Some of my MainStage patches are randomly detuning??

TIME SENSITIVE: After playing my last show with zero issues, I pulled up my MainStage Concert for my next show and noticed that several of my pads and pianos are now detuning randomly without any changes that I can think of on my end. Certain keyboards are still correct with 440, but other patch layers on the same Song are several cents off, and some of my pads are fluctuating pitch while holding one single note. When I first start playing on a Song, they sometime are in tune for the first few seconds but then they suddenly jump out of tune and then remain that way. I have checked these items:


  • Tuning is set to 440Hz in settings.
  • I changed my sample rate back and forth — no fix.
  • I checked to see if somehow all of these particular patches by themselves somehow had all been modified internally to be detuned a certain number of cents etc. — they were all normal or unchanged, and to get even close to the correct pitch they needed to be set to approx +25 cents, which is completely abnormal.
  • I quit MainStage and restarted (including restarting my computer) — no fix beyond a few sounds and then it detuned again.
  • I restored the project file from a backup just prior to my last show when I had zero issues — after doing so, it played in tune for a few seconds and then immediately jumped out of tune, replicating the same problem.
  • MainStage is fully up to date and so is my OS.


I haven’t had an issue like this that wasn’t correctable by simply restarting MainStage. Looking forward to y’all’s help, gotta get this back up and running for my next show!

MacBook Pro 15″

Posted on Jul 6, 2025 05:16 PM

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6 replies

Jul 7, 2025 09:50 AM in response to tfromtroon

Thank you for the suggestion. I didn’t go through with making a new concert, but from your comment and another forum I saw (Random Pitch Bending - Apple Community), I ended up opening the MIDI Message Monitor and saw that my pitch bend wheel was sending nonstop unwanted messages, constantly changing without being triggered manually at all. The solutions for filtering out unwanted CC messages in MainStage/Logic are not super efficient as far as I’ve seen (some even suggesting a third-party plugin), and they seem more like a bandaid than a real solution to me. So I did some research and found that Novation Impulse keyboard wheels (as well as some others) sometimes randomly breakdown. Not a lot of probable solutions for the hardware, but there are a few things I can try before buying a new keyboard. Here is the article I referenced about the wheel issues:


https://gearspace.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-and-electronic-music-production/1310994-novation-impulse-61-pitch-issues.html


Might just be time for a new board. Thanks again!

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Some of my MainStage patches are randomly detuning??

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