Anyone help a MIDI newbie out

[kolakube]

Hi there,

Firstly I should say, im not sure if this is an Ableton prob or a Keyboard prob. To be fair the prob is me but I mean Im not sure where to look to fix this.

Until now I have only used virtual instruments with Ableton or monotimbral synths such as my Juno 106 or 101. I have added a 16 part multitimbral synth yesterday and have am struggled all day (6 hours to get it working)

From messing around I have worked out

1 - I have to set my synth to local off under the global settings.
2 - I then select what part I want by arming the record button on Live's mixer.

Now what I can't get my head around is

1 - Why MIDI off doesn't seem to want to do anything today. Only the stop button on live seems to stop the notes when I press on my keyboard.
2 - After setting up two external instruments one for midi channel 1 and one for midi channel 2 if arm channel 1 and mute it I can still hear the exact same sound out of channel 2.
3 - The above does not work the other way around. If fact nothing I do can get a sound out of channel 2. Arming it, soloing it nothing. The only way to get a sound out of channel 2 is to arm channel 1 and play notes on my keyboard.

I hope I have explained the above correctly but I really am out of my depth here. If you need any further info please ask me specific Qs and ill get the info back to you.

I have been on with this for the last 6 hours now. Its driving me mad! Any help greatly appreciated.

[kolakube]

Not so sure it is me now. Dusted of my old copy of Cubase SX and it works fine.

[longjohns]

how bout a screen shot

[kolakube]

Hi long johns

Seem to have this sorted for the time being.

It seems to work fine when I set the "Audio From" option (of external instrument) to "no audio"

This doesn't seem to be the correct setting though so I cannot understand how this makes it work? Surely the no audio setting would imply I wouldn't hear anything? I would have thought Id have to set the "Audio From" option to my Delta 1010's outputs? Would I be wrong for thinking that?

[kristian]

I had the same issue; instead of explaining it once more, here's the thread :

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=117131

[kolakube]

@ kristian

Hi there,

Yeah thats the exact prob I had. I understand the majority of Live users may favor VST instruments but us hardware synth users are paying a price here.

Latency isn't good at all on Live 8 re hardware and now this. Im thinking of going back over to cubase but I love Live. Seems very buggy for us hardware users. This is why I didn't u[grade to Vista when it first came out. I refuse to be nothing more than a glorified beta tester and pay for the privilege.

Did you set your external instrument to no audio? Did this work for you also?

[kristian]

hmm.. I disagree with you that Live 8 is bad for hardware... I am currently running 3 hardware synths plugged into my Motu UltraLite. I´m running 2 of the synths through external instrument (since they only have one MIDI in) and the third via the setup described in the above thread (since it has 8 MIDI input channels) and it works like a charm. I hardly get any latency at all too be honest; but there´s no point in using the external instrument for an external synth that outputs several MIDI channels; the external instument is just a shorthand for not having to create one MIDI and one Audio track (and for that purpose, its really good!). Sorry for your external synth issues; maybe you should check the audio buffer settings on your audio hardware as well?

[kolakube]

Well Im getting plagued with problems.

MIDI off is temperamental too. Could be my keyboard I suppose.

Turning audio to off means I have to mix down via my Delta 1010 mixer also which is not what I want to do.

I wouldn't have a clue how to set Ableton up so I can play my synths without external instrument. Didn't really understand what you meant. Any chance anyone could walk me through it bullet point by bullet point

[kristian]

hey... ok I'll try to explain what I understand For your example, if I understand you correctly, you have a synth with multiple MIDI in channels and you're wondering how to set it up without External Instrument plugin. Now, I assume you only have one set of Audio out from your synth plugged into your audio interface, for this discussion lets say its available on Ext 1/2 (stereo input in other words).

Lets say you want to use MIDI channel 1 and channel 2 to the synth, so you create 2 MIDI tracks in Live. Set output of the first MIDI track to MIDI channel 1 and output of the second MIDI track to Midi channel 2. Don't add the External Instrument plugin (I'll explain later). Now, you should be able to send the MIDI data to the synth, but you can't hear anything right? To get the Audio input from the synth, you need to create a separate Audio track. Set the input of the Audio track to "Ext 1/2" and set the Monitor selector to "On". Now you should be able to hear your synth. When you arm MIDI track 1, you can play the first MIDI part of your external synth, and vice versa when you arm MIDI track 2. There is no point in arming the audio track; just leave it alone.

Now, back to the External Instrument plugin: as I understand it its basically a shorthand. Lets say you have a external synth with only one MIDI input channel. To get this to work without the External Instrument plugin you would need to :

1) create a MIDI track to send MIDI data to the synth
2) create a audio track with the input to your synth and monitor IN

you can then add MIDI effect plugins to the MIDI track and audio effects to the audio track, but they are still 2 separate tracks. Instead of this, using the Exernal Instrument basically lets you group all this into ONE track instead of two: you can add MIDI effects to the left of the External instruments plugin and audio effects to the right: it basically combines the signal path so you get a natural conversion from MIDI to audio. So, why can't you use just 2 external instrument plugins in your case?

Well, recall that you only have one set of audio out from your synth. If you use 2 external instument plugins, you are basically duplicating the audio from the synth. Think of it without the exernal instrument plugin: you are create 2 MIDI tracks and 2 Audio tracks. Even if you would mute the one track, you would still hear the audio output from your synth.

I hope this lengthy description helps.. I don't know how to explain it in any other way :p

[kolakube]

hey thanks man, that's really appreciated.

Unfortunately I wont be able to give this a try till fri afternoon but Ill update as soon as I do. Just wanted to say thanks for your time in the mean time.

[kristian]

no problemo hope it helps!

[kolakube]

Hey mate, its works - thanks very much!!!

[kolakube]

Found another probs related problem

Everything works fine, I play on my keyboard and I can hear the correct sounds, can trigger my sound module too and all the relevant mixer channels light up on Lives mixer.

However if I play back a clip of MIDI information nothing happens. No light up of lives mixer channels.

Anyone any ideas?

EDIT - -My fault, I set monitor on the MIDI channels not the audio.

This works like a charm, thanks mate for taking the time to explain. Very helpful.

[kristian]

enjoy makin music thats what its all about!

[kolakube]

Totally agree, but its very easy for technology to get in the way of that as well as to totally enhance it.