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I'm using an old Roland RD-200 electric piano as my MIDI controller. I'm seeing a lot of weird behaviour when using it, like the sustain pedal not working and notes getting cut off without playing a release sample. My problem appears to be similar to the one mentioned in this linuxsampler.org thread in that the piano is sending an "All Notes Off" (B0 7B 00) control message whenever the last depressed key is released. I've verified with Pocket Midi that this is happening, but I'm a bit stuck on how to deal with it. I've inferred from the thread that this is an outdated usage of that signal and it should not be getting sent.

The musician in the linuxsampler thread resolved the issue by filtering that signal out using mididings, a Python module that is straightforward to use under Linux and rather more complicated to get running under Windows. I've started down that road but am currently trying to figure out how to get glib installed so I can get to the next step of building the mididings python module.

Is there a (preferably free) Windows app that can filter out this control signal? I tried using something called MIDI Relink but there didn't seem to be any way to filter that particular signal.

Or is it possible to do this in Bitwig 3? Its built-in MIDI control devices don't seem to be able to do it, but perhaps there is a VST with this capability? Putting it ahead of the instrument in the chain should let it filter out these messages.

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    I would look for a MIDI plugin instead of a separate app. I'd be very surprised if there aren't MIDI management VSTs available, although if there aren't it's probably because so many DAWs include MIDI management or come with MIDI management plugins. Note that the question of "Can Bitwig do this and how?" is on topic here, but the question of "What apps or VSTs are available that do this?" is off topic here.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Dec 3, 2020 at 20:56
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    Bitwig does include a "Note FX" set of plugins, mentioned in section 17.12 of the Bitwig user guide, but it doesn't look like any of them can be tweaked to filter the messages you want to filter.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Dec 3, 2020 at 21:03
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    Roland alway did use CC123 like it was about to go extinct. The higher end keyboards usually were switchable, that one isn't, unfortunately. Almost all DAWs include a switchable filter for it, because, as you've noticed, it's a really really unfriendly data-point.
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 4, 2020 at 9:18
  • For now I've just followed some forum advice and put a heavy thing on some of the upper keys that I don't use. Works well enough unless I try to play something that goes into that range.
    – intuited
    Jan 1, 2021 at 23:16

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You could do this just with Bitwig, but it'll take a bit of work. From chapter 13 of the Bitwig Studio User Guide:

Anyone with knowledge of JavaScript and the MIDI specification can customize any of the included controller scripts or even write their own. For full details on Bitwig Studio's controller API, go to the Dashboard, click on the Help tab, and then click on the Documentation page. Various Developer Resources can be found here.

So you could write a custom controller script for the RD-200 to make it behave as you want in Bitwig.

If you want something already built, I suggest a web search for "midi filter vst". I found two tools that would probably work in the first page of hits on that search.

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  • I did that search as well, but none of the tools I tried were able to work with that particular type of signal—thus the question :)
    – intuited
    Jan 1, 2021 at 23:15

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