playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Share your favorite Ableton Live tips, tricks, and techniques.
Post Reply
samtastic
Posts: 195
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:03 pm

playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Post by samtastic » Tue May 12, 2009 5:02 pm

hi all,
is it possible to layer up instruments or VSTs and then play them through one keyboard simultaneously?

I know, for example, that you could have a nice bass synth, then copy it's MIDI clip and apply it to a sub-bass synth and then blend the two together for a much fatter sound.

but is it possible to do the same thing live? ie jamming with one keyboard will control both synths at once?

cheers

wehkah
Posts: 498
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:19 pm
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Post by wehkah » Tue May 12, 2009 5:08 pm

hej,

take a look at the midi routing chapter in your Live helpfile (manual). ableton has a really good manual and its very easy to understand.

have fun :mrgreen:

cheers
T
Motto: sharing knowledge...

https://soundcloud.com/bytechop

5meohd
Posts: 115
Joined: Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:49 am

Re: playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Post by 5meohd » Tue May 12, 2009 9:39 pm

just hold ctrl and arm multiple tracks!


lol, i didnt find this out until a month or so ago and its so fun.. especially because you can arm a drum rack as well and put clicks and taps and pings and get really really cool idm/psy sounds just messing around!

Superchibisan
Posts: 593
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 7:25 pm

Re: playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Post by Superchibisan » Wed May 13, 2009 12:00 am

set up the different vst channels to monitor different midi channels. use the selector on your keyboard to switch between these midi channels. (my edirol has a knob that just spins through the midi channels. very useful.)

seismicexplo
Posts: 61
Joined: Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:43 pm

Re: playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Post by seismicexplo » Thu May 14, 2009 11:48 pm

put different instruments on different chains in a rack

emef
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Jul 13, 2002 5:08 pm
Location: blackpool
Contact:

Re: playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Post by emef » Fri May 15, 2009 11:24 pm

yep just drag a bunch of synths/vsti's into an instrument rack
ya can play as many synths at once or as many as your computer can handle
all synths will be triggered by a single key press

ReasonliveUSER
Posts: 94
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2008 8:34 am
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: playing many instruments/VSTs at once thru one keyboard?

Post by ReasonliveUSER » Sat May 16, 2009 2:43 am

yes indeed I was waiting for someone to suggest making an instrument rack. that would be the easiest way. sure you can do it the other way by setting up different midi tracks with plug-ins instruments to receive midi from a master midi track by setting this up in the input output monitor section of the tracks but the instrument rack is a sleeker way of doing this.

each plug/device has its own chain where you can drop more fx's. just remember if you build your self a monster kick ass rack disable it or freeze it when you are not using it to save thecpu load (i prefer disableing each plug one by one bcuz i can mute ones i aint using this way)i have a rack with the native instrument's komplete bundle and it can take 20% of my cpu when idle so I disable whatever i'm mot using. I have a rack with all reason device ready to go i even had a rack for all my hardware gear grouped and sent to Live's individual external instrument device and cloned each time for all midi channel and even a special hardware one set to ch 10 for drum patches.

one you grasp the basic concepts of the rack you will then move on and learn about key spit and velocity zones with in the rack to filter different sounds when you play
http://therightbros.blogspot.com
Computer: 2.16Ghz Intel core 2 Duo 17''Imac w/ 500gb internal HD 3gigs of ram on Snow Leopard
Software: Ableton Live 8 Suite & Propellerhead Reason 5
Storage: 5x OWC Mercury Elite 1TB HD
M-Audio ProjectMix I/O

Post Reply