Anybody know about multi-channel midi on one track?

chewywater · Post by **chewywater** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:32 pm

What I'm trying to do:
I am trying to play a violin using kontakt 2 in live 6.
midi ch1 in Kontakt plugin plays legato violin.
midi ch2 in Kontakt plugin plays staccato violin.

When I play the violin using my external midi controller I would like to use a knob to switch back and forth between staccato and legato during the performance.

Problem
When I try to do this, live receives all input from the keyboard but only sends the notes to ch1 of the plugin.

Questions:
Anyone know how to accomplish what I want to do?
Can live record multi-channel midi input to a single track?
Can live associate different midi channels with midi notes in the same track?

I was hoping to use live for a film scoring project.
Unfortunately large orchestral plugins put different articulations on different channels.

bensuthers · Post by **bensuthers** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 11:42 pm

you will need two input/output channels - then use racks to filter the data, and send the output of the channels to the midi instrument with the kontakt instrument....but don't send to the track in...send direct to the kontakt channel.

chewywater · Post by **chewywater** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:09 am

bensuthers wrote:you will need two input/output channels - then use racks to filter the data, and send the output of the channels to the midi instrument with the kontakt instrument....but don't send to the track in...send direct to the kontakt channel.

Thanks I will give this a shot and report back!

chewywater · Post by **chewywater** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 7:42 pm

OK.
I created a midi fx rack with a chain selector that I can now control from the keyboard. I've got a multichannel midi instrument on its own track.

How can I now guide the midi events from each chain into separate channels on the plugin track?

Am I going about things the wrong way here?
What I'm trying to avoid is having a single performance spread over many midi tracks.

annihilator.1 · Post by **annihilator.1** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 7:57 pm

just create 2 midi tracks,1st track with the vst & then route midi from the second track to the 1st using the Midi To option on the second track,a new drop down will appear below that which will allow you to choose which channel to route to.

Now input on either tracks will trigger the right channel,if you then set the input of the second track to Midi Ch 2 and record enable both tracks you should be able to switch the midi channel you transmit from your keyboard to play the appropriate instrument.

chewywater · Post by **chewywater** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:00 pm

annihilator.1 wrote:just create 2 midi tracks,1st track with the vst & then route midi from the second track to the 1st using the Midi To option on the second track,a new drop down will appear below that which will allow you to choose which channel to route to.

Now input on either tracks will trigger the right channel,if you then set the input of the second track to Midi Ch 2 and record enable both tracks you should be able to switch the midi channel you transmit from your keyboard to play the appropriate instrument.

Yes. This will work.
Unfortunately if the plugin is a multi with 10 channels, the performance gets spread over ten tracks. (Although the complete performance does get saved on the vst's track, it will only play through one vst channel once there).

I gave the two channel example to keep my question simple. In reality I am using an orchestral plugin where each orchestral instrument can have 10+ midi channels. What this means for me is that if I put a piece together with 40 of these instruments, the performances will be spread across 400 tracks.

Other daws get around the problem by allowing multi channel midi data to exist in one track. And I was hoping ableton had a similar workaround.

If I could use midi-racks/chain selectors to rout midi data directly to different channels of a plugin, it would solve the problem beautifully.

Again the problem I'm trying to solve is how to keep a midi performance that requires a multi-channel plugin confined to a single track.

I appreciate the input everyone. If I've misunderstood your advice please let me know.