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Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 8:01 pm
by Elevated01
Anyone have ideas or workarounds to do this? I searched & found a few topics, but they were geared towards live performance. What I'm looking for is a way to flip through all my ready-made instrument rack presets, via one button on my midi controller. (currently using Akai mpk225).

My background is using a workstation keyboard for sounds (Korg Triton Extreme). So I'm used to being able to hit one button on my keyboard to surf through my presets while composing. My Triton is long-gone and I'm a happy Ableton user, but would LOVE to be able to recreate this fast/easy preset switching functionality. Anyone?? xoxo

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 9:25 pm
by Quez
I'd like to know this as well.
I can surf patches from Reason with the Axiom 2nd Gen, but it doesn't work in Ableton. Devices in Reason have a "browsing" function with an up/down selector, but not Ableton ones.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:13 am
by login
Ableton instruments can't do that, the closest you can getnis you engage the hot swap functinality and use your computer keyboard to change presets.

However third party plug ins which accept MIDI program change messages can be configured to do it.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:52 am
by Matt_Quinn
You can do it easily with a knob, not sure about a button though. Make an instrument rack with a chain for each preset, the open up the chain selection zone editor. Use the 'distribute range evenly' command to split each preset chain into it's own zone. Map the chain selector to a macro, and you can scroll through the presets one at a time.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2015 8:48 pm
by Jekblad
Matt_Quinn wrote:You can do it easily with a knob, not sure about a button though. Make an instrument rack with a chain for each preset, the open up the chain selection zone editor. Use the 'distribute range evenly' command to split each preset chain into it's own zone. Map the chain selector to a macro, and you can scroll through the presets one at a time.
Yeahhhhh this is not so good for preset surfing unless you want to drag over 128 different presets to start surfing with. It's not so great for live performance as you can get stuck notes.

If you're just switching between a few this is the best solution though... don't forget to map the on/off switch as well and save a lil cpu.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2015 3:06 pm
by Matt_Quinn
Works fine for me, not sure what your problem with the method is. I guess if you need more than 128 presets it might be an issue.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2015 7:03 pm
by Elevated01
Thank you everyone! Matt, I'm familiar with the 128 device rack trick. I'm looking a system that requires less setup / maintenance than this. (Although I may resort to it)

My dude Lenny Kaiser suggested this, which is very cool but not exactly what I'm looking for either:
http://www.maxforlive.com/library/devic ... ram-change

I'm starting to think the functionality I want is something which would have to be built into Live itself. Basically to midi control the device hot-swapping feature.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 3:12 am
by caustik
I had to create my own VST plugin to do this. I guess it's similar to what you've linked above, except also supports Bank and Sub-bank and doesn't require Max.

http://blog.caustik.com/2015/04/08/vst- ... m-changes/

If you give more details about how this could work better, I'll improve it.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 7:56 am
by Elevated01
Amazing work caustik, it looks like you've made something similar but without needing M4L!

What i'm looking for is a device which can flip through my saved instrument racks, in the order they're in within the Live browser. Is this possible, maybe with M4L?

Thank you for chiming in.

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 11:18 pm
by caustik
Elevated01 wrote:Amazing work caustik, it looks like you've made something similar but without needing M4L!

What i'm looking for is a device which can flip through my saved instrument racks, in the order they're in within the Live browser. Is this possible, maybe with M4L?

Thank you for chiming in.
I haven't done any M4L programming, but from what I can see it doesn't look like the file browser is accessible from M4L or the JS API.

It's also not accessible from VST, so currently I don't see an easy way to do what you want :(

Re: Surfing thru Ableton instrument Presets via midi controller

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:27 pm
by Elevated01
Got it, thanks for the info. I suppose I shall send the Abes a feature request :) I've heard that Live 10 is on the way...