Ableton Forum

Using Ableton Live 10 Suite, I'm trying to recombine several MIDI clips (or incoming streams) to get a sort of beat-shuffling effect; however, I am having a hard time getting this to work. The idea was to have several tracks (call them Track A, Track B and Track C) each play a clip with a different sequence, and then have Ableton Live randomly select which MIDI clip was controlling the instrument track (ex: a drum rack) at any specific point in time.

I don't want to select random clips using Follow Actions b/c I want the change to happen at random points, not just on multiples of a bar, and it would be too tedious to program all the combinations as short clips. Also, I have other plans for this feature in the same set.

I have set up the MIDI source tracks, and have them all sending MIDI to an instrument track. I am able to toggle the Track Activator manually on each source track and get the effect I want, however, I'm unable to automate/randomize this b/c I can't seem to map them to an LFO so only one is on at a time. What I think I need is something like a Chain Selector that can select the incoming MIDI stream/clip based on some sort of automation curve/random LFO.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to achieve this in Ableton Live, or using Max for Live? Or perhaps there are some existing MIDI effects or M4L devices that can do this. I would appreciate any ideas you may have...

you could try the midi sender/receiver devices in this pack:
https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/max-7- ... -machines/

lets you send clips from multiple tracks into one 'receiver' channel. then map a random lfo to the receiver's bus selector.

garyboozy wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 18, 2019 3:19 pm

garyboozy

Works brilliantly, thanks @garyboozy!