Sustain pedal not working...help?

One possibility is sustain overlapping each others, if it's recording over previous tracks.
 
Looking at the piano roll may show this, especially during recording over a track.

Nope. Can't fix it. Any other help out there? Really need it.

Hey tobey, can you explain what you mean by keyboard is dry and monitor not? Sorry for my ignorance. Also, how do I tell the effect is getting to track? All this is new... as you might can tell.

I'm sorry to be late replying, had to go to bed. I'm using a Tascam FW 1804 interface driver. And I have been keeping Local Control off. No CC64 events in Events List. I thought it was receiving them, but it's not. I turned on the Input Echo and it didn't work either and showed no controller events as well. I noticed that it not only doesn't record sustain but it chops the data up, especially when I play chords. The RS 70 has a lot of system message options that I've been playing with for days and nothing works. But with Local Control off, it wouldn't help anyway would it? So is it the Tascam maybe?
 
Appreciating the help so much.

I'm away from my setup and won't be home till tonight late but am anxious to try your instructions and will get back to this forum as soon as I try it all out. I had found the link you posted and tried holding the key down as it said to do, but no go. I'm not sure if my Sonar 8 is updated or not, will find out. I so hope checking the controller as you said will work. This is driving me crazy.
 
After years of use, my brother moved from Sonar 8 to Logic and he's the one that has set up Sonar and everything for me. He's a guitar player and doesn't understand how important sustain is to a keyboard player. He told me to just do what he did on Sonar and go into piano roll and lengthen the notes. The song I'm trying to record is 7 minutes long... can you imagine what it would take to do that in a song filled with elaborate keyboard parts? While he would never consider playing his guitar dry, he doesn't understand the essential need for the nuance of sustain. So, he will be no help on this. I say this so it will explain why I know so little about the set up myself. But for this sustain problem everything is gliding beautifully.
 
I'll be back as soon as I work the adjustments you mentioned to let you know if it worked.
 
Thanks lots... and lots.

sequen
While he would never consider playing his guitar dry, [my brother] doesn't understand the essential need for the nuance of sustain.

Tell him to tie a sock around the neck of his guitar and see how he likes it. 
 
As an aside, I once had an old upright piano on which the rod that lifts the dampers was warped and would constantly fall out of place. It ended up being good for my technique in that I learned how to get more sustain by holding keys as long as possible, and it was good for my composing in that it inspired my to improvise in a more up-tempo, percussive style that didn't need sustain.

Tell him to tie a sock around the neck of his guitar and see how he likes it.

Yeah! Really!
 
Neat story about old upright. Went through a few of those myself. I'm hoping I don't have to start writing purely staccato songs if I can't get around this sustain nightmare.

 

As mentioned, I don't think it's relevant to your current issue

 
I see I did misunderstand and that my problem is the opposite of that issue. I'll definitely look into the plugin fix from tencrazy too.

In Edit -> Preferences -> MIDI -> Playback and record --
In the RECORD section there is a list of MIDI event types to record. Is "controller" checked?
In PLAYBACK make sure the "Prepare Using" value is 500 or more.
 
Aside from these settings: there is a midi activity indicator on the task bar. Even without play or record active, it should blink when you press the pedal. That would indicate the keyboard is actually sending pedal and Sonar is detecting it. The settings above control whether Sonar will record it and play it back properly.

It does blink when I press the pedal. I looked in Edit and everywhere else for the options you listed and didn't find them anywhere. Is that because I'm in older version of Sonar? But the light is blinking.

sequen

In Edit -> Preferences -> MIDI -> Playback and record --
In the RECORD section there is a list of MIDI event types to record. Is "controller" checked?
In PLAYBACK make sure the "Prepare Using" value is 500 or more.

Aside from these settings: there is a midi activity indicator on the task bar. Even without play or record active, it should blink when you press the pedal. That would indicate the keyboard is actually sending pedal and Sonar is detecting it. The settings above control whether Sonar will record it and play it back properly.

It does blink when I press the pedal. I looked in Edit and everywhere else for the options you listed and didn't find them anywhere. Is that because I'm in older version of Sonar? But the light is blinking.

There was a reorganization of project and global settings in Sonar X1. I'm sure I don't remember the layout of preferences & settings in version 8, but I'm wondering if there is an "Advanced" button, as there is in the current version, that would expose more settings. The MIDI event types to record is a setting that goes way back in history; maybe it's accessible from some other menu item. Does "help" help find it? By the way, it may be worth exploring whether Sonar 8.3.1 is a worthwhile free upgrade for you, though probably not affecting the current problem.

In SONAR 8, the checkbox to record Controllers is under Options > Global >  MIDI tab, and the Prepare Using buffer setting is at the bottom of that same page. My guess is they will both be correct if you haven't been in there before.
 
Your sustain pedal should definitely remain plugged into the back of the RS-70. The pedal is just an on/off switch (in most cases); it's the keyboard that generates the CC64 pedal messages that get transmitted to SONAR.
 
From everything you've said, I'm pretty confident the sustain messages are reaching SONAR and getting recorded, and I can't think why the RS-70 wouldn't respond to them on playback if it's responding to note events.
 
In any case, I would not worry about installing Sustainfix; CC123 is not the problem.
 
At this point, you just need to check the MIDI message flow step by step:
 
1. Verify the CC64 controller events are getting recorded with values of 127 for down, and 0 for up, with the same channel as the notes (all this is visible in the Event List view menitoned previously)
2. The controller events are registered in the track's MIDI output meter on playback (you might need to record just some pedal events to be sure)
3. The pedal event register in SONAR's MIDI out indicator in the System Tray.
4. the RS-70 is receiving the controller events. unfortunately, yo're kind of out of luck here because it appears the RS-70 does not have MIDI I/O activity indicators. The evidence will have to be that notes are sustained as expected.
 
You're looking for something like this in the Event List:

 
 
 
 
 
 

Yay, beautiful sustain!
 
Dave, do you still have 8 installed or did you just remember Options > Global >  MIDI tab ? That was a while ago. I don't even have a copy of the Sonar 8 manual online any more.

Yay, beautiful sustain!

Yes, oh my gosh it's great. The last 4 hours I've been working on the song. Have been trying to tweak the very nice and harsh overdrive guitar patch from the RS 70 to sound like it needs to on the pattern. Loving it all.
 

OP needs to go smack his brother around for doing that, and not remembering.

I think I'll just tie a sock around the neck of his guitar!
Oh by the way... Pat is short for Patricia... yeah, I'm a dumb girl.
 

Enjoy! See you 'round the forum.

For sure Dave. Best forum ever!

 Curse Mattel for producing that "MIDI is hard!" Barbie. 

Hey I got that Barbie.... and immediately pulled her head off. Very vindicating. But I am very lazy about getting it on midi. I'm a musician for God sake, not a geek! This song, which is probably the hardest song I've written in my life, (why do I do this?) but in it, I must be a progressive drummer that will dress up the meter with off beat toms and rolls; a bass player that I prefer walking it all up and down the scale to interact nicely with the drums; a bridge that will include fast distorted guitar licks that will accent a grand piano in the background; then, one must mix it all down right...... all this on top of keeping the midi behaving right. On top of this, my brother is coming over Sunday to add a Kurzweil box component for better sounds and I just know he's going to find my song and try to adjust/delete every controller note that he will believe is hurting the song.. But I've had the best day today. And thank you again Dave. I'm certain I'll be showing up here with new stupid Barbie questions.... you might want to run right now.