Midi Setup for External Sequencer and Controllers

[Richard1965]

Hi All,

I have recently mastered the art of using external synths in Ableton with no real need to understand anything in depth about Midi except for Lives midi ports. I found myself purchasing a Polyend Play which has so much potential as an external sequencer with 8 audio and 8 midi tracks. I started jamming with it, realising each midi track needed to be set to a specific channel and then setting the same channel on each piece of hardware. Fabulous, everything was great, recorded midi and audio in Live no problem.

I then realised that I could not control/play any of the hardware instruments with anything other than 'Play' as I had set specific midi channels. After hours of playing with the set up, I realised it was a case of one midi channel or all. When a controller is set to receive all, the 'play' then sends note data to everything when sequencer is active so that is not an option.

I would like to be able to play a synth module (hardware) or VST via a midi controller keyboard AND the Polyend Play without having to keep changing the midi channels on the controller keyboard? I know you can set the midi in to be from the controller in Live but wondered if there was another way to do this?

I also realised that my Push2 sends note data across a number of midi channels so there is only one octave of the pads that triggers notes when a synth has a certain midi channel assigned to it? Any thoughts on why this is the case or how to change it to a single channel?

I am running everything on USB midi currently and I have a Behringer ADA8200 ADAT extender into a focusrite 18i8 so a Midi in and Out port are available if that could be utilised?

Hardware synths are as follows: Korg Modwave (acts as main keyboard controller), Virus Acess Ti, ASM Hydrasynth, Prophet Rev2, Digitone, Maschine Mk3, Moog Minitaur. Roland JX08. Push2, Polyend Play
Windows 10 PC, Ableton Live 11

Any help would be amazing.....
Richard

[chapelier fou]

In Live you can set up several tracks listening to the same midi input but outputting to various outputs/channels. You could then arm the one you want to target the wanted synth.

[Richard1965]

I tried that and it seemed to ignore the 'arm' status and then not play any other track even if the midi input was set to receive from Play. i.e. three tracks set to receive midi from play but only the armed track sounded on playback.