. The notes that were sustained from the previous patch are now stuck until you switch back to it and tap the sustain pedal (resulting in a sustain off message to that patch) or until you use MIDI PANIC to stop it.


A bit of history... this worked fine in MainStage 1.x but was partially broken in MainStage 2 prior to version 2.1.2. In that instance it was only a problem if you didn't have a sustain pedal control in your layout mapped to sustain. Most of the default concerts were already set up this way so unless you started with a blank one (as I did) or removed it you probably never ran into this problem. At the time I posted this question to the MainStage forum and got a response explaining the workaround. Even so, MainStage 2.1.2 fixed the problem -- it was specifically noted in the release notes.


I regularly play in musical theatre pits and it's pretty common for there to be at least a few spots where the keyboard book is written such that it's a necessity to do this. The situation is usually that you're holding a chord and you need to switch patches in the middle of holding it so you can be ready to play a new patch at the beginning of the next measure. You don't always have enough fingers or hands available to hold the chord manually without dropping out notes, especially when there's also a page turn thrown in too!


(Aside: If you use MainStage in live performance one thing I would suggest is mapping a button or key to PANIC -- I use the highest C on my keyboard. That way if you inadvertently trigger this problem you can quickly and reliably get it to stop.)


Has anyone found a workaround to get this to work correctly in MainStage 3? In any case I will be filing a bug report.

Aug 15, 2013 8:06 PM in response to oj777

The patch changes seem to work ok with internal software instruments. The notes don't sustain from being held with or without the pedal. I see the problem with external midi instruments. "Defer Patch Change" is a work around but doesn't show the new patch change until the previous notes are released.

Mainstage 2 works correctly in both cases.

Aug 17, 2013 10:17 AM in response to oj777

I had this problem but was able to work around it by switching the sustain pedal on my Yamaha keyboard for one that didn't send half pedal sustain. Maybe this could also be switched on some keyboards in the settings.


The pedal I was using had a 1/4" TRS type stereo connector, the one I switched it for had a 1/4" mono jack instead.

Aug 19, 2013 1:44 PM in response to oj777

For support the only official way is via AppleCare. Nothing else is support.


If you are talking about the feedback website: this is to inform Apple about wishes, bugs, whatever, but not for support. It clearly states above the form: "Use the form below to send us your comments. We read all feedback carefully, but please note that we cannot respond to the comments you submit.". If they contacted you back based on your feedback, it shows that they are reading your feedback and obviously interested in the problem - potentially to fix it. Happened many times here: good feedback leads to fixes and improvements in the next version - even feature requests seem possible. But they will not allow using this as a support backdoor.


It might simply be an issue with your keyboard and with that you are on your own! Have you checked with MIDI Monitor what kind of MIDI data for sustain your keyboard sends? Maybe there is something off, there?

Aug 21, 2013 9:25 PM in response to Josh Glover

Thanks for posting some suggestions. I finally had a chance to investigate them with MainStage 3.0.1 but unfortunately I am still having the same problem.


First I tried the Defer Patch Change option on the patches as Josh suggested but the problem remains: if I switch patches with the sustain pedal down, the sustained notes are stuck until I switch back to the patch. Releasing the sustain pedal seems to send the sustain off message to the new patch and not the old one. (I did test this in Perform mode as you suggested.)


I was not able to test if disabling half pedaling solves the problem because my keyboard does not support disabling it. I did try a few different pedals but they all support half pedaling which I confirmed by looking at the MIDI messages which you can now conveniently do in MainStage itself with the new Scripter MIDI plugin. (For the record I'm using a Roland RD-700NX stage piano.)


Thanks oj777 for reporting the problem to Apple. Hopefully we'll see a fix soon.

Sep 10, 2013 8:53 PM in response to oj777

I found a very odd fix for this problem that works for me. If the midi channel strip I'm switching away from has audio input assigned and there is a signal coming in from it, then sustain off/note off messages are sent to the previous patch after switching. I usually use a Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 interface but I tried once with a midi only m-audio device. I used the macbook builtin audio with my iPod connected for the channel strip audio input. When the iPod is playing, patch switching works correctly. If I stop the iPod or turn the volume down the notes get stuck again. I hope this is a bug, it doesn't make sense for midi processing to depend on audio signals being present. Mainstage 2 doesn't require the audio input to work correctly.

Sustain pedal in Mainstage 3

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