Key Lock, Chord Mute and unplayed notes issue with Bitwig

I have posted a thread about this on the Bitwig KvR forum and have had it confirmed by another user. I have messaged Bitwig support but will link the thread here for completeness:

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=259&t=547496

It will likely be a Bitwig issue, as it works correctly in S1.

However, while looking into this problem, I did notice that the Chord Mute setting for Key Lock didn’t work on the first 3 key lock modes, just on the Chord ones.

Hello @xylyx and welcome,

It seems to work well here in Bitwig but we will have a look in detail during the week.

The Keys-Lock feature can mute/redirect notes. If there is MIDI content playing on Scaler’s track, it might affect the output notes differently than what you expect. It will combine the notes from the track and the ones you play on your controller and both might trigger changes in Scaler.

You are right. Those lock modes are not reactive to chord so it has never been needed or asked as far as I know. I see how it can be counter-intuitive, we will have a chat with the team about this.

Thanks for reporting

Thanks Ed,

There is no controller being used, just a midi clip. The problem appears to be the way Bitwig handles 2 note on events that occur at the same time - shifting the non-chord triggers to be a fraction later makes it work as expected, so it would appear to be something Bitwig needs to fix.

I’ve had a reply from Bitwig regarding the notes not playing correctly and they say it is to do with the way the plugin is handling the timing. The reply is quoted below:

This seems to be a timing issue in the plugin. The reason could be that In contrast to other DAWs, Bitwig Studio stores and plays midi notes with the same timing precision as the audio engine runs, not the typically more coarse midi resolution used in other hosts.

I bought Scaler today, and it seems I just ran into this issue.

I can reproduce it easily: If I setup keylock with chord notes and set chord mute to “muted,” if I press a “chord note” and hold it, as soon as press a “chord key”, it cuts off the “chord note” I was holding.

As someone else stated earlier in the thread, this does not happen with the first three keylock modes.

Is this a bug, or is it working as intended? If it is intended, it seems to limit its usefulness, as your notes get cutoff every time you play a chord.

My system:

  • Ableton 10
  • Win 10
  • Latest Scaler release

Many thanks

I saw this in the release notes for the 2.1.2 update:

Fix notes being cut-off on chord change when using Keys-Lock - Scale White Keys.

Not sure if that was addressing the same issue described in this thread, but in any case, the issue happening in this thread is still happening.

Is this a bug, or is it working as intended? If it is intended, it seems to limit its usefulness, as your notes get cutoff every time you play a chord.

BTW: Many thanks for all the support and updates!

@davide @Ed1

Kindly asking you guys to please take a look at my two posts above. This is still broken, and the key lock/chord mute thing is borderline unusable like this.

Many thanks!

Fixed and will be included in the next update 2.2 due Black Friday!

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Fabulous. If there is any chance a hotfix could be issued sooner, that would be amazing. But, if not, it’s all good.

REALLY happy this is going to get fixed in any case.

Many thanks!

Sorry we need to focus on 2.2 pulling man hours away would cost the development which is looking very exciting…

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Confirming this is fixed in 2.2. Huge thanks.

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