Support for Polyphonic Aftertouch

[metasymbol]

This great "Linnstrument" is using polyphonic aftertouch:

http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument.html

Unauthorized for Ableton users !

Notes from the Linnstrument manual:

Ableton Live

Ableton Live does not pass received MIDI channel information to a track, so even if you're using a plug-in that permits Channel Per Note operation, Live removes the channel information before passing it on to the track, thereby preventing Channel Per Note operation.

[hyperscientist]

Wow, I was about to order Linnstrument and now I am finding about this by luck. Thank you guys for letting me now early. Ableton...

[crumhorn]

This great "Linnstrument" is using polyphonic aftertouch:

http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument.html

Unauthorized for Ableton users !

Notes from the Linnstrument manual:

Ableton Live

Ableton Live does not pass received MIDI channel information to a track, so even if you're using a plug-in that permits Channel Per Note operation, Live removes the channel information before passing it on to the track, thereby preventing Channel Per Note operation.

There is a bit of a work around for this because you can set the MIDI channel for each track, so by creating 16 tracks (or as many as you need), each with it's own channel setting, you can record and playback multi chanel MIDI.

Obviously using one track per channel has it's downsides when editing

[clu2033]

Seriously, it's 2015. Haken continuum, soundplane, and linnstrument are the future of controllers and use multichannel midi control as integral parts to their functionality. I'm glad Ableton put a bandaid on the latency issue, now they NEED to work on getting poly aftertouch supported.

[tedlogan]

Even Push has Poly-AT (or so I've been told). I would love to be able to play even more expressively. Subtle pitchbends/effects/infinity-of-options per-note...yes please.

[S4racen]

I know it outputs it, think it gets killed at the Ableton end... I've got the LaunchPad PRO at home but haven't been able to test yet...

Cheers
D

[clu2033]

Even Bitwig has produced a beta with not only polyphonic aftertouch but full 3 dimensional expression for controllers such as linnstrument and haken continuum. This has been confirmed to me by Roger Linn himself.

[RO-mix]

Wonder that ableton does not even fully support they own controller... Hope they will listen to customers...

[Bumathan]

Owner of A linnstrument here. + 1 for poly aftertouch !

[xer4111]

I would like to refresh this thread.

I just "enjoyed" once again, the fact that Live filters out poly pressure messages, so I can't play any instrument in live and use poly aftertouch. I can totally use it in Mainstage, or in Pro Tools. Pro Tools records aftertouch but you can only edit in event mode, which is basically useless. BUT you can perform tracks and record them in Midi and get the poly aftertouch recorded.

All I am really requesting here is that Albeton allow us to have live pass-through of poly pressure while an instrument is loaded inside of Live. This allows me to perform with it along with whatever loops or other tracks I have going in Live.

I can't see why this would be such a huge issue to implement.

It IS a lot of midi data, but I'm sure there's a relatively simple way to allow passthrough on the channel being played live. It would seem also just as simple to have event-level recording of that, but frankly it is easier to just record the audio and edit that than it would be to go back and edit event info on a part to fix things.

The bottom line is that it would be a great feature for Live to simply pass through the poly pressure data so that the software instrument responds to the live performance of the keyboard.

To Ableton - once again, I've been a loyal customer since version 2 of your software, along with a significant number of other users who have requested this support. I hope you are listening on this request. There are more and more hardware controllers now that support poly-pressure, so it's no longer the case that it's rare for a keyboard to support this.

Thanks for listening.

[xer4111]

Just a little more on why this issue is important to performers:

1. iPads and newer "flat" keyboards that are readily available (and very inexpensive) support poly pressure or poly-aftertouch. There are LOTS of examples.

2. Pretty much all the Arturia soft synths support poly aftertouch - if you engage "AT" and you are setup to send poly AT, it works. Most people don't know about this because they don't try to use it that way. I use it to great advantage in Pro Tools and Mainstage.

3. Reaktor and Kontakt also support poly AT and it is easy to Mod instruments like Razor to receive poly AT, which is REALLY cool.

But here's the thing - ANYONE using Ableton Live will never know that these work even if they are using a hardware device supporting Poly AT because Live filters out all Poly AT messages and doesn't pass them to the software instruments.

So again, even if it's only pass through with no support to record the Poly AT information, people would be able to perform with it, and record audio if they wish to record clips. The musicality of poly AT when properly worked into a string patch, pad or polyphonic keyboard sound is really worth having. Doing wild filter sweeps on select notes, or activating vibrato or other LFO effects is totally worth having. There are other applications as well depending on how good one is at patching synths.

If you're only launching clips, then of course, this is all irrelevant I suppose, but if you are launching clips while also playing parts using instruments loaded into Live, where Live is the "host" for your sounds, then this becomes a very valuable feature.

So, Again Ableton team, please give this a new look. It can't be too hard to implement pass-through so that instruments can "hear" and "respond" to poly AT message. Okay - all for now. Thanks for listening.

Rex Perry
Perry Multimedia Inc.
Ableton user since version 2

[groumpf]

I don't understand why recording Poly AT could be so difficult.
It's just 3 bytes per message like control change.
http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midimessages.php

I remember a program in BASIC on Atari ST which could do that.

The difficulty is to be able to edit because each message is linked to a note so it's more a GUI difficulty.

But just recording and playing it would already be a valuable step.

[adamj]

FWIW, this is what got me to buy Bitwig. Version 1.2 supports poly AT, and I'm enjoying using my CME XKey with, for example, u-he plugins to do some really expressive stuff.

I'll still use Ableton Live, but lately it seems Bitwig cares about building features that are important to me and I've been using it more and more. That doesn't mean Bitwig is better than Live, it's just how the products are lining up against my personal interests right now.

[cherrypulse]

+1 We really need this feature! This is going to be the future as more companies begin to release more Expressive MIDI instruments! Currently, it's possible to play multi-timbral instruments (by routing various midi tracks with different channels into the plug-in instrument) but recording that data and being able to edit it is no easy task.

While polyphonic aftertouch is really needed in Ableton, we really need more support for playing and recording MIDI data in an efficient and easy way for multi-timbral instruments.

[Stromkraft]

I remember a program in BASIC on Atari ST which could do that.

All sequencers I used on ST recorded polyphonic aftertouch. Omitting it remains an enigma.