I wanted a quick way to audition midi files in Ableton without having to set up instruments for each track of the midi. So when I came across a General Midi instrument call SonCat I thought I might make use of this to do the job easily. I started off in Session view and allocated the first track for SonCat, this would output directly to the Master bus. I then allocated 16 tracks, each of which pointed to the SonCat track (but with different channel numbers. Because of the way GM modules work, I made sure that the track pointing to channel 10 was labelled as 'Drums'.
Now all I needed to do is copy and paste a midi file to begin at track 2. and then make swap the drum clip into the 'Drums' track if necessary.
When I started the scene corresponding to the midi I was able to here the song playing on all the instruments defined by midi file, but the timing between tracks seemed to be bit out. As Eric Morecambe would say - all the correct notes were being played, but not in the correct time!
So ... I tried to same process in Arrangement view. This time all worked well.
Why is there a difference? It does work OK with some midi songs but not many. It's as if the Session does not respect the time starting clips that have no notes at the beginning.
I would prefer to work in Session View because my template can be easily set up to hold a large number of midi songs and I can then use it as a sort of audition jukebox.
Thanks for help