Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Post Reply
BenHarrisSongs
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2018 10:59 pm

Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Post by BenHarrisSongs » Tue Apr 10, 2018 11:07 pm

Hey hey. So I just upgraded to Live 10 Standard ‘cause I want to use it for keyboard patches in live performance. I have one channel strip that has a series of instrument racks on it, each of which contains the actual soft-synth producing the sound (also instrument racks) and I switch between them using the channel selector on the first layer of instrument racks.

It works like a charm except for one thing. When I push the sustain pedal down, each instrument rack is receiving the midi, regardless of which rack is currently selected with the chain selector. This eats up a ton of CPU, making it impossible to have more than 8 or 9 patches.

(I’m using Arturia’s Analoglab 3 for most of my sounds. Don’t know if that matters.)

Anyone having this problem/have a better way to run keys patches in live???

Angstrom
Posts: 14921
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:22 pm
Contact:

Re: Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Post by Angstrom » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:28 am

It is an awkward situation. The chain select method never feels very elegant, and there's this issue where CC data gets through (though note data isn't sent to inactive instrument rack chains) . Of course there are cases where we want CC to get through to the deactivated instruments, but for your case ... no factory solution.

Of course there is the dreaded response: "a solution could be made in M4L"
I don't think there's any M4L midi routing method (to individual chains), so I suspect each chain would need an M4L midi device placing on it - an "inactive chain midi blocker" - which would detect whether its parent chain is active... in which case it would allow all midi messages from the in to out.

The time it would take to build such a device would depend on a persons skill level. An expert could probably do this in 10 minutes, or for someone like me about 2 hours of incompetent bungling, or it might take a novice somewhere around 3 months.

Piotr Dydycz
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2017 8:09 pm

Re: Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Post by Piotr Dydycz » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:45 pm

Anyone having this problem/have a better way to run keys patches in live???
I've encountered exactly same issue (particularly problematic with piano plugins as they react to sustain pedal messages both eating CPU and producing unnecesary "pedal noise").
I've prepared custom simple M4L midi device to filter unnecesary MIDI CC messages. I have to put in on each chain before actual plugin.

I would like to know if there is an out-of-the-box solution.

BenHarrisSongs
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2018 10:59 pm

Re: Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Post by BenHarrisSongs » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:57 pm

I figured it out! Much simpler than what I imagined.

If you midi map your controller to turn the actual VST on/off, it doesn't produce the sound and saves the CPU.

So you can have your chain selector with as many instrument racks as you want, so long as the actual VST for those instrument racks is bypassed, you're good to go. Just turn the one you want to use on before you play it, then off again before your next sound.

The only downside to this is needing to get a Launchpad or something with a lot of pads or knobs to be able to individually assign each one to turning one instrument rack on/off, but for live use, I actually prefer this method.

scheffkoch
Posts: 593
Joined: Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:37 pm

Re: Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Post by scheffkoch » Thu Apr 12, 2018 3:16 pm

....you can also assign the on/off knob to the chain selector so that the instrument is only active when it is selected...
macbook pro m1pro, macos monterey, rme multiface via sonnet echo express se I, push 2, faderfox mx12, xone:k2

time2launch
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:44 am

Re: Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Post by time2launch » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:49 am

I ran into the same problem and it's actually much simpler than that. Just right click on the chain selector and click the change selector filters MIDI ctrl. Thank God it was that simple. Loving this

blankdistrict
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 6:05 pm

Re: Chain selector for keyboard presets - sustain pedal issue

Post by blankdistrict » Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:55 pm

time2launch wrote:
Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:49 am
I ran into the same problem and it's actually much simpler than that. Just right click on the chain selector and click the change selector filters MIDI ctrl. Thank God it was that simple. Loving this
Yo, you just made my day! Awesome tip! 8)

Post Reply