neilbaldwin
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WOW MAN!

I thought I'd throw the question in here as there seems to be a broad range of knowledge on all sorts of software.

Is there a way, when using VST instruments in Ableton Live, to direct the MIDI "input" (I use inverted commas because it's an internal connection, of course) from Ableton to a specific MIDI channel in the plugin/VST?

I can see there are options like this for MIDI input to Ableton (you can set the input port and the input channel) but there doesn't seem to be corresponding filtering to the VST "bus".

neilbaldwin
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WOW MAN!

Not to worry, I found a really straight-forward explanation on the Sound On Sound website. Here's the relevant bit and a link to the whole article in case anyone else is struggling with that aspect.

Let's Get Multitimbral
In case you're wondering why I used Cakewalk's Rapture in the first example, it's because it has the 'Live mentality'. Rapture has six different 'elements' (basically, voices) that offer lots of looping and tempo-sync options, and can be set up for multitimbral operation so that each element receives data over a separate MIDI channel. When loaded into Live, this allows a variety of MIDI-based looping options that complement the way Live treats digital audio.

Anyway, taking advantage of this requires setting up Live for a multitimbral synth. In this instance, the 'MIDI + instrument' track becomes a kind of container for the soft synth, and is fed by multiple MIDI tracks (one for each channel you want to address). As an example, we'll set up Live to play back three MIDI tracks into Rapture elements one, two, and three, which are set to those respective channels.

Create the MIDI instrument track, which we'll call track one. I generally set this to No Input to avoid confusion, as I want to add inputs only from other MIDI tracks and create as many MIDI tracks as there are multitimbral channels to be driven. In this case, there are three. Set the input for each of these MIDI tracks as desired.

In each MIDI track's upper MIDI To field, select the track containing the instrument (in this case, MIDI track one).

In the lower MIDI To field, assign the MIDI output to the desired instrument channel (in this case channels one, two, and three for the three element channels). Now set the Monitor switches for the three MIDI tracks to Auto. If you record-enable a track, it will send the incoming MIDI data to the channel that you have just selected, and of course, you'll also be able to record this into the sequencer.

Now you can record as desired into the various tracks, and play them all back when completed into the MIDI Instrument track.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul06/a … h_0706.htm

cheapshot
Offline
Tokyo, Japan

Glad you got closure. That problem was bugging me all day at work. I come home, and you have the solution!

neilbaldwin
Offline
WOW MAN!

I'm glad the problem forced me to dig deeper into that side of Live - the internal routing stuff is extraordinarily powerful. I never tend to think of Live beyond sweet effects and the ability to work some kind of black magic with looping samples. It seems there's a whole other aspect to it that I've never noticed.

smile

CMDR
Offline
brighton, uk

Here's a solution to the pesky 'CC to Knob' problem with Ableton that I wrote for Pulselooper in regards to midines that should technically work, to set up an instrument within Ableton to control Midines, Arduinoboy or Mssiah,

Controller->Ableton->Device

The sad thing is that it's a certain part of ableton that doesn't exist.
You just simply cannot map a CC to a midi control to route out of ableton.

All you need to do is set up a an instrument rack in a midi channel with this plugin in the rack.
Map each individual CC out in the plugin, ie CC1 becomes CC7, CC2 becomes CC9 etc.
Then press the triangle next to the on/off button of the plugin and then configure.
Move each slider or knob in the plugin while in configure mode and it creates a slider in the instrument rack you can use to assign a midi controller to.

If you want to limit the amount of data sent i.e. 1-20 instead of 1-127 then it gets a bit trickier.
Click the button below the on/off button and it opens the macro editor, hit map mode, then map each macro knob the the control knob of the plugin.
In the top left where the midi mappings normally are should be a macro mapper with a min and max value which is shown as 0.0 to 1.0, which is the percentage.
Now work out what each value is in percent, like you want 1-16 out of 127, you need to work out what that is in a percent value.
This will limit each CC to just those values and when you turn your knob on your controller it will be more natural, instead of overshooting a value.
You can also name each macro so that when you are editing you wont get confused at which one is which.

To complete all of this you need to route that channel into a separate midi channel, as you only want to affect the control change data in the clip.
The second channel then gets routed to Midines!

http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Pr … teControl/

Specifically, this: http://www.bluecataudio.com//Vault/Prod … ntrols.png

Last edited by CMDR (Apr 19, 2010 12:59 pm)

akira^8GB
Offline
New York City

This was helpful, I was banging my head against the wall the other day with a similar issue (trying to control a multitimbral VSTi).