from preset to preset

pistacchio · Post by **pistacchio** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 6:34 am

hi to all!
i'm planning to use ableton in a live situation. being a k-board player i'd use it mainly as a vsti / effect machine. the possibility of trigging things via midi and via compuyer keyboard.
now, as i'm playing progressive / experimental rock with my band, there are a lot of radical changes within a song and often there's not a real end/begin between different songs, so i need to change often parameteres. say, pass from a piano sound with reverb with a part of the keyboard split to make pads, to a sax-like instrument in the left part and a organ on the right. just throwing some random example.
the question is: how can i quickli change so many parameters (on order to have a really mixed liveset) with the minimum amount of keys?
if i need to change 4 things (say, set a different output volume, shut down a reverb, change the vsti and split the keyboard) from a beat to the other i cannot afford pressing 4 keys!!
thanks in advance.
gustavo

pistacchio · Post by **pistacchio** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 5:21 pm

anyone?

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 5:28 pm

Do you know what clip envelopes are?
If not. They might be what you are looking for.

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 7:35 pm

study the various track routing options. I'm pretty sure you could set up something by routing midi and audio from one track to another, setting up midi fx for keyboard splits and then muting and unmuting various tracks or setting up the a-b crossfader to switch between sounds.

maybe you need one of these:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15363

psilosly · Post by **psilosly** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 7:39 pm

This is something that isn't all that easy currently.

Your best bet is to go with modular VSTi's (the Korg Legacy Collection/Cell is wicked for this) and then you can change stuff with a Program Change command.

Another way to do this is to use device groups, build your device groups and save them in a folder, then drag and drop them on your track in live. Problems with this: it requires a mouse and you can easily lose your MIDI mappings (if you have them).

Another option is to go with a hybrid of the above. Have a VST instrument that accepts Program Changes and have all your MIDI mapped to it, and then drop effect device groups after it.

To avoid losing MIDI mappings, you can break up your device groups so that certain pieces always have the same effects in them (say a high and low pass filter group with the cuts mapped). You can leave these as they are for the whole set and just replace other device group parts.

But man, it would be so nice if we could have program changes for device groups!

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 11:43 pm

you could also look at bomes midi translator and set it up so that one key enabled/disabled a whole channel and it's effects with one press. you could feasibly set this up so that if you hit the key to enable an effects group it simultaneaously turned off all other groups, but it might take a while to figure out and set up the correct midi messages.
you could probably do the same thing with bidule or similar and it may be a bit more intuitive, but i'm not sure of that.

pistacchio · Post by **pistacchio** » Tue Sep 27, 2005 1:23 pm

hmm..
maybe the simpliest solution would be: is there any plugin / vst able to produce midi out signals when triggered?
say that i've assigned C#2, D2, D#2, and E to 4 parameters. i trigger this ideal machine with c2, it multiplies the signal and outputs C#2, D2, D#2, and E. this would trigger the 4 parameters (switches and so on) with just one key, C2.

is there any similar vst?

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 12:26 am

plogue bidule is in vst beta testing, so should be able to do that soon. energy xt can probably do it now, and it's a bit cheaper. you could build your own vst in synthmaker or synthedit, or set it up in reaktor or something as well i guess. midiox or bomes, as i said, could do it too.