Troubleshooting

Most problems with Melody Rack come down to one of three things: it is a MIDI effect and there is no instrument after it, macOS has not given your DAW a microphone, or your DAW has not rescanned. This chapter works through those and the rest, roughly in the order people hit them.

What you'll learn

• What to check when you hear nothing
• Fixing microphone access, and how to work without it
• What to do when the plugin does not appear in your DAW
• What the messages under the header mean
• Two REAPER-specific behaviours that are not bugs
• What changes when the trial ends

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11.1 I hear nothing

Check there is an instrument after the plugin. Melody Rack makes no sound of its own. It sends MIDI to the instrument on the track, and if that slot is empty there is nothing to hear.

• In Logic, Melody Rack goes in the MIDI FX slot and the instrument goes in the Instrument slot below it.
• In Ableton Live, REAPER and other VST3 hosts, Melody Rack goes on the track ahead of the instrument in the chain.

Then check, in order:

1. The two counts in the take bar. N sung and N made are also the mutes. Dim means that channel is not going to the track. Click to light them.
2. The host's Output parameter, if you have automated it. Off means nothing leaves.
3. Whether anything is switched on in the rack. A fresh plugin has only In Key on, and In Key with no key does nothing at all, so the plugin passes your take through untouched. That is correct, and it means the sound you get is your own take through your own instrument.
4. Whether the trial has ended. See §11.7.

11.2 Sing is greyed out

macOS grants microphone permission to the application, not to the plugin, so what needs the permission is your DAW.

1. Quit your DAW.
2. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.
3. Turn on the switch for your DAW.
4. Reopen the DAW and the plugin.

The plugin does not raise the prompt itself, and that is deliberate: asking for audio before macOS has decided can terminate the host process and take an unsaved project with it.

You can use the whole plugin without a microphone. Press Keys to play the melody in from a controller, press play and let a MIDI clip on the track go past, or use Import. All three make a take exactly as singing does.

11.3 The plugin is not in my DAW

• Relaunch the DAW. Most hosts only scan for new plug-ins at startup, and Logic validates Audio Units on launch.
• Look under MIDI effects, not instruments. Melody Rack registers as a MIDI processor, so it never appears in the instrument list. In Logic it is in the MIDI FX slot menu.
• Check the format your host uses. macOS installs both the Audio Unit and the VST3; Windows installs the VST3 only.
• Force a rescan from your DAW's plug-in preferences if relaunching is not enough. Some hosts keep a cache that needs clearing.

11.4 The messages under the header

One slim line appears under the header when there is something to say. There is only ever one at a time.

Errors from an import, or from a send that failed, appear in the same place.

11.5 The bar lines are dashed

The grid is a ruler rather than a promise. Two things cause it:

• The take was imported. Nothing counted it in, so the first note is the downbeat and the bar lines are drawn where they would fall, not where they were played to.
• The take was recorded through a fallback audio path that cannot honour a start time. This is host-specific and rare.

Neither breaks anything. The plugin is declining to claim a precision it does not have. If you need a take on a measured grid, record it again with a count-in, or with your DAW rolling.

11.6 Two REAPER behaviours that are not bugs

The spacebar does nothing in the plugin window

REAPER answers Space in its own event handling before the plugin window is offered it. Use the plugin's play button with the mouse, or use REAPER's transport, which is what the key is reaching.

The plugin's playhead runs ahead of REAPER's cursor

REAPER → Preferences → Audio → Buffering → Anticipative FX Processing is on by default with a 200 ms render-ahead. REAPER renders plugins ahead of the play cursor and buffers the result, so the position the plugin is given is genuinely in the future. It affects every plugin GUI, which is also why meters read early in REAPER. The audio is correct throughout.

Turn Anticipative FX Processing off if the offset bothers you. If a playhead offset works out to roughly 200 ms, this is the setting to check first.

11.7 The trial has ended

The rack stops sending notes to the track and the window says so. Nothing is deleted, and your DAW project is untouched: the takes, the racks and the keys are all still in the session and come back the moment the plugin is licensed.

Your own MIDI keyboard still reaches the track. The lockout is about the plugin's output; cutting a player's controller off the track would read as a dead controller.

Buying from the same window unlocks it within a few seconds. See Chapter 2.

11.8 An import will not load

• Three minutes is the ceiling. Detection runs on the main thread inside the plugin, and a take is a phrase. Trim the file first.
• Very long or very quiet recordings can leave the detector with nothing to work with. The status line says when nothing was found.
• Odd formats are decoded three ways, ending with your host's own system decoder, so most things load. If one does not, converting it to a WAV or an MP3 first will.

11.9 A take disappeared

• Cmd+Z brings back a take you recorded over or deleted. Undo carries the whole take list, so the roll and the numbers can never disagree.
• The plugin keeps five takes. Recording a sixth drops the oldest, unless you had flipped back to it, in which case the one after it goes instead.
• Everything saves into the DAW project, including the takes and their pitch curves. If a session opens with less than you left, check you are opening the project you saved rather than a copy.

11.10 Still stuck

Get in touch through the contact page. It helps to say which DAW and which version you are on, and what the line under the header said.