This detail just came to me:

The idea of note-off velocity for an acoustic piano is meaningful when one considers how the damper makes the vibrating string come to rest.  If you are playing, say, a soft chord that you wish to decay more slowly than normal, wouldn't it make more sense to hold down the sustain pedal (CC #64), and then slowly release it?

When I make demos for Pianoteq, some of my pieces make use of this very fact.  For example, let's say we wish to release a held whole note chord with "reduced note-off velocity".  I would simply play that whole note chord with somewhat lesser duration than, say, a dotted half note (3 beats instead of 4) --- all the while I would depress my sustain pedal just after striking the chord, and at the appropriate time, proceed to decrease s-l-o-w-l-y the continuous pedal controller.  In real experience, I have found that notes sustained with CC#64 tend to show the desired effect when CC#64 has been decreased continually from 127 to about 65 or 70.

An added benefit of this technique is that the "longer" virtual strings have more virtual mass and, given the correctly reduced sustain pedal, they tend to linger for a slightly longer time than do the higher notes.  Restated, the lower, more massive strings contain more virtual kinetic energy or momentum than do higher strings.

Food for thought.

Cheers,

Joe

- CS10, CS7, CS4
- CA95, CA65
- CN34, CN24
- ES7
- MP11, MP7
- VPC1

Cheers,
James
x

I remember even ye olde Korg X5D transmitted it, despite the fact that it wasn't mentioned in the manual.

So my (quite old) Roland RD-300GX does send continuous note-off values. I can get values as low as 1 and as high as 127 and pretty much everything in between. Same for note-on and sustain pedal of course. Just FYI

feline1 wrote:

My Kurzweil MIDIboard and my CME UF7 MIDI keyboards both transmit Note Off velocity.

Are you sure about the UF-7?
When I looked at the manual of the UF-series there was an X for both transmitted and received Note-off Velocity.

The manual is wrong ;-)
I discovered the UF7 transmitted Note Off Velocity when analysing its out put using a little diagnostic utility called http://www.midiox.com

The action on my MidiBoard is pretty hefty and weighty - some might say "far too stiff"!  It suits me though as I am a bit of a meat-fist key-pounder anyway
From what I've read on the Interweb though, the MidiBoard's keyboard action was changed half-way through its production run, so not all models have such a stiff action.

cheers
Hans

cheers
Hans

My Kurzweil MIDIboard and my CME UF7 MIDI keyboards both transmit Note Off velocity.

Are you sure about the UF-7?
When I looked at the manual of the UF-series there was an X for both transmitted and received Note-off Velocity.

I took a look at the manuals of the following models:

Roland RD700 GX
Roland RD300 GX

CME VX series
CME UF 5 6 7 8

Yamaha Cp300
Yamaha Cp33

Kawai MP8II

Kurzweil PC3X
Kurzweil SP3
KurzweilMidiBoard

So if we can trust the manuals only the Roland RDs, the CME VX series and the three listed Kurzweil intruments have this feauture.

About the Fatar NUMA
and Studiologic SL990-Pro I know otherwise that they don't support it.

If there's anyone who knows better and can deny any of the assumptions I placed above I would be very thankful. Especially if there's anybody who can definitly tell if Rolands RD models really detect and transmit proper note-off velocity, I would be dlighted to read it. Ok, I still have to take a look at the Kurzweil keyboards, but I fear to run out of options to find a decent controller.
Feline, what do you think of MidiBoards mechanics?

These have a column for TRANSMITTED and a column for RECEIVED, with rows for a the standard types of messages from the MIDI spec.

Look for the row called VELOCITY, and see if there a "O" in the Transmitted column for "Note Off".

If there's an "O", that should mean the keyboard transmits proper none-off velocity.

If there's an "X", it means it just transmits a dummy note off velocity value for every note (usually either Note Off = 64, or Note On = 0). 
Don't be fooled because keyboards HAVE to transmit at least a dummy value, otherwise the notes would ring for ever! But that's not the same as supporting proper Note Off velocity.

My examination of the MIDI implementation charts show that they send out a constant value of 64 for the note off velocity.  When you look at the MIDI implementation charts, be sure you are looking at MIDI Transmitted and not MIDI Received or Recognized. [...]

I checked out midi implementation charts of FP-4/FP-7 and of RD-300 GX and RD-700 GX. Both RD Models also transmit note-off velocity (value 0-127), while the FP models send a standardized value of 40 in hexadecimal, which means, Cellomangler you are right, is a 64 in the decimal system.

It's pretty hard to consciously control (it's not like easing up slowly on a real piano key because it's a once-only-per-note value) but it does introduce another variable into the mix and may add to expression.

I don't think anyone really tries to or needs to *consciously* control it - it's just something that happens when people play -  it makes a small difference but it is detectable and adds to the realism of the pianoteq emulation.

My examination of the MIDI implementation charts show that they send out a constant value of 64 for the note off velocity.  When you look at the MIDI implementation charts, be sure you are looking at MIDI Transmitted and not MIDI Received or Recognized.  Many keyboards will recognize Note Off Velocity, but I personally don't know of any that transmit a variable velocity value on Note Off.  Why do you want this feature...?  Seems like an awful lot of extra MIDI data and it would be very difficult to have consistency with key release, IMHO.

It's not any extra data!
You will always need a status byte and a data byte to indicate a 'note off'
Some keyboards may just send a "note on" (status byte) with a velocity of zero (data byte),
or some may may just always send a "note off" (status byte) with a fixed velocity (e.g. 64) (data byte)...
... if keyboard do transmit note off velocity, it just means the data byte will have a corresponding value between 1 and 127 in it, rather than 0 or 64.

It's not "difficult to have consistency", it's just natural!
Players will naturally take their hands off the keys at different speeds, and good software such as pianoteq is able to subtley reflect this, just the way a real piano can.

My Kurzweil MIDIboard and my CME UF7 MIDI keyboards both transmit Note Off velocity.