MIDI output from empty drum rack?

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Mage2k
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MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Mage2k » Fri Jun 17, 2016 2:44 am

Is there any way to get MIDI output from an empty drum rack? That would allow me to use my Push to easily sequence drum patterns for my OP-1. Basically, I want MIDI triggered by my Push 2 to go to my OP-1 to trigger drum sounds there.

Shift Gorden
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Shift Gorden » Fri Jun 17, 2016 9:32 pm

Mage2k wrote:Is there any way to get MIDI output from an empty drum rack? That would allow me to use my Push to easily sequence drum patterns for my OP-1. Basically, I want MIDI triggered by my Push 2 to go to my OP-1 to trigger drum sounds there.
Hmmmmmm, maybe mate. I could totally be wrong, on whether this works, but I know you can drag an External Instrument instrument onto the Drum Rack drum pads. But, I'm not quite sure how to set up External Instrument with the OP1.

timday
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by timday » Fri Jun 17, 2016 11:14 pm

The best way I have found is to drop an ext inst to each of the pads that play the OP-1, this enables you to name the pads for sequencing and play them with a Push or Launchpad etc. The chains should have both send and play set to the appropriate note on the OP-1 (for example the OP-1's kick is on F2 - bearing in mind the OP-1's drum map is not GM compliant - so the chain for the kick should be set to F2 for both send and play). MIDI send from the ext inst should be on OP-1 channel 1 not channel 10 as on other drum machines unless you have reset the channel.

All these ext insts should have audio as "no input" = bear in mind the OP-1 does not have separate outs for each drum so if you set them all to recieve whatever input channels you have the OP-1 on it will recieve all the drums over all the ext insts which will probably lead to massive distortion. You should put a final ext inst on a pad which is not in use (I generally favour C0 since it's well out the way), it will still need the MIDI sends otherwise it can't recieve audio but this will be on a note which the Op-1 does not have a drum on. This will be the recieve ext inst and will be the chain you put any FX on to.

Then save the rack as a preset because you never want to go throgh the PITA of setting up all the pads again.

Hope this makes sense. This approach also works for Korg Volcas and anything else you want to map to a drum rack but where the drum machine only has a mono or stereo out. In fact I have a rack which combines the drum sends for a Volca Beats and a Rhythm Wolf so I can use the two together on one rack.

Mage2k
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Mage2k » Sat Jun 18, 2016 5:48 am

timday wrote:The best way I have found is to drop an ext inst to each of the pads that play the OP-1, this enables you to name the pads for sequencing and play them with a Push or Launchpad etc. The chains should have both send and play set to the appropriate note on the OP-1 (for example the OP-1's kick is on F2 - bearing in mind the OP-1's drum map is not GM compliant - so the chain for the kick should be set to F2 for both send and play). MIDI send from the ext inst should be on OP-1 channel 1 not channel 10 as on other drum machines unless you have reset the channel.

All these ext insts should have audio as "no input" = bear in mind the OP-1 does not have separate outs for each drum so if you set them all to recieve whatever input channels you have the OP-1 on it will recieve all the drums over all the ext insts which will probably lead to massive distortion. You should put a final ext inst on a pad which is not in use (I generally favour C0 since it's well out the way), it will still need the MIDI sends otherwise it can't recieve audio but this will be on a note which the Op-1 does not have a drum on. This will be the recieve ext inst and will be the chain you put any FX on to.
Thank you! This was exactly what I was looking for. I just got a surprise while setting this up when I discovered that the OP-1's stuff does respond to velocity even though it's own keys aren't velocity sensitive :)
Then save the rack as a preset because you never want to go throgh the PITA of setting up all the pads again.
Hah. No kidding. That took forever.
Hope this makes sense. This approach also works for Korg Volcas and anything else you want to map to a drum rack but where the drum machine only has a mono or stereo out. In fact I have a rack which combines the drum sends for a Volca Beats and a Rhythm Wolf so I can use the two together on one rack.
Nice! That's a cool idea.

Stromkraft
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Stromkraft » Sat Jun 18, 2016 1:46 pm

Mage2k wrote:Is there any way to get MIDI output from an empty drum rack?
Just make new chains and set the trigger and send notes. That's all you need to do to trigger sounds elsewhere. If so, that track need to be listening to your rack track (In/Out settings). You can use External Instrument too if you want the audio back to the rack, as suggested.
Make some music!

timday
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by timday » Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:39 pm

I can't make that work for more than a single drum pad because the receive track seems to need to be listening to the chain not the whole rack, and can only listen to one chain at once, which is how I ended up with an ext inst per pad. I'd like to find a neater way to be honest, my method is a bit ugly and I assume that ext inst have some cpu burden attached to them so running loads can't be a great idea. It's just I've tried doing it with chains and can't make it work. Am I missing something?

Stromkraft
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Stromkraft » Sun Jun 19, 2016 11:32 pm

timday wrote:I can't make that work for more than a single drum pad because the receive track seems to need to be listening to the chain not the whole rack, and can only listen to one chain at once, which is how I ended up with an ext inst per pad.
I used to have this problem, but in Live 9.6.1 at least I just set the listening track to the whole drum rack track PostFX and all notes I send reach the receiving track. I'm not sure if this used to not work and has been fixed or if I changed some detail in my set up.

There might be many factors that affect this, so it's a good thing to put a MIDI monitor in there so you see the MIDI event you expect to see in every step. Follow the data when troubleshooting issues like this.
Make some music!

Mage2k
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Mage2k » Thu Jun 23, 2016 3:46 am

Stromkraft wrote:
timday wrote:I can't make that work for more than a single drum pad because the receive track seems to need to be listening to the chain not the whole rack, and can only listen to one chain at once, which is how I ended up with an ext inst per pad.
I used to have this problem, but in Live 9.6.1 at least I just set the listening track to the whole drum rack track PostFX and all notes I send reach the receiving track. I'm not sure if this used to not work and has been fixed or if I changed some detail in my set up.

There might be many factors that affect this, so it's a good thing to put a MIDI monitor in there so you see the MIDI event you expect to see in every step. Follow the data when troubleshooting issues like this.
Got it working this way! It was actually necessary as the rack with all of the external instruments per pad had an untenable lag.

timday
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by timday » Thu Jun 23, 2016 6:12 am

Weirdly, it's not working for me and I'm on 9.6.1. Chain setup works fine but the MIDI notes don't seem to go to the listening track. I'll have another go at the weekend and try to figure out why.

Mage2k
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Mage2k » Thu Jun 23, 2016 5:20 pm

timday wrote:Weirdly, it's not working for me and I'm on 9.6.1. Chain setup works fine but the MIDI notes don't seem to go to the listening track. I'll have another go at the weekend and try to figure out why.
Basically, I just started from the setup you detailed and:

1. Removed all of the MIDI sending External Instruments from the chains.
2. Created a new MIDI track and set it's MIDI From to the OP-1 Drum Rack track.
3. Moved the receiving External Instrument from the drum rack to the new track.
4. I also discovered that I needed to set MIDI From to None on the OP-1 Drum Rack track as I was getting some weird MIDI loops when trying to use the pattern sequencer on the OP-1.

Anyway, I'll take some screen shots tonight after I'm off work and post them here in case that'll help.

timday
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by timday » Thu Jun 23, 2016 6:48 pm

yeah, it's getting the MIDI through to the recieve track that's not working. Not sure why. I'll take a look when I have time, and screenshots would be appreciated. it's not so urgent for me as I don't seem to be experiencing the same lag that you are but a more elegant solution than 100000000 ext insts would be nice.

timday
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by timday » Sat Jun 25, 2016 5:01 pm

OK got it. Oddly it works fine if you use a MIDI controller to trigger the drum, set up a clip, or click the note in piano roll view, but not if yo click on the pad in the drum rack or the play button on the chain, which was what I was doing.

Mage2k
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Mage2k » Sat Jun 25, 2016 11:10 pm

timday wrote:OK got it. Oddly it works fine if you use a MIDI controller to trigger the drum, set up a clip, or click the note in piano roll view, but not if yo click on the pad in the drum rack or the play button on the chain, which was what I was doing.
Whoa, I hadn't even noticed that. My issue now is that the Velocity device apparently has no effect on the MIDI notes sent out via a clip. The individual note velocities from the velocity pane in clips work fine, as do notes generated by hitting the pads on my Push, but putting a Velocity Device on a chain has no effect on note velocities sent via that chain, nor does putting the device before the entire rack have any effect on all the pads. Really scratching my head on this one as I'd really like to be able to get individual pad mixing capability by using one in Fixed mode on each pad and automating the Out Hi values.

Mage2k
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by Mage2k » Sun Jun 26, 2016 12:02 am

Well, turns out that my Velocity device idea does work with the External Instrument per pad setup. Given that I also figured out the lag issue I had with that setup I'm going with it as the superior setup. It's one less track to deal with and I get a way to have per-pad/drum-sound mixing even though they don't have separate outs since I can now control that via velocity in on each with a knob.

Know any good, current Max4Live macro bank devices? It'd be nice to be able to map all of the pads' Velocity devices' Out Hi knobs to one central place so I don't have to deal with selecting chains in the drum rack to access them for manual adjustments.

For what it's worth, the lag issue was from leaving the set open for hours without using it. When coming back and hitting play the MIDI clock gets off and restarting the program fixes it. I'm guessing it's from some kind of OS de-scheduling issue or the like. I also spent a little time honing in on the best Hardware Latency setting on the External Instrument devices for my setup so now it's really tight.

timday
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Re: MIDI output from empty drum rack?

Post by timday » Sun Jun 26, 2016 8:19 am

Covert Operators did a 16 Macro device that can be got from here for free, it's pretty old though and don't know how well it works under all conditions http://www.covops.org/max_for_live_collection/

The velocity device thing seems a good idea. I guess the other thing you could do if 16 macros doesn't work is be a bit clever in assigning your macros on the drum rack e.g. open and closed hats on the same one, all the toms on the same one etc. It would be less flexible but still useful.

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