best way to cycle through instruments?

[boatclub]

hello there.

trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this.

i have like, 8 tracks setup that i use to trigger different clips with and whatever, but i also have a bunch of simplers, operators etc etc that i want to have in the live set, so that i can cycle through them with a button or encoder on my midi controller, and just fire up one on the fly so i can play it with my pad kontrol.

whats the best way to go about doing this?

at the moment, i have a 9th track setup with an instrument rack, with all the instruments i want to use in its own chain, and using the chain selector scroll through them, but it's a bit small and fiddly, and the text at the bottom to see which chain is currently selected is so tiny.

any body got any other ideas?

thanks, lou.

[yur2die4]

This might sound goofy but what if you had Dummy Clips with the title of each instrument you wanted to use and those Dummy Clips would activate the appropriate setting on your chain selecting knob? (Sorry if it isn't that intuitive, it is all i could think of haha)

[boatclub]

that would probably be cool too. i was thinking of that, but wasn't sure how to setup a specific dummy clip like that.
how do you link the dummy clip to the chain selector? i tried looking in the envelope view but didn't see anything appropriate :S

[outershpongolia]

I just put together a chain selector to select reason instruments.

Make a chain for every instrument, map the chain selector to a knob, set up your ranges, and you'll be able to switch instruments by turning the knob.. essentially you could have 128 of them, one for every click of the knob, but this isn't ideal.

I think you can rack up instruments, plugin's, etc and easily switch through them with the chain selector mapped to a knob.

If you had 3 or 4 tracks to change instruments at once they could be mapped to the same knob, so you're switching a whole sound set with one twist? I should try this out..

[boatclub]

as i mentioned in my first post, this method with the chain selector mapped to a midi knob isn't really ideal, it's pretty fiddly, and it's too hard to see what's currently selected properly. it's not something i'd really like to do.

started the thread to ideally find a better alternative to this.

i thoguht ableton would totally have a better way to do this.

any ideas?

[siliconarc]

give each instrument in the rack its own chain.

in session, create a clip for each instrument in the rack's midi track (10 instruments in the rack = 10 clips, etc).

go into each clip and edit the 'chain select' envelope. for clip/instrument 1, nudge the envelope up to 1 and so on.

now map a different CC button or qwerty key to each clip to select the instrument you want.

[yur2die4]

I looked in my manual to see if the PadKontrol supported single increment/decrements of a CC# but it does not.

Some controllers have the option to have for instance, two buttons assigned to the same CC#. One button would be +1 and the other would be -1 of the value. So if you had CC# 7 (volume) set to 100, tapping the -1 would give you 99. This would be extra handy for flipping through instruments but you would still not have any kind of labels and you would have to keep tapping that button repeatedly.

I still feel that having clips assigned to the knob that controls the chain selector would be the best option because you have a clear label (or color) and immediate access to the sound (especially if you kept quantization to "0").

The person who posted above's description should hopefully help

[Jekblad]

if you map a CC to the chain selector, you can access the other instruments with one button press by using different velocities.

is that really what i mean to say? either way, using a knob is pretty lame, buttons would be better. Can the PK send CC's through the pads? you can use one scene to change instruments.

[outershpongolia]

That's my biggest deal with Synths.. I use the xiosynth and I'm constantly scrolling through patches with the rotary encoder..

Then I use a microKORG at my buddies house and you just switch by pressing the different buttons and using the genre knob.. which for my case would be perfect.

More synths need to have a row of buttons, like 10 or so, to put favorite patches on, instead of scrolling with a wheel or up/down buttons.

[delicioso]

Just use the same cc# for different buttons but with different values for each buttons. No need for dummy clips if you do it this way. Just set up an instrument rack with a chain per preset. Now map the chain selector in live to that same cc#. Don't forget to limit the min max value to the number of chains, so that if you have 4 chains/presets then set min to 0 and max to 3. I do this with my Nocturn and it works perfect. I even use this method with multitimbral plugs like sampletank and kontakt by using the External Instrument device for each chain.

[Jekblad]

^^^ exactly

[outershpongolia]

OT: The knob on the XioSynth that scrolls through the sounds in synth mode is also program change knob in MIDI mode. So is there a way to send a program change message to the xiosynth that will change the synth sound in synth mode? I hate scrolling through 200 patches on my synth to find the sound I am looking for..

[boatclub]

Just use the same cc# for different buttons but with different values for each buttons. No need for dummy clips if you do it this way. Just set up an instrument rack with a chain per preset. Now map the chain selector in live to that same cc#. Don't forget to limit the min max value to the number of chains, so that if you have 4 chains/presets then set min to 0 and max to 3. I do this with my Nocturn and it works perfect. I even use this method with multitimbral plugs like sampletank and kontakt by using the External Instrument device for each chain.

yes, this is a good idea, however the dummy clips isn't so bad, because it gives you a big list to scroll through, and you can visually see it better, rather than the chain selector, which is tiny, and it's very hard to see what you currently have selected and whats coming up etc.

[delicioso]

Just use the same cc# for different buttons but with different values for each buttons. No need for dummy clips if you do it this way. Just set up an instrument rack with a chain per preset. Now map the chain selector in live to that same cc#. Don't forget to limit the min max value to the number of chains, so that if you have 4 chains/presets then set min to 0 and max to 3. I do this with my Nocturn and it works perfect. I even use this method with multitimbral plugs like sampletank and kontakt by using the External Instrument device for each chain.

yes, this is a good idea, however the dummy clips isn't so bad, because it gives you a big list to scroll through, and you can visually see it better, rather than the chain selector, which is tiny, and it's very hard to see what you currently have selected and whats coming up etc.

well, in my case using the Nocturn as described above, I can label my buttons with patch names in the Automap GUI. It's very visual and totally a different experience than mapping the chain selector to a knob which is not practical at all.

[depnaker]

Make a chain for every instrument, map the chain selector to a knob, set up your ranges, and you'll be able to switch instruments by turning the knob.. essentially you could have 128 of them, best merchant account one for every click of the knob, but this isn't ideal.